PLANTAGENET PERIOD.--HENRY II. TO THE DEATH OF RICHARD I.
The period on which we now enter, called, in compliance with usage, the
_Plantagenet_, might for our present purpose more strictly be named
_The Light Wine Period_. And it is instructive; and might have served
for instruction to certain of our legislators in the present reign, who
first tried beer (houses) to put down spirit drinking, and then tried
wine to put down spirits and beer. The facts of English history were
disregarded, and these _remedial_ expedients were adopted, in the light
of which the irony of the Spartans pales, who to put down drunkenness
made their slaves drunk, and then exhibited them as hideous examples.
We have seen that the traffic of wines with Bordeaux was brought about
through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine. That
‘great Provence dower,’ as Dante calls it, was the secret of the new
trade with Guienne and Gascony, provinces which had both been erected
into the dukedom of Aquitaine in the preceding century. The Normans
were the great carriers. In the centre of the vessels that brought home
the produce of the new English possessions in France were large fixed
tanks (_Pipæ gardæ_), and right well did the sailors understand the
process known as ‘sucking the monkey,’ or, in plain English, furtively
drawing off the wine from its receptacle in course of transit. And they
must have had plenty of choice, for amongst the wines imported were
Muscadell, Malmsey, Rhenish, Dele, Stum, Wormwood, Gascony, Alicant,
Canary, Sack, Sherry, and Rumney.
At the very time that the English were enjoying the wines of France,
our French neighbours were reciprocally appreciative. William
FitzStephen, in his _Life of Thomas à Becket_, states that when he went
as chancellor into France to negotiate a royal marriage, two of the
waggons which accompanied him were laden with beer in iron-bound casks
for presents to the French, ‘who admire that kind of drink, for it is
wholesome, clear, of the colour of wine, and of a better taste.’
To this period many writers refer the origin of
_Distillation_.
And, as in many other cases, when the inventors are unknown, the
Arabians are at once accredited with the discovery. The argument
probably runs thus--_Alcohol_, _alchymy_, _alchymist_, _alembic_,
have all something in common; moreover, they all begin with _al_,
and _al_ is the Arabic article, _therefore_ alcohol was invented by
the Arabians. So high an authority as Gibbon (_Decline and Fall_) is
of opinion that ‘_they_ first invented and named the alembic for the
purpose of distillation.’ Indeed, it is the commonly received opinion
that their visionary hope of finding an elixir of immortal health led
them to the discovery of alcohol, and entailed upon mankind a beverage
which has proved to some a blessing, but to millions a curse.
But the derivation of the words is the history of their origin.
_Alembic_ is the Greek ἄμβιξ, a beaker, with the Arabic prefix _al_,
which is intensive. _Alcohol_ is the Hebrew _Kaal_ (Chaldaic _cohal_),
with the same prefix, and signifies something highly subtilised, pure
spirit.[57] The Arabians owed much to other countries; they were
rather restorers and improvers than inventors. They formed the link
which unites ancient and modern literature; but their superstitious
reverence for antiquity checked originality of ideas and freedom of
thought. In respect of the discovery in question, it is certain that
the invention preceded the days of the Saracens. Pliny very nearly
described the process. Thus, he details the mode of obtaining an
artificial quicksilver by distillation; and in another book (xv.),
he speaks of the vapour arising from boiling pitch being collected on
fleeces of wool spread over pots, and afterwards extracted from them
by expression. Galen, the famous medical writer of the second century,
speaks of distillation _per descensum_; while Zosimus, a writer of the
fifth century, has given figures of a distilling apparatus which
Borrichius has copied in his _Hermetis et Ægyptiorum Chemicorum
Sapientia_.
The sobriety of the country can be tolerably gauged from a comparison
of such contemporary writers as John of Salisbury, Giraldus Cambrensis,
and Peter of Blois. The former of these, in a letter to a friend,
writes:--‘You know that the constant habit of drinking has made the
English famous among all foreign nations.’ In another letter, sent
by him to this country: ‘Both nature and national customs make you
drunkards. It is a strife between Ceres and Bacchus. But, in the beer
which conquers, and reigns, and domineers with you, Ceres prevails.’
Again, in his _Polycraticus_, he distinguishes between vulgar feasts,
when the mightiest tippler is considered the best man, and polite
feasts, where sobriety becomes joyous, and plenty does not lead to
excess. Giraldus Cambrensis, Archdeacon of Brecknock at the close of
the twelfth century, describes a dinner with the Prior of Canterbury
where were a variety of wines such as piment and claret, besides mead,
&c. Of the Irish clergy, he says, ‘you will not find one who, after
all his rigorous observance of fasts and prayer, will not make up at
night for the labours of the day, by drinking wine and other liquors
beyond all bounds of decorum.’ Peter of Blois observes, in one of his
letters:--‘When you behold our barons and knights going on a military
expedition, you see their baggage horses loaded, not with iron but
wine, not with lances but cheeses, not with swords but bottles, not
with spears but spits. You would imagine they were going to prepare a
great feast, rather than to make war.’
The greatest genius of the reign of Henry II. was Walter Mapes, the
king’s chaplain, best known under the names of ‘Map,’ and the ‘jovial
archdeacon.’ This last title is an anachronism, inasmuch as he was
not made Archdeacon of Oxford till the reign of Henry’s son Richard,
when he was no longer an author. His powerful satire was directed
against the growing corruptions of the Church. Never were abuses more
sweepingly exposed than in his famous _Apocalypse of Golias_--Bishop
Golias being an imaginary impersonation of ecclesiastical profligacy.
In estimating the personal qualifications of Mapes to sit in judgment
on his clerical brethren, it should be remembered that he was the
author of a celebrated drinking ode in Leonine verse, which has a
singularly Bacchanalian ring about it. Camden alludes to the author as
one who filled England with his merriments, and confessed his love to
good liquor, with the causes, in this manner:--
Mihi est propositum in taberna mori;
Vinum sit appositum morientis ori:
Ut dicant, cum venerint, angelorum chori,
Deus sit propitius huic potatori.
Poculis accenditur animi lucerna,
Cor imbutum nectare volat ad superna;
Mihi sapit dulcius vinum in taberna
Quam quod aqua miscuit præsulis pincerna.
Suum cuique proprium dat natura munus,
Ego nunquam potui scribere jejunus;
Me jejunum vincere posset puer unus,
Sitim et jejunium, odi tanquam funus.
Unicuique proprium dat natura donum,
Ego versus faciens, vinum bibo bonum,
Et quod habent melius dolia cauponum,
Tale vinum generat copiam sermonum.
Tales versus facio, quale vinum bibo,
Nihil possum scribere, nisi sumpto cibo,
Nihil valet penitus quod jejunus scribo,
Nasonem post calices carmine præibo.
Mihi nunquam spiritus prophetiæ datur,
Nisi tunc cum fuerit venter bene satur,
Cum in arce cerebri Bacchus dominatur,
In me Phœbus irruit, ac miranda fatur.
Of which the following, by Robert Harrison, is an ‘Imitation.’
I’m fixed:--I’ll in some tavern lie,
When I return to dust;
And have the bottle at my month,
To moisten my dry crust:
That the choice spirits of the skies
(Who know my soul is mellow)
May say, Ye gods, propitious smile!
Here comes an honest fellow.
My lamp of life ‘I’ll’ kindle up
With spirits stout as Hector;
Upon the flames of which I’ll rise
And quaff celestial nectar.
My lord invites me, and I starve
On water mix’d with wine;
But at _The Grapes_, I get it neat,
And never fail to shine.
To every man his proper gift
Dame Nature gives complete:
My humour is--before I write,
I always love to eat;
For, when I’m scanty of good cheer,
I’m but a boy at best:
So hunger, thirst, and Tyburn-tree
I equally detest.
Give me good wine, my verses are
As good as man can make ‘em;
But when I’ve none, or drink it small,
You’ll say, The devil take ‘em!
For how can anything that’s good
Come from an empty vessel?
But I’ll out-sing even Ovid’s self
Let me but wet my whistle.
With belly full, and heart at ease,
And all the man at home,
I grow prophetic, and can talk
Of wondrous things to come.
When, on my brain’s high citadel,
Strong _Bacchus_ sits in state,
Then _Phœbus_ joins the jolly god,
And all I say is great.[58]
Others have tried their hand at a translation. S. R. Clarke (_Vestigia
Anglicana_) thus renders the first stanza:--
Well, let me jovial in a tavern die,
And bring to my expiring lips the bowl,
That choirs of angels, when they come, may cry,
Heaven be propitious to the toper’s soul.
The late Mr. Green gives the following version:--
Die I must, but let me die drinking in an inn!
Hold the wine-cup to my lips sparkling from the bin!
So, when angels flutter down to take me from my sin,
‘Ah, God have mercy on this sot,’ the cherubs will begin![59]
It only remains to add that this enigmatical character well earned the
title of ‘the Anacreon of his age.’
The habits of the king were abstemious, an example which his sons
disregarded. So dissolute and hot was Geoffrey in his youth, remarks
Giraldus, that he was equally ensnared by allurements, and driven on
to action by stimulants. The ‘nappy ale’ and the cup of ‘lambswool,’
well known to the readers of the pretty ballad entitled ‘King Henry II.
and the Miller of Mansfield,’ were the ruin of the royal prince, so
prematurely cut off. It might have been well for the three brothers,
Geoffrey, Richard, and John, had the sumptuary laws of their father
extended to drinks as well as meats. But in forming an estimate of
individuals much is to be taken into account; and in the present
instance, in addition to youth and, perhaps, propensity, it must be
remembered that the surroundings of the court and the conviviality of
the times acted and reacted. Everything that could was made to minister
to appetite. Religion itself was made subservient to the vulgar taste.
Its festivals were accommodated to the vulgar craving. The feast of the
Saviour’s nativity was among the primitive Christians ushered in by the
display of calm devotional feeling, unalloyed with the counterfeit of
sensual enjoyment, but soon it degenerated into a scene of boisterous
activity. Such it was during the Anglo-Saxon period. Such it continued
under the line of Norman kings, with the one redeeming feature of the
assembling of the prelates and nobles of the realm for deliberating
upon the affairs of the country. As a relief, however, to these grave
deliberations the guests were feasted with a series of banquets. The
part played by Cœur de Lion at such entertainments is thus alluded to
in one of the metrical romances of the period:--
Christmas is a time full honest;
King Richard it honoured with great feast,
All his clerks and barons
Were set in their pavilions,
And served with great plenty
Of meat, and drink, and each dainty.
In the same way the festival of St. Martin was degraded. The old
calendars of the Church state, in the order of the day: ‘The
Martinalia, a genial Feast; wines are tasted of, and drawn from the
lees; Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ While (says John Brady) it
generally obtained the title of the _second Bacchanal_ among old
ecclesiastical writers:--
Altera Martinus dein Bacchanalia præbet;
Quem colit anseribus populus multoque Lyæo.
A little old ballad tells the same tale, which begins:--
It is the day of Martilmasse,
Cuppes of ale should freelie passe.
Days spent in this medley of feast and deliberation gave place to
nights of revelry, at which masques and mummings formed some of the
features of the entertainments. A continual round of revelry was thus
maintained during the whole of the twelve days forming the feast of
Yule, and seldom until the expiration of the closing night’s debauch
did they return to a more sober course. A capital insight into the
manners of the times of the first Richard is supplied by Sir Walter
Scott in his historical romance _Ivanhoe_. From it we gather the forms
of _pledging_ then adopted: thus Cedric is represented as addressing
Sir Templar:--‘Pledge me in a cup of wine, and fill another to the
Abbot, while I look back some thirty years to tell you another tale.’
‘To the memory of the brave who fought’ at Northallerton! ‘Pledge me,
my guests.’ After ‘deep drinking’ a further toast is proposed:--‘Knave,
fill the goblets--To the strong in arms, be their race or language what
it will.’ On another occasion we find the hermit bringing forth ‘two
large drinking-cups, made out of the horn of the urus, and hooped with
silver. Having made this goodly provision for washing down the supper,
he seemed to think no farther ceremonious scruple necessary on his
part; but filling both cups, and saying in the Saxon fashion, ‘_Waes
Hael_, Sir sluggish knight!’ he emptied his own at a draught. ‘_Drink
Hael_, Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst!’ answered the warrior. Another story
is given in which Cedric welcomes King Richard with the same salutation.
The heads of religious houses are probably caricatured with truth.
There is exquisite satire in the letter which Conrad is made to read
from Prior Aymer:--‘Aymer, by divine grace, Prior of the Cistercian
house of St. Mary’s of Jorvaulx, to Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a
knight of the holy order of the Temple, wisheth health, with the
bounties of King Bacchus and my Lady of Venus.... I trust to have my
part when we make merry together, as true brothers, not forgetting the
wine cup. For, what saith the text? _Vinum lætificat cor hominis._’ The
capacity of Friar Tuck is gauged by the king (chap. xli.) at ‘a but of
sack, a runlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale, of the first
strike. If,’ says the king, ‘that will not quench thy thirst, thou must
come to court, and be acquainted with my butler.’
The Chronicles of St. Edmundsbury abound with the irregularities of
this time. For instance, we read of a tournament held near St. Edmund,
after which eighty young men, sons of noblemen, were asked to dine
with the Abbot. After dinner, the Abbot retiring to his chamber, they
all arose and began to carol and sing, sending into the town for wine,
drinking, screeching, depriving the Abbot and convent of sleep, and
refusing to desist at the command of the superior. When the evening was
come they broke open the town gates, and went out. The Abbot solemnly
excommunicated them. Very few years after this (A.D. 1197) we find the
cellarer, at the same St. Edmundsbury, turned out for drunkenness.
The next year his successor committed a crime, for which the Abbot
restricted him to water. In the case of another official,[60] his
goods were seized for gross irregularities.
The clergy seem to have needed public admonition. The eighteenth of
Hubert Walter’s Legislative Canons at York enjoins: ‘Because, according
to the Word of the Lord, if the priest offend he will cause the people
to offend; and a wicked priest is the ruin of the people; therefore the
eminence of their order requires that they abstain from public bouts
and taverns.’
The tenth canon of the same archbishop, at Westminster, A.D. 1200,
ordained ‘that clerks go not to taverns or drinking bouts, for from
thence come quarrels, and then laymen beat clergymen, and fall under
the Canon.’
When such was the condition of the clergy, it would be vain to look
for a high standard of morality among the people. Richard of Devizes,
the chronicler of the acts of Richard I., exposes the intemperance of
the king’s troops engaged in Palestine, and its influence upon their
allies. He remarks: ‘The nations of the French and English, so long as
their resources lasted, no matter at what cost, feasted every day in
common sumptuously, and, with deference to the French, to something
more than satiety; and _preserving ever the remarkable custom of the
English_, at the notes of clarions, or the clanging of the trumpet or
horn, applied themselves with due devotion to drain the goblets to the
dregs. The merchants of the country, who brought the victuals into the
camp, unaccustomed to the wonderful consumption, could hardly credit
that what they saw was true, that a single people, and that small in
number, should consume three times as much bread, and a hundred times
as much wine, as that on which many nations of the heathen, and each
of them innumerable, lived. The hand of the Lord deservedly fell upon
these enervated soldiers.’[61]
Allusion has already been made to the personal habits of King Richard
I. The immediate cause of his death was an arrow which pierced
his shoulder upon the occasion of his laying siege to the castle
of Limosin. Some have blamed the unskilfulness of the surgeon in
attendance; others have said, the king himself by his intemperance did
not a little help to inflame the wound.[62]
The Edwardian romance, entitled ‘Richard Cœur de Lion,’ contains
abundant allusions to conviviality. In the following quotation, the
occurrence of the term _costrel_, by which is intended an earthen or
wooden flask, is the occasion of a paragraph in Chaffer’s valuable work
on pottery.[63]
Now, steward, I warn thee,
Buy us vessel great plente,
Dishes, cuppes and saucers,
Bowls, trays and platters,
Vats, tuns, and costrel.
The same romance tells that it was a female minstrel, an Englishwoman,
who betrayed the knight-errant king on his return from the Holy Land.
It is worth quoting as illustrative of minstrel life which in these
times formed so prominent a feature:--
When they had drunken well a fin,
A minstralle com therein,
And said, ‘Gentlemen, wittily,
Will ye have any minstrelsey?’
Richard bade that she should go.
The minstralle took in mind,
And saith, ‘Ye are men unkind;
And if I may, ye shall for-think
Ye gave neither meat nor drink,
For gentlemen should bede
To minstrels that abandon yede,
Of their meat, wine, and ale.’[64]
In the reign of King John occurs
_The Earliest Statute on the Foreign Wine Trade_.
It was enacted (1200) that the wines of Anjou should not be sold for
more than 24_s._ a tun, and that the wines of Poitou should not be
higher than 20_s._ The other wines of France were limited to 25_s._ a
tun, ‘unless they were so good as to induce any one to give for them
two marks or more.’ Twelve honest men in every town were to superintend
this assize. This ordinance, Holinshed says, could not last long, for
the merchants could not bear it; and so they fell to, and sold white
wine for eightpence the gallon, and red, or claret, for sixpence. The
king claimed, out of every imported cargo, one tun before the mast,
and another behind it, under the name of _prisa_ or _prisa recta_,
and officers were appointed to collect and account for the same. From
the entries of this reign we discover that the principal wines then
consumed in England were--those of Anjou, chiefly white and sweet;
Gascon wine, wine of Saxony, and wine of Auxerre, which came from the
territory of the Duke of Burgundy.[65]
The introduction of these wines soon began to manifest its effects.
Roger de Hoveden, whose annals date as far as the third year of John,
says: ‘By this means the land was filled with drink and drinkers.’
That the English had a wide-spread fame for heavy drinking we
incidentally learn from an _on-dit_ of Pope Innocent III. When the case
of the exemption of the Abbey of Evesham from the Bishop of Worcester
was being argued before the pope, the bishop’s counsel said, ‘Holy
father, we have learnt in the schools, and this is the opinion of our
masters, that there is no prescription against the rights of bishops.’
The pope replied, ‘Certainly, both you and your masters had drunk too
much English beer when you learnt this.’
King John founded the Abbey of Beaulieu, which had a famous vineyard.
Possibly the imported wines did not please the palate of the monks.
Their standard may have been that of a writer of the period who has
given the world an enumeration of the qualities of good wine, which
he says should be as ‘clear as the tears of a penitent, so that a
man may see distinctly to the bottom of his glass. Its colour should
represent the greenness of a buffalo’s horn. When drunk, it should
descend impetuously like thunder, sweet-tasted as an almond, creeping
like a squirrel, leaping like a roebuck, strong, like the building of
a Cistercian monastery, glittering like a spark of fire, subtle as the
logic of the schools of Paris, delicate as fine silk, and colder than
crystal.’[66]
FOOTNOTES:
[57] ‘Le mot en effet paraît être de l’ancienne Chaldée, où il
signifiait “brûler.” En trouve-t-on des rudiments chez les peuples
d’où nous vint d’abord cet “esprit” des liqueurs fermentées? On a cru
longtemps que c’étaient les Arabes, mais nous pensons, avec Mongez et
Pauw, que ce sont les Tartares qui en auraient appris la fabrication
par les Chaldéens. Certaines liqueurs importées de Perse en Egypte
semblent avoir été alcooliques.’ Edouard Fournier, _Mélanges_, vol.
iii. p. 517.
[58] From Ritson’s _Ancient Songs and Ballads_.
[59] _Short History of the English People._ ‘The Latin poems commonly
attributed to Walter Mapes,’ form a volume edited by the laborious Mr.
Thomas Wright for the Camden Society in 1841.
[60] Cf. Tomline and Rokewode, _Monastic and Social Life in the Twelfth
Century_.
[61] Rapin, _History of England_, vol. i. p. 256.
[62] The old metrical romance of _Richard Cœur de Lyon_ has a similar
reference to the Holy Land expedition--
‘The cuppes fast abouten yede,
With good wyn, pyement and clarré.’
[63] _Marks and Monograms_, p. 58.
[64] _Took in mind = was offended._ _For-think = repent._ _Bede =
give._ _Yede = travel._
[65] See Aspin’s _Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants of England_;
Maddox: _History of the Exchequer_; Burton: _Annals_.
[66] Neckam.