CHAPTER X.

STUART PERIOD.

In entering upon this period it will be necessary to consider, in the

first place, what were the drinks chiefly in use. A pamphlet, bearing

the date 1612, enumerates a number of the wines then popular:--

Some drinking the neat wine of Orleance, some the Gasgony, some the

Bordeaux. There wanted neither sherry sack, nor Charneco, Malyfo,

nor amber-coloured Candy, nor liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved

Bastard, fat Aligant, nor any quick-spirited liquor.[112]

That Spanish wines of the Sacke species were now especial favourites,

is evident from an ordinance of James I.:--

Whereas, in times past, Spanish wines, called sacke, were little or

no whit used in our court, and that in late years, though not of

ordinary allowance, it was thought convenient that such noblemen

and women and others of account, as had diet in the court, upon

their necessities by sicknesse or otherwise, might have a bowle or

glasse of sacke, and so no great quantity spent; we understanding

that within these late years it is used as common to all order,

using it rather for wantonnesse and surfeiting than for necessity,

to a great and wasteful expense.... Our pleasure is that there be

allowed to the serjeant of our seller 12 gallons of sacke a day,

and no more.

The fashion of Malmsey had passed away, and the Hungarian red wine

(Ofener) had taken its place. It came by Breslau to Hamburg, whence

it was shipped to England. Very little Hungarian wine used to be made

with a view to exportation. Now many sorts find their way to this

country, notably the Carlowitz. The wine-jurors of the 1862 Exhibition

reported:--‘Great expectations have been formed of the capability of

Hungary as a wine supplying country. The produce is large, amounting to

nearly 250,000,000 gallons yearly. Many of the wines are good, but more

careful treatment is generally required.’ At one time only imperial

Tokay was known in England as the produce of that country.[113]

Hock was also in high repute:

What wine is it? Hock,

By the mass, brave wine.[114]

Besides wine, beer and spirits were both adopted. Spirits used to

be called _strong waters_, and _comfortable waters_; thus, when Sir

George Summers of Lyme, in 1609, was driven before a hurricane, which

led to his discovery of the Bermudas, there appeared no hope of saving

the ship, so waterlogged was she. In this extremity, those who had

‘comfortable waters’ drank to one another as taking their last leaves.

Ale and beer were both in common use. But a new kind arose in

competition. Dr. Butler, physician to James I., and, according to

Fuller, the Æsculapius of that age, invented a kind of medicated ale,

called _Dr. Butler’s Ale_, which used to be sold at houses that had the

‘Butler’s Head’ for a sign.[115]

But to pass from the _quid_ to the _quatenus_, as Bishop Andrewes

would say. Were these liquors drunk to excess? We should suspect

that such would be the case, knowing the example of the Court, and

remembering that not a little of the literature of the time abetted

free living, whilst, at the same time, legislative restriction and

ecclesiastical monition were rife, and in certain quarters, both

clerical and lay, these excesses were vehemently anathematised.

Yes, the legislative, we shall find, was active, far more active than

the executive, as appears from the renewal of an important statute in

the same reign, just as though it had utterly ceased to be in force.

The king showed great desire to enforce several statutes, but the

difficulty lay in the fact that he was the first to infringe them. In

fact, as Green does not hesitate to aver, the king was known to be

an habitual drunkard; ladies of rank copied the royal manners, and

rolled intoxicated in open court at the king’s feet.[116] His tutor,

Buchanan, was a great drinker; and his nurse is said to have been a

drunkard,[117] which latter circumstance gave him a predisposition

to drink; the relation of cause and effect in such cases being

established. Dr. Mitchell, one of the Lunacy Commissioners, stated

in evidence before the Select Committee on Habitual Drunkards in

1872: ‘It is quite certain that the children of habitual drunkards

are in a larger proportion idiotic than other children, and in a

larger proportion themselves habitual drunkards.’[118] The king’s

hereditary tendency was not improved by his connection with Denmark.

In the carouses with which that Court celebrated the royal nuptials,

James increased that proclivity for heavy drinking to which most of

his follies may be traced. He dates his letters ‘From the castle of

Cronenburg, quhaire, we are drinking and driving _our_ in the auld

manner.’ The same influence followed him to his own dominions. A tavern

sign, ‘The King of Denmark,’ perpetuates to this day a royal visit

which was celebrated with unparalleled orgies. It will be remembered

that James I. married a sister of Christian IV., king of Denmark.[119]

In 1606 the Danish king, Christian, paid a visit to this country. He

and his brother-in-law, James, were invited to a festival at Theobalds,

the seat of the Prime Minister Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. The revellings

there were disgraced by scenes of intemperance which have acquired

historical notoriety. The queen was by necessity absent at the time

when the kings were abandoning themselves to unrestrained excess. Mr.

Samuelson, in his _History of Drink_, has fallen into the error of

certain writers of the last century who have accused Queen Anne of the

derelictions from propriety committed on this occasion by a certain

_queen_, who, having taken too much, reeled against the steps of King

Christian’s throne. But, as is pointed out by Strickland, this _queen_

was only the Queen of Sheba, personated by a female servant of the

Earl of Salisbury, and not the Queen of Great Britain, as any one may

ascertain who reads Sir John Harrington’s letter, the sole document on

which is founded the mistaken accusation of intemperance against the

queen of James I. The story has been often told in whole or part, but

it may be well to produce the original.[120]

Those whom I never could get to taste good liquor now ... wallow in

beastly delights. The ladies abandon sobriety, and are seen to roll

about in intoxication. After dinner, the representation of Solomon,

his temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made.... The

lady who did play the queen’s part did carry most precious gifts

to both their majesties, but forgetting the steppes arising to

the canopy, overset her caskets in his Danish Majesty’s lap, and

fell at his feet, though I rather think it was on his face. Much

was the hurry and confusion--cloths and napkins were at hand to

make all clean. His Majesty then got up, and would dance with the

Queen of Sheba, but he fell down and humbled himself before her and

was carried to his inner chamber. The entertainment and show went

forward, and most of the presenters went backward or fell down,

wine did so occupy their upper chambers.

Much more is told, but one sentence is pregnant: ‘The gunpowder fright

is out of all our heads, and we are going on hereabouts, as if the

devil were contriving every man should blow up himself by wild riot,

excess, and devastation of wine and intemperance.’

The queen was not present; indeed, she was not even a guest of the

earl at this time, but was confined to her chamber sick and sad at

Greenwich Palace. At a banquet on the Thames, however, given soon after

by her royal brother, the queen was present. They pledged each other to

continued friendship. To each pledge, drum, trumpet, and cannon were

responsive. Shakespeare describes a similar scene:

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,

But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell.

Such pledges of friendship seem almost typical of the happy event of

1863, to which Jean Ingelow so exquisitely alludes in her ‘Wedding

song.’

Come up the broad river, the Thames, my Dane,

My Dane, with the beautiful eyes.

* * * * *

And they said, ‘He is young, the lad we love,

The heir of the Isles is young;

How we deem of his mother, and one gone above,

Can neither be said nor sung.

He brings us a pledge--he will do his part

With the best of his race and name;’

And I will, for I look to live, sweetheart,

As may suit with Thy mother’s fame.

But, taking leave of the court, let us proceed to discover the manners

of the people, from contemporary authors and dramatists. Much is

to be gleaned from the voluminous writings of Thomas Decker, whose

pamphlets and plays, the _Quarterly Review_ once said, would furnish

a more complete view of the habits and customs of his contemporaries

in vulgar and middle life than could easily be collected from all the

grave annals of the times. His _Seven Deadly Sins of London_, published

in 1606, is a mighty invective against the iniquity of the day. It

has been well remarked in the introduction to Arber’s reprint of the

work, how much the mind of the writer was imbued with the style of

the old Hebrew prophets, and how sure he was that that style would

find a response in the hearts of his readers. For instance, how like

the ‘burden of the Word of the Lord’ is his apostrophe to London--‘_O

London_, thou art great in glory, and envied for thy greatness. Thou

art the goodliest of thy neighbours, but the proudest, the wealthiest,

the most wanton.... Thou sit’st in thy gates heated with wines.’ In

his account of the third deadly sin, he speaks of wines, Spanish

and French, meeting in the cellar, conspiring together to lay the

_Englishman_ under the board. Perhaps his finest effort of prosopopæia

is his impersonation of sloth, whom he represents as giving licences to

all the vintners to ‘keepe open house, and to emptye their hogsheades

to all commers, who did so, dyeing their grates into a drunkard’s blush

(to make them knowe from gates of a prison) lest customers should

reele away from them, and hanging out new bushes, that if men at their

going out could not see the signe, yet they might not lose themselves

in the bush.... And as _drunkennesse_ when it least can stand, does

best hold up ale-houses, so _sloth_ is a founder of the alms-houses,

... and is a good benefactor to these last.’ To call attention to this

author’s notices of such _rules of drunkenness_ as Vpsy-Freeze, Crambo,

Parmizant, &c., would be beside the present object; but the book will

amply repay study, and serve as a commentary on Defoe’s _Plague of

London_. Several other of his works bear upon the present theme, _e.g._

_The Batchelor’s Banquet_, _Lanthorne and Candle Light_, and _English

Villanies prest to Death_.

A writer quite as voluminous, and equally with Decker a scourge of

iniquity, was George Wyther (persistently called by so many--Hazlitt

and Brand among the number--Wythers). In 1613 he brought out his

satirical essays, _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, the truth and beauty of

which, to his honour be it said, touched the heart of Charles Lamb, who

observes:[121]

The game run down is coarse general vice, or folly as it appears in

classes. A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is _stript and whipt_....

To a well-natured mind, there is a charm of moral sensibility

running through them. Wither seems everywhere bursting with a love

of goodness, and a hatred of all low and base actions. At this day

it is hard to discover what parts in the poem _Abuses Stript_ could

have occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was vice in high

places more suspicious than now?

Reference has already been made to the allusion in this work of Wither

to the custom of _Hock-tide_. He ridicules the notion of such an

observance and that of _ales_ subserving the devotion of youth, and

indignantly asks,--

What will they do, I say, that think to please

Their mighty God with such fond things as these?

Sure, very ill.

In this same work occurs an allusion to the then common practice of

inserting _toast_ into ale with nutmeg and sugar:--

Will he will drinke, yet but a draught at most,

That must be spiced with a _nut-browne tost_.

The origin of the word _toast_ is much disputed, as is elsewhere

observed, and no better account of it is forthcoming than that the word

was taken from the toast which was put into the tankard, and which

still floats in the loving cup. Hence the person named was the toast or

savour of the wine, that which gives the draught piquancy.

Many other of the drinking customs of the day are criticised, but

not all with censure. The ode to Christmas, for instance, contrasts

strongly with his later puritanical sentiments. Neither sectarian gloom

nor civil struggles had yet enveloped the author when he wrote,--

Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,

And let us all be merry.

Hark how the roofs with laughter sound!

Anon they’ll think the house goes round,

For they the cellars’ depth have found,

And there they will be merry,

which introduces a stanza upon _wassailing_. A change must have come

over his dream before he wrote his second ode on the same subject,

which alone would entitle him to the encomiums of Hazlitt or any other

critic.[122]

Far more unqualified denunciation of seventeenth century excess is to

be found in a volume by Thomas Young (1617), entitled _England’s Bane,

or the Description of Drunkennesse_. He says,--

There are in London drinking schooles: so that drunkennesse is

professed with us as a liberall arte and science.... I have seene a

company amongst the very woods and forests drinking for a _muggle_.

Sixe determined to trie their strengths who could drinke most

glasses for the muggle. The first drinkes a glasse of a pint, the

second two, the next three, and so every one multiplieth till the

last taketh sixe. Then the first beginneth againe and taketh seven,

and in this manner they drinke thrice a peece round, every man

taking a glasse more than his fellow, so that he that dranke least,

which was the first, drank one and twenty pints, and the sixth man

thirty-six.[123]

Scarcely less absurd than these laws of drunkenness, are the laws of

health-drinking as described by Barnaby Rich in his work published

1619, the title of which is an excellent preface to the subject-matter,

‘_The Irish Hubbub, or the English Hue and Crie_; briefly pursuing the

base conditions and most notorious offences of this vile, vaine, and

wicked age. No less smarting than tickling,’ &c. The following is his

description of toasting laws:--

He that beginneth the health hath his prescribed orders; first

uncovering his head, hee takes a full cup in his hand, and settling

his countenance with a grave aspect, hee craves for audience;

silence being once obtained, hee begins to breath out the name

peradventure of some honourable personage that is worthy of a

better regard than to have his name polluted amongst a company of

drunkards; but his healthe is drunke to, and hee that pledgeth must

likewise off with his cap, kisse his fingers, and bowing himselfe

in signe of a reverent acceptance. When the leader sees his

follower thus prepared, he soups up his broath, turnes the bottom

of the cup upward, and in ostentation of his dexteritie, gives the

cup a phillip, to make it cry _twango_. And thus the first scene

is acted. The cup being newly replenished, to the breadthe of an

haire, he that is the pledger must now beginne his part, and thus

it goes round throughout the whole company, provided alwaies by a

cannon set downe by the founder, there must be three at the least

still uncovered, till the health hath had the full passage, which

is no sooner ended, but another begins againe, and he drinks a

health, &c.

It appears from another author, that this method was accounted a

procedure _in order_, for he adds, ‘It is drunke _without order_ when

the course or method of order is not observed, and that the cup passeth

on to whomsoever we shall appoint.’ Drink is the burden of the songs

of this hilarious writer, who is usually, known by the sobriquet of

Drunken Barnaby (or Barnabea) from the titles he himself employed. It

is curiously illustrative of the hold that convivial phrases had upon

the popular mind that we find a pious divine solemnly quoting the words

of a suffering Christian, one Lawrence Saunders, to this effect,--‘My

Saviour began to mee in a bitter cup, and shall not I _pledge_ Him?’

[_i.e._ drink the same cup of sorrow]. The divine just alluded to,

Dr. Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, in his sermon (1685) entitled ‘Woe to

Drunkards,’ anathematises _toasting_: ‘Abandon that foolish and vicious

custome, as Ambrose and Basil call it, of drinking healths, and making

that a sacrifice to God for the health of others, which is rather a

sacrifice to the devil, and a bane of their owne.’

But this kind of appeal was by no means confined to the pulpit. Robert

Burton, the famous author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621), who

cannot be accused of being strait-laced (at any rate, Anthony Wood

speaks of his company as very merry, facete, and juvenile), in his

pungent chapter on Dyet as a cause of melancholy, exclaims,--

What immoderate drinking in every place! How they flock to the

tavern! as if they were born to no other end but to eat and drink,

as so many casks to hold wine; yea, worse than a cask, that marrs

wine, and itself is not marred by it.... ‘Tis now come to that

pass, that he is no gentleman, a very milk-sop, that will not

drink, fit for no company.... No disparagement now to stagger in

the streets, reel, rave, &c., but much to his renown.... ‘Tis the

_summum bonum_ of our tradesmen, their felicity, life, and soul,

to be merry together in an ale-house or tavern, as our modern

Muscovites do in their mede-inns, and Turks in their coffee-houses.

They will labour hard all day long, to be drunk at night, and spend

_totius anni labores_ in a tippling feast.... How they love a man

that will be drunk, crown him, and honour him for it, hate him

that will not pledge him, stab him, kill him: a most intolerable

offence, and not to be forgiven.

Again, in his chapter on ‘Mirth and Merry Company,’ he warns,--

But see the mischief; many men, knowing that merry company is the

only medicine against melancholy, will therefore neglect their

business, and spend all their days among good fellows in a tavern,

and know not otherwise how to bestow their time but in drinking;

malt-worms, men-fishes, or water-snakes, like so many frogs in a

puddle.... Flourishing wits and men of good parts, good fashion,

and good worth, basely prostitute themselves to every rogue’s

company to take tobacco and drink.... They drown their wits, seeth

their brains in ale, consume their fortunes, lose their time,

weaken their temperatures, contract filthy diseases, rheumes,

dropsies, calentures, tremor, get swoln juglars, pimpled red faces,

sore eyes, &c.; heat their livers, alter their complexions, spoil

their stomachs, overthrow their bodies (for drink drowns more than

the sea and all the rivers that fall into it), mere funges and

casks--confound their souls, suppress reason, go from Scylla to

Charybdis.

If such were the avowed expressions of Burton, we shall not wonder

to find such men as George Herbert and Bishop Hall vehement in

denunciation of the same bane.

Because luxury is a very visible sin, the parson is very careful

to avoid all the kinds thereof, _but especially that of drinking,

because it is the most popular vice_; into which if he come,

he prostitutes himself both to shame, and sin, and by having

fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, he disableth

himself of authority to reprove them: for sins make all equal whom

they find together; and then they are worst, who ought to be best.

Neither is it for the servant of Christ to haunt inns, or taverns,

or ale-houses, to the dishonour of his person and office.[124]

This passage is quoted to call attention to the words italicised (not

by Herbert), _‘because it is the most popular vice_;’ an independent

confirmation of the excessive drinking in the reign of James I.

Again, in _The Parson in Journey_, chapter xvii.,--

When he comes to any house, where his kindred or other relations

give him any authority over the family, if he be to stay for a

time, he considers diligently the state thereof to God-ward, and

that in two points: First, what disorders there are either in

apparel, or diet, _or too open a buttery_, &c.

The meaning of the words italicised is mistaken by the occasional

annotator to Bohn’s edition, who explains it, ‘A repository or

store-room for certain provisions.’ But in Elizabethan and Jacobean

times, _buttery_ always meant the place where the beer (or wine) was

kept. Evidence is forthcoming from our dramatists of those periods.

Thus:--

(1) Maria, in _Twelfth Night_ (act i., scene 3), says to the

unfortunate butt Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, ‘I pray you bring your hand to

the buttery bar and let it drink.’

(2) Middleton, in _A Trick to Catch the Old One_ (Ed. Dyce, vol. ii.),

has a clear proof, in the words, ‘Go, and wash your lungs i’ th’

buttery.’

From Herbert’s _Jacula Prudentum_ may be extracted--

A drunkard’s purse is a bottle.

Choose not a house near an inn.

Take heed of the vinegar of sweet wine.

The wine in the bottle doth not quench thirst.

A morning sun, and a wine-bred child, and a

Latin-bred woman, seldom end well.

Once more, from the _Church Porch_,--

Drink not the third glasse, which thou canst not tame

When once it is within thee; but before

Mayst rule it, as thou list: and poure the shame,

Which it would poure on thee, upon the floore.

It is most just to throw that on the ground

Which would throw me there, if I keep the round.

He that is drunken may his mother kill

Bigge with his sister: he hath lost the reins,

Is outlaw’d by himselfe; all kinde of ill

Did with his liquor slide into his veins.

The drunkard forfets Man, and doth divest

All worldly right, save what he hath by beast.

Shall I, to please another’s wine-sprung minde,

Lose all mine own? God hath giv’n me a measure

Short of his canne, and bodie.

* * * * *

Be not a beast in courtesie, but stay,

Stay at the third cup, or forego the place.

Wine above all things doth God’s stamp efface.

Bishop Hall was unsparing in his lashes of the vices of his time, and

amongst these of intemperance. We hear him in verse and prose, in

critique and sermon. Thus, in his _Satire on the Stage_,[125]--

Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams

Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking streams,

So doth the base and the fore-barren brain,

Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.

In his _Contemplation_ on Lot he remarks, ‘Drunkenness is the way to

all bestial affections and acts. Wine knows no difference either of

persons or sins.’ In his sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, on Good

Friday, 1609, we find ‘Every of our sins is a thorn, and nail, and

spear to Him; while thou pourest down thy drunken carouses, thou

givest thy Saviour a portion of gall.’ Why are not the preachers of

to-day equally outspoken? One of his apophthegms can scarcely be

forgotten:[126] ‘When drinke is in, wit is out; but if wit were not

out, drinke would not be in;’ and, lastly,--

Wine is a mocker. When it goes plausibly in, no man can know how it

will rage and tyrannise. He that receives that traitor within his

gates shall too late complain of surprisal. It insinuates sweetly,

but in the end it bites like a serpent and hurts like a cockatrice.

Even good Uriah is made drunk. The holiest may be overtaken.

But it is time to pass from precept to _law_.

In 1603 the power of licensing inns and ale-houses was granted by

letters patent to certain persons, in which it was enacted that no

victualler could sell less than one full quart of the best ale for one

penny, and two quarts of the smaller sort for the same. The preamble of

the statute of 1604 is most valuable for the information it affords as

to what the ancient Parliaments considered to be the legitimate use of

a tavern.

Whereas the ancient, true, and principal use of wine, ale-houses,

and victualling-houses was for the receipt, relief, and lodging

of wayfaring people travelling from place to place, and for the

supply of the wants of such people as are not able by greater

quantities to make their provision of victuals; and not meant for

entertainment and harbouring of lewd and idle people to spend

and consume their money and time in lewd and drunken manner: it

is enacted that only travellers, and travellers’ friends, and

labourers for one hour at dinner-time or lodgers can receive

entertainment under penalty.

The statute of 4th James imposes _punishment for drunkenness_:--

Whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late

grown into common use, being the root and foundation of many

other enormous sins, as bloodshed, stabbing, murder, swearing,

fornication, adultery, and such like, to the great dishonour

of God and of our nation, the overthrow of many good arts and

manual trades, the disabling of divers workmen, and the general

impoverishing of many good subjects, abusively wasting the good

creatures of God.

Therefore a fine of five shillings was imposed for intoxication, or

confinement in the stocks for six hours, and for the first offence of

remaining drinking in a person’s own neighbourhood, a fine of three

shillings and fourpence, or the stocks, the penalty being increased for

further offence. The fine, it must be remembered, was worth several

times the same amount imposed now for intoxication, and the high road

to it, tippling, is now passed over. The time prescribed in the stocks

was fixed at six hours, because by that time the statute presumed

the offender would have regained his senses, and not be liable to do

mischief to his neighbours.[127]

Little success can as yet have attended legislation, for in 1609, the

statute, admitting that ‘notwithstanding all former laws and provisions

already made, the inordinate and extreme vice of excessive drinking and

drunkenness doth more and more abound,’ enacts that offenders convicted

against the two last Acts shall be deprived of their licence. Again has

this statute to be renewed in 1623, as though the executive had slept.

Among the grievances that the Parliament of 1621 examined was one that

patents had been granted to Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michel,

for licensing inns and ale-houses; that great sums of money had been

exacted under pretext of these licences; and that such innkeepers as

presumed to continue their business without satisfying the rapacity of

the patentees, had been severely punished by fine, imprisonment, and

vexatious prosecutions. The patentees were denounced as criminals. They

fled for refuge. Sentence was passed upon them, which, in the case of

Mompesson, was commuted. Many useful hints might be learnt from purely

local legislation from time to time. Indeed, a most useful code might

be formed from a digest of borough enactments. Let one illustration

suffice. We find a local law at Lyme, about this time, to the effect

that no retailer of beer was to sell to any craftsman or servant of the

town, unless he was in company with a stranger. In 1612 it was there

ordered that no one should tipple any one day above one hour in any

house. It merely remains to be noticed that in Cott. MSS. Titus B. III.

Codex chartaceus, in folio, Constans fol. 281, may be found--

1. A letter of James I. to the magistrates of Southampton; with

orders for the regulation of ale-houses and victualling-houses,

Westm., March 3, 1607.

2. An order of the Queen’s Council for an exact account of all the

inns, ale-houses, and taverns in the kingdom, towards levying a tax

upon them for the repairs of Dover harbour. Richmd, July 20, 1577.

3. An order for the regulation of ale-houses, 1608.

4. An order of Privy Council for a return concerning the ale-houses

in different countries, Feb. 19, 1608.

5. Three letters of the Privy Council, and a paper of directions

concerning ale-houses. Greenwich, June 30, 1608.[128]

The reign of Charles I. very nearly covers the second quarter of the

seventeenth century. If we had to select a single author as our guide

to the social habits of the time, we should probably at once fix upon

Thomas Heywood, the busiest of dramatic writers, ‘a sort of prose

Shakespeare,’ as Charles Lamb makes bold to say. Of his numerous works,

one is a direct exposure of the then drinking customs.[129] The immense

variety of drinking-cups, as well as the intrinsic value of many of

them, speaks volumes. He describes them as ‘some of elme, some of

box, some of maple, some of holly, &c., mazers, broad-mouth’d dishes,

moggins, whiskins, piggins, cruizes, ale-bowles, wassell-bowles,

court-dishes, tankards, kannes, from a bottle to a pint, from a pint

to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used

amongst the shepheards and harvest-people of the countrey; small jacks

wee have in many ale-houses, of the citie and suburbs, tip’t with

silver, besides the great black jacks and bombards at the court, which

when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their returne into their

countrey, that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes: we

have besides, cups made of horns of beasts, of cocker-nuts, of goords,

of the eggs of estriches, others made of the shells of divers fishes

brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of

pearl. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowls, prounet

cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie,

when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their

cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere-cups, wine-bowls, some white,

some percell gilt, some gilt all over, some with covers, some without,

of sundry shapes and qualities.’

In the same books occurs the following curious satire:--‘There is now

profest an eighth liberal art or science, called _Ars Bibendi_, _i.e._

the Art of Drinking. The students or professors thereof call a greene

garland, or painted hoope hang’d out, a _colledge_, a sign where there

is lodging, man’s-meate, and horse-meate, an _inne of court_, an _hall_

or an _hostle_, where nothing is sold but ale and tobacco, a _grammar

schoole_; a red or a blue lattice, that they terme _a free schoole_ for

all comers.... The bookes which they studdy, and whose leaves they so

often turne over are for the most part three of the old translation and

three of the new. Those of the old translation--1, The Tankard; 2, The

Black Jacke; 3, The Quart-Pot, Rib’d, or Thorondell. Those of the new

be these: 1, The Jugge; 2, The Beaker; 3, The Double or Single Can, or

Black Pot.’ The same author gives a list of slang phrases then in use,

signifying the being intoxicated. ‘He is foxt, hee is flawed, he is

flustered, hee is suttle, cupshot, he hath seene the French king, he

hath swallowed an havie or a taverne-token, hee hath whipt the cat, he

hath been at the scriveners, and learn’d to make indentures, hee hath

bit his grannam, or is bit by a barne-weesell,’ &c. In another of his

productions, _Shipwreck by Drink_, he describes a drunken scene which

took place in a house that he was passing in which a feast was being

held:--

In the height of their carousing, all their brains

Warmed with the heat of wine.

And a marvellous piece of description it is. The guests imagine

themselves to be rocked in a vessel during storm, climb bedposts

as though they were masts, turn out the furniture as if casting

ship-lading overboard; another bestrides his fellow to escape,

Arion-like, on the dolphin’s back. The staff of the constable who

enters is considered to be Neptune’s trident, and so forth.

But enough of this author. The habits of his time had evidently

impressed him, and he constantly revives his impression. But it was

no self-formed phantom. Abundance of corroboration is forthcoming.

A political economist of the same date (1627) remarks, ‘This most

monstrous vice is thus defined:--“Drunkenness is the privation of

orderly motion and understanding.” ... But I need not stand much about

the definition of drunkenness, for, with grief I speak it, the taverns,

ale-houses, and the very streets are so full of drunkards in all parts

of this kingdom, that by the sight of them it is better known what this

detestable and odious vice is than by any definition whatsoever.’[130]

Regarding it then as established, that the intemperance of the times of

Elizabeth and James I. was still perpetuated, it is natural to inquire

to what it is to be attributed.

(1) _The attractiveness of the drinks themselves_, a constant factor in

all periods.

Of wines, Canary and sack were in most demand, though these were

constantly terms indifferently used; thus,--

Some sack, boy.

Good sherry-sack, sir?

I meant Canary, sir; what, hast no brains?[131]

The following is the explanation of the confusion in terms:--

Your best sacks are of Xeres in Spain; your smaller, of Gallicia

and Portugall; your strong sacks are of the islands of the Canaries

and of Malligo, and your Muskadine and Malmseys are of many parts,

of Italy, Greece, and some special islands;[132]

and renders intelligible the following:--

Two kinsmen near allied to sherry sack,

Sweet Malligo and delicate Canary.[133]

It is extolled in Beaumont and Fletcher:--

Give me a cup of sack

An ocean of sweet sack.

Canary was in great esteem. John Howell praises it as ‘accounted the

richest, the most firm, the best bodied, and lastingest wine: while

French wine pickles meat in the stomach, this is the wine that digests,

and doth not only breed good bloud, but it nutrifieth also, being a

glutinous substantial liquor. Of this wine, if of any other, may be

verified that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good

blood causeth good humours, good humours causeth good thoughts, good

thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven;

ergo good wine carrieth a man to heaven. If this be true, surely more

English go to heaven this way than any other, for I think there is more

Canary brought to England than to all the world besides.’[134]

But probably no kind of drink came amiss.

The Russ drinks quass; Dutch, Lubeck beer,

And that is strong and mighty;

The Briton, he metheglin quaffs,

The Irish _aqua vitæ_;

The French affects the Orleans grape,

The Spaniard tastes his sherry;

The English none of these can ‘scape,

But he with all makes merry.[135]

(2) The prevailing habit of _toasting_ may be set down as a second

cause, and a powerful factor it must have been in national corruption,

if the case is not overstated by William Prynne,[136] who wrote his

startling book to prove ‘the Drinking and Pledging of Healthes to

be Sinfull and utterly Unlawful unto Christians.’ In his Epistle

Dedicatorie to King Charles I. he urges that his Majesty’s _health_ is

an occasion, apologie, pretence, and justification of excesse.

Alas! how many thousand persons have been drawne on to

drunkennesse, drinking their wit out of their heads, their health

out of their bodies, and God out of their soules, whiles they have

beene too busy and officious in carrying healthes unto your sacred

Majestie.

Following upon this is an appeal ‘To the Christian Reader,’ in which

he offers six reasons ‘why men are so much infatuated with the odious

sinne of drunkennesse. (_a_) The inbred corruption and practice of

humane nature. (_b_) The power of the Prince of the ayre, who hath

lately gotten such high predominance in the souls of vitious men, that

they doe not only glory in their drunkennesse, proclaiming it unto the

world, but set themselves against the God of Heaven, violating the

very lawes of nature and the very rules of reason. (_c_) The third

reason is, the popular titles given to abettors of intemperance,

_e.g._, good fellow, sociable, joviall boon companion, good natured,

&c.; whilst mottoes of ignominy are applied to the temperate, _e.g._,

Puritanisme, discourtesie, coynesse, singularitie, stoicisme, &c.

(_d_) The fourth reason is the negligence and coldnesse of justices,

magistrates, &c., in the faithful execution of those pious statutes

enacted by the State against this sinne. “If justices were as diligent

to suppresse drunkennesse and _ale-houses_ as they are industrious to

patronise them, the wings of drunkenness would soon be clipt, whereas

now they spread and grow, because the sword of execution clipse them

not.” (_e_) The fifth cause why this gangrene doth so dilate is the

ill example of gentlemen, great men, magistrates, and ministers, who

either approve excesse, or tolerate it in their misgoverned families,

“which are oftentimes made the very theatres of Bacchus, and the

seminaries, sinkes, and puddles of ryot and intemperance, under

pretence of hospitality.” (_f_) The sixth cause assigned is, “Those

common ceremonies, wiles, and stratagems which the deuill and his

drunken rowt have invented, of purpose to alure, force, and draw men

on to excesse of wine.” ... There is no such common bayte to entice

men to intemperance as this idle, heathenish, and hellish ceremonie of

_beginning_, _seconding_, and _pledging_ healthes.’

Prynne then proceeds in the book proper to give fifteen arguments

against health-drinking, drawn out in syllogistic form. Perhaps the

most useful part of the book is the array of quotations from ‘the

Fathers’ against occasions of intemperance; SS. Augustine, Basil,

and Ambrose being most frequently quoted. He vindicates Luther from

a charge laid against him by the Papists, which cannot be omitted.

They put it about ‘that Luther once made a great feast at his house,

to which he invited the chiefest Professours of the Universitie, and

among the rest one Islebius. Dinner being ended, and all of them

somewhat merry, Luther, after the Germane custome, commanded a great

glasse divided with three kindes of circles to be brought unto him;

and out of it he drunke an health in order to all his guesse. When

all of them had drunke, the health came at last to Islebius. Luther

then, in the presence of all the rest, takes this glasse, being filled

up, into his hand, and, shewing it to Islebius, saith: “Islebius, I

drinke this glasse full of wine unto thee, which containes the tenne

commandements to the first circle; the Apostles’ Creed to the second,

the Lord’s Prayer to the third, and the Catechisme to the bottom.” When

he had spoken, he drinkes off the whole glasse at a draught; which

being replenished with wine, he delivers it to Islebius, that he might

pledge him all at a breath, who takes the glasse and drunke it off

onely to the first circle, which did containe the Decalogue--it being

impossible for him to drink any deeper--and then sets downe the glasse

on the table, which hee could not behold againe without horrour: then

said Luther, “I knew full well before, that Islebius could drinke the

Decalogue, but not the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Catechisme.”’

He further cites some canons from ancient Councils; the most important

being Canon xv. of the Council of Lateran, 1215:--‘Let all clergymen

diligently abstain from surfeitings and drunkenness. For which let

them moderate wine from themselves, and themselves from wine. Neither

let any one be urged to drink, since drunkenness doth banish wit and

provoke lust. For which purpose we decree that that abuse shall be

utterly abolished, whereby, in divers quarters, drinkers bind one

another to drink healths or equal cups, and he is most applauded who

quaffs off most carouzes. If any shall offend henceforth in this,

let him be suspended from his benefice and office.’ Again, in the

Provincial Council of Colin, 1536, is the order--‘All parish priests

or ministers are chiefly prohibited, not only surfeiting, riot,

drunkenness, and luxurious feasts, but likewise the drinking of

healths, which they are commanded to banish from their houses by a

General Council.’

Thus much for the habit of toasting; but--

(3) We may assign as the third reason for the prevalent

excess--_Convivial Literature_. The name that first suggests itself is

that of Herrick. It is not only in poems avowedly of this description,

such as ‘The Wassail’ and ‘The Wassail Bowl’ but it is a vein running

through the entire seam of his songs. With him, at Christmas-time,--

My good dame, she

Bids ye all be free,

And drink to your heart’s desiring.

In his _New Year’s Gift_, he bids Sir Simeon Steward--

Remember us in cups full crowned,

And let our city health go round.

Is he singing of Twelfth Night? No sooner is the question of king and

queen settled than their health must be drunk:--

And let not a man be seen here,

Who unurged will not drink,

To the base from the brink,

A health to the king and queen here.

Next crown the bowl full

With gentle lamb’s wool;

Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,

With store of ale too;

And thus ye must do

To make the wassail a swinger.

Of course, ‘True Hospitality’ would be impossible without the favourite

ingredient:--

But as thy meat, so thy immortal wine

Makes the smirk face of each to shine,

And spring fresh rosebuds, while the salt, the wit,

Flows from the wine, and graces it.

The pretty superstition that wassailing the trees will make them bear,

is included among the Christmas Eve ceremonies in his _Hesperides_:--

Wassaile the trees, that they may beare

You many a plum and many a peare;

For more or lesse fruits they will bring,

As you do give them wassailing.

The day of this ceremony varies in different localities. In Devonshire

the eve of the Epiphany is chosen; there the farmer and his men proceed

to the orchard with a huge jug of cider, and forming a circle round a

well-bearing tree, drink the toast,--

Here’s to thee, old apple tree,

Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow!

And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!

Hats full! caps full!

Bushel, bushel, sacks full,

And my pockets full too; huzza![137]

Total sustenance (not _abstinence_) was part of his religion. In his

exquisite little poem entitled ‘A Thanksgiving for his House’--only to

be approached (of its kind) by Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn, ‘Who givest

all’--he thanks God, amongst other mercies, for the _wassail bowl_:--

Lord, I confess too, when I dine,

The pulse is Thine,

And all those other bits that be

There placed by Thee.

The worts, the purslain, and the mess

Of water-cress,

Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent:

And my content

Makes those, and my beloved beet,

To be more sweet.

‘Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth

With guiltless mirth;

And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,

Spiced to the brink.

With Herrick must be coupled in this connection the name of Cowley, of

whom Dr. Johnson said, that ‘if he was formed by nature for one kind of

writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest

in the familiar and the festive.’[138] He was perfectly at home with

Anacreontics. That on ‘Drinking’ will be remembered:--

Nothing in nature’s sober found,

But an eternal health goes round.

Fill up the bowl then, fill it high.

Fill all the glasses there, for why

Should every creature drink but I?

Why, men of morals, tell me why?

As will also ‘The Epicure’--the ‘_bibamus, moriendum est_’ of Seneca:--

Fill the bowl with spicy wine,

Around our temples roses twine,

And let us cheerfully awhile

Like the wine and roses smile.

* * * * *

To-day is ours; what do we fear?

To-day is ours, we have it here.

Let’s banish business, banish sorrow;

To the gods belong to-morrow.

Cowley’s death was accelerated by intemperance if we can rely upon the

authority of Pope. The event occurred while Dean Sprat was his guest.

They had visited in company a neighbour of Cowley’s, who too amply

refreshed them. ‘They did not set out for their walk home till it was

too late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in the fields all

night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off.’

To the same convivial school belongs Sir Richard Fanshawe, to whom the

distress of the monarch provided occasion for a toast:--

Come, pass about the bowl to me;

A health to our distressed king!

Though we’re in hold, let cups go free,

Birds in a cage do freely sing.[139]

And Alexander Brome, whose _Mad Lover_ exemplifies the tyranny of

excessive drinking:--

I have been in love and in debt and in drink

This many and many a year;

And those three are plagues enough, one would think,

For one poor mortal to bear.

‘Twas drink made me fall into love,

And love made me run into debt;

And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,

I cannot get out of them yet.

There’s nothing but money can cure me

And rid me of all my pain.

‘Twill pay all my debts

And remove all my lets,

And my mistress that cannot endure me

Will love me, and love me again;

Then I’ll fall to loving and drinking amain.

(4) A fourth cause of the intemperance of the time was the profusion of

_taverns_. Decker writes that ‘a whole street is in some places but a

continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red

lattice.’[140]

The Lord-keeper Coventry thus speaks of them:--‘I account ale-houses

and tippling-houses the greatest pests in the kingdom. I give it you in

charge to take a course that none be permitted unless they be licensed;

and for the licensed ale-houses, let them be but few and in fit places;

if they be in private corners and ill places, they become the den

of thieves--they are the public stages of drunkenness and disorder.

Let care be taken in the choice of ale-house keepers, that it be not

appointed to be the livelihood of a large family. In many places they

swarm by default of the justices of the peace.’[141] It may be remarked

that by this time inns had become representative; that is, for the most

part each inn attracted a particular species of customer. This did not

escape the notice of that keen observer Heywood:--

The gentry to the King’s Head,

The nobles to the Crown,

The knights unto the Golden Fleece,

And to the Plough the clown;

The Churchman to the Mitre,

The shepherd to the Star,

The gardener hies him to the Rose,

To the Drum the man of war;

To the Feathers, ladies, you; the Globe

The seamen do not scorn;

The usurer to the Devil, and

The Townsman to the Horn;

The Huntsman to the White Hart,

To the Ship the merchants go,

But you that do the Muses love

The sign called River Po;

The bankrupt to the World’s End,

The fool to the Fortune hie,

Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,

The fiddler to the Pie;

* * * * *

The drunkard to the Vine,

The beggar to the Bush, then meet

And with Sir Humphrey dine.

Bishop Earle, whose _Microcosmography_ is accounted a faithful

delineation of characters as they existed in the seventeenth century,

has bequeathed the following account of a tavern of his date:--‘A

tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an

ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the

vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence

of this is supplied by the ivy-bush. It is a broacher of more news than

hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some

spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to

make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this music above is answered

with a clinking below. The drawers are the civillest people in it, men

of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem them, none can boast more

justly of their high calling. ‘Tis the best theatre of natures, where

they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of

the world, up and down; to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the

great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to

see heads, as brittle as glasses, and often broken. Men come hither to

quarrel, and come here to be made friends. It is the common consumption

of the afternoon, and the murderer or the maker away of a rainy day. It

is the torrid zone that scorches the face, and tobacco the gunpowder

that blows it up. Much harm would be done if the charitable vintner had

not water ready for the flames. A house of sin you may call it, but

not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like

those countries far in the north, where it is as clear at midnight as

at midday. After a long sitting it becomes like a street in a dashing

shower, where the spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running

below. To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man’s

recreation, the idle man’s business, the melancholy man’s sanctuary,

the stranger’s welcome, the inns-of-court man’s entertainment, the

scholar’s kindness, and the citizen’s courtesy. It is the study of

sparkling wits, and a cup of comedy their book, whence we leave them.’

(5) A fifth cause was the perpetuation of Wakes. Complaints were made

in all directions of their evil tendency. The author of the _Life of

John Bruen_ (1641) laments that ‘Popery and Profannes, two sisters in

evil, had consented and conspired in this parish, as in many other

places, together to advance their idols against the arke of God, and to

celebrate their solemne feastes of their Popish saints by their wakes

and vigils, ... in all riot and excesse of eating and drinking.’

The outcry, it is evident, arose rather from the Puritan than the

Temperance party, and became so irrepressible that at the Exeter

assizes (1627), Chief Baron Walter and Baron Denham made an order

for suppression of all wakes. Judge Richardson made a like order

for the county of Somerset, 1631. But on Laud’s demurrer the King

commanded this order to be reversed; which the judge declining to do,

a report was required by the bishop of the diocese how the feast days,

church-ales, wakes, and revels were observed within his jurisdiction.

On receipt of these instructions the bishop advised with seventy-two

of the most able of his clergy, who certified that on these feast days

the service of God was more solemnly performed than on any other days,

that the people desired their continuance, as did also the ministers,

for that they preserved the memorial of the dedication of their

several churches, civilised the people, composed differences, tended

to the increase of love and unity, and to the relief of the poor.

On the delivery of this certificate Judge Richardson was cited, and

peremptorily commanded to reverse his former order. After this, King

Charles I. gave new force to his father’s declaration:--

We do ratify and publish this our blessed father’s decree, the

rather because of late, in some counties of our kingdom, we find

that under pretence of taking away abuses there hath been a general

forbidding, not only of ordinary meetings, but of the feasts of

the dedications of the churches, commonly called _Wakes_. Now his

Majesty’s express will and pleasure is that these feasts, with

others, shall be observed; and that his justices of the peace shall

look to it, both that all disorders there may be prevented or

punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with manlike and

lawful exercises, be used.

It should here be stated that malice even has not dared to impeach

the private morals of Charles I. Chaste and temperate are epithets

constantly applied to him. The most convincing testimony to the latter

virtue is the statement of A. Wood, that the vintners illuminated at

his death, made bonfires, and drank lusty carouses. He had evidently

not favoured their trade; but the justice of his cause and the

injustice of his treatment were engraven on many a publican’s sign, to

which the ‘Mourning Crown and Mitre’ bore witness. _The Mourning Bush_

was the sign set up by John Taylor, the ‘Water-Poet,’ over his tavern

in Long Acre, to express his grief at the beheading of the King. But

he was compelled to away with it; when, in its place, he put up the

_Poet’s Head_, his own portrait, with this inscription:--

There is many a head hangs for a sign,

Then, gentle reader, why not mine?

The following is the testimony of Clarendon:--

As he (the king) excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance

he was so strict, that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree,

that at a great festival solemnity, where he once was, being told

by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they

drank, and that there was one earl who had drunk most of the rest

down, and was not himself moved or altered, the king said that he

deserved to be hanged; and that earl coming shortly after into the

room where his Majesty was, in some gaiety, to show how unhurt he

was from that battle, the king sent one to bid him withdraw from

his Majesty’s presence; nor did he in some days after appear before

him.

The following lines occur on the signboard of the inn near Hardwicke

House, close to Caversham, where Charles I. was kept a prisoner:--

Stop! traveller, stop! In yonder peaceful glade

His favourite game the Royal Martyr played:

Here, stripped of honours--children--freedom--rank,--

Drank from the bowl, and bowled for what he drank;

Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,

And changed his guinea, ere he lost his crown.

But, along with so many incentives to excess, were there no

counteractive agencies at work? The reply is that there were. Precept

and law were neither silent nor inoperative. It was not for nothing

that men like Jeremy Taylor and Usher, Milton and Crashaw, lived and

wrote.

Of the first-named writer (chaplain to the king) two quotations must

suffice.

_Jeremy Taylor on Temperance._--Temperance hath an effect on the

understanding, and makes the reason sober, and the will orderly,

and the affections regular, and does things beside and beyond

their natural and proper efficacy: for all the parts of our duty

are watered with the showers of blessing, and bring forth fruit

according to the influence of heaven, and beyond the capacities of

nature.[142]

_Jeremy Taylor on our Shortening our own Days._--In all the

process of our health we are running to our grave: we open our

own sluices by viciousness and unworthy actions; we pour in drink

and let out life; we increase diseases and know not how to bear

them; we strangle ourselves with our own intemperance; we suffer

the fevers and the inflammations of lust, and we quench our souls

with drunkenness: we bury our understandings in loads of meat and

surfeits, and then we lie down on our beds, and roar with pain and

disquietness of our souls.[143]

Archbishop Usher, treating of the seventh commandment, asks,--

How is this commandment broken in the abuse of meat and drink?

Either in regard of the _quality_ or _quantity_ thereof. How in

regard of the _quantity_? By excess, and intemperance in diet: when

we ... give ourselves to surfeiting and drunkenness. What be the

contrary duties here commanded? 1. Temperance, in using a sober

and moderate diet, according to our ability.... 2. Convenient

abstinence (1 Cor. ix. 27).[144]

Of Milton, Johnson says that--

His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of a

severe student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and

fed without excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without

delicacy of choice.

But we should certainly infer, _pace_ the good Doctor, that in his

earlier years at least he was fond of wine, from his sonnet to Mr.

Lawrence, which seems redolent of Horace in his Bacchanalian moods. The

sonnet is intensely classical:--

_To Mr. Lawrence._

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be won

From the hard season gaining? Time will run

On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire

The lily and rose, that neither sow’d nor spun.

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste, _with wine_, whence we may rise

To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice

Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?

_He who of those delights can judge, and spare_

_To interpose them oft_, is not unwise.

Also in _L’Allegro_ we are rather disposed to think our poet shows

that he was not altogether superior ‘to the spicy nut-brown ale.’ On

the other hand, his--also Horatian--sonnet to Cyriac Skinner seems to

suggest a somewhat similar idea to Cowper’s ‘cups that cheer but not

inebriate,’ though they may refer to moderate drinking:--

_To Cyriac Skinner._

Cyriac, whose grandsire, on the royal bench

Of British Themis, with no mean applause

Pronounced and in his volumes taught our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench;

_To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench_

_In mirth that after no repenting draws_.

On the other hand, he could be no friend to excess who in _Paradise

Lost_, book i., thus speaks of Belial:--

In courts and palaces he also reigns,

And in luxurious cities, where the noise

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,

And injury and outrage; and when night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

And again:--

Intemperance on the earth shall bring

Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew

Before thee shall appear!

What an advocate of _prohibition_ was he who could write,--

What more foul common sin among us than drunkenness? Who can be

ignorant that if the importation of wine were forbid, it would both

clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men

might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of

intoxicating liquors!

Richard Crashaw, of whom it was writ,--

Poet and saint! to thee alone are given

The two most sacred names of earth and heaven,

reckons amongst his many efforts of genius, _Temperance, or the Cheap

Physician_, where, after ridiculing the doctors’ mystic compositions,

he asks,--

And what at last shall gain by these?

Only a costlier disease.

That which makes us have no need

Of physic, that’s physic indeed.

It may be remembered that this poet was the author of the epigram whose

last line runs,--

Lympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.

The modest water saw its God, and blushed.

This epigram was composed by Crashaw when Dryden was an infant, so

should not be attributed to the latter.

Some noble lines of the poet James Nicholson are well worthy of

record:--

Our homes are invaded with dark desolation,

There’s danger wherever the wine-cup doth flow;

Then pledge your fair hands to resist the temptation,

Nor stain your red lips with those waters of woe.

Lift up your bright glances, put on all your beauty--

Your holy affections--your God-given dower;

Such weapons are mighty--awake to your duty,

The trophies you gather will add to your power.

And, once more,--

I’ll pledge thee not in wassail bowl,

With rosy madness filled;

But let us quaff the nobler wine,

By Nature’s hand distilled.

Where to the skies the mountains rise

In grandeur to the view,

Where sparkling rills leap down the hills,

Our Scotia’s mountain dew.

Thomas Weaver, 1649, writes,--

The harms and mischiefs which th’abuse

Of wine doth every day produce,

Make good the doctrine of the Turks,

That in each grape a devil lurks.

Divines like Hugh Peters declaimed from the pulpit against

intemperance. Archbishop Harsnet, founder of Chigwell School, left

the regulation respecting the head master, that he be ‘no tippler, no

haunter of ale-houses, no puffer of tobacco.’

In addition to abundance of precept, some legislative action is

noticeable.

In 1627 (3 Charles I.) a fine of twenty shillings, or whipping, is

imposed for keeping an ale-house without licence.

* * * * *

In 1687 the vintners were called upon to submit to a tax of a penny a

quart upon all the wine they retailed. As they repudiated the demand, a

decree was passed in the Star Chamber forbidding them to sell or dress

victuals in their houses. Two years after, they were questioned for the

breach of this decree, and to avoid punishment they consented to lend

the king six thousand pounds, subsequently entering into a composition

to pay half the duty which was at first demanded of them.

An Act of 1688 prohibits the retailing of wine in bottles--an Act which

must have fostered adulteration. Light wines will not keep long in the

cask, and if not bottled at the proper time become useless. The dealer,

to avert loss, adopts preventive measures. The door is at once open to

fraud and adulteration. Complaints of the latter became now common.

Wines had risen greatly in price. _An order in Council of 1633_ directs

that Canary, Muskadells, and Alligant should be sold in gross at 17_l._

a pipe, and at 12_d._ the quart by retail; Sacks and Malaga at 10_d._

the quart; the best Gascoigne and French wines at 6_d._ the quart.

In 1643 was established the excise, which was introduced, on the model

of the Dutch prototype, by the Parliament after its rupture with

the Crown. Originally established in 1643, its progress was gradual,

being at first laid upon those persons and commodities where it was

supposed that the shoe would least pinch--viz. the makers and venders

of ale, beer, cider, and perry. The Royalists at Oxford followed the

example set them at Westminster, and imposed a similar duty; both sides

protesting that it should be continued no longer than to the end of

the war, and then be abolished. But the Parliament soon after extended

its application to many other commodities, and in course of time these

champions of liberty declared the impost of excise to be the most

easy and indifferent levy that could be laid upon the people, and so

continued it during their usurpation. It was afterwards made hereditary

to the Crown. Mr. Pymme is considered to have been the father of this

impost.

* * * * *

Doubtless there was great occasion for the committee of 1641, which

inquired into the general state of the clergy. That there was

intemperance in many quarters cannot be denied; but something must

be put down to the spirit of the time. Drink was an accessory of

everything, and self-restraint was not a constant factor; there could

be only one result. The tree was bad, the fruit was bad. That the

following extract is now regarded as a curiosity, is itself a proof of

very altered manners. The items are taken from the Darlington parochial

registers:--

1639. For Mr. Thompson that preached the forenoon and afternoon,

for a quart of sack, 14_d._ 1650. For six quarts of sack to the

minister that preached when we had not a minister, 9_s._ 1666. For

one quart of sack bestowed on Mr. Gillet, when he preached, 2_s._

4_d._ 1691. For a pint of brandy, when Mr. George Bell preached

here, 1_s._ 4_d._; when the Dean of Durham preached here, spent in

a treat with him, 3_s._ 6_d._ For a stranger that preached, a dozen

of ale, 12_d._

We here pause for a moment to listen to some very thoughtful remarks of

Howell, contained in a long epistle to Lord Cliffe, upon the subject of

comparative drinkdom. He writes:--

It is without controversy that in the nonage of the world, men and

beasts had but one buttery, which was the fountain and river, nor

do we read of any vines or wines till two hundred years after the

flood; but now I do not know or hear of any nation that hath water

only for their drink, except the Japanese, and they drink it hot

too; but we may say that whatever beverage soever we make, either

by brewing, by distillation, decoction, percolation, or pressing,

it is but water at first; nay, wine itself is but water sublimed,

being nothing else but that moisture and sap which is caused

either by rain or other kind of irrigations about the roots of

the vine, and drawn up to the branches and berries by the virtual

attractive heat of the sun, the bowels of the earth serving as an

alembic to that end, which made the Italian vineyard-man (after a

long drought, and an extreme hot summer which had parched up all

his grapes) to complain, ‘For want of water I am forced to drink

water; if I had water I would drink wine:’ it may also be applied

to the miller, when he has no water to drive his mills. The vine

doth so abhor cold, that it cannot grow beyond the 49th degree to

any purpose; therefore God and nature hath furnished the north-west

nations with other inventions of beverage. In this island the old

drink was ale, noble ale, than which, as I heard a great foreign

doctor affirm, there is no liquor that more increaseth the radical

moisture, and preserves the natural heat, which are the two pillars

that support the life of man. But since beer hath _hopped_ in

amongst us, ale is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so

good as Sir John Oldcastle and Smugg the smith was used to drink.

Besides ale and beer, the natural drink of part of this isle may be

said to be metheglin, braggot, and mead, which differ in strength

according to the three degrees of comparison. The first of the

three, which is strong in the superlative if taken immoderately,

doth stupefy more than any other liquor, and keeps a humming in the

brain, which made one say, that he loved not metheglin because he

was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the

hive. Cider and perry are also the natural drinks of parts of this

isle.

The condition of things underwent no material change during the

Commonwealth and Protectorate, notwithstanding the special pleading of

political partisanship. The state of morals in England and its capital

is accurately described in a letter to a French nobleman during the

Protectorate:--

There is within this city [London] and in all the towns of England

which I have passed through, so prodigious a number of houses where

they sell a certain drink called ale, that I think a good half of

the inhabitants may be denominated ale-house keepers. These are a

meaner sort of _cabarets_. But what is more deplorable, there the

gentlemen sit and spend much of their time, drinking of a muddy

kind of beverage, and tobacco, which has universally besotted the

nation, and at which I hear they have consumed many noble estates.

As for other taverns London is composed of them, where they drink

Spanish wines, and other sophisticated liquors, to that fury and

intemperance, as has often amazed me to consider it. But thus

some mean fellow, the drawer, arrives to an estate, some of them

having built fair houses, and purchased those gentlemen out of

their possessions, who have ruined themselves by that base and

dishonourable vice of ebriety. And that nothing may be wanting to

the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have

translated the organs out of their churches to set them up in

taverns; chanting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to

the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in

the celebration of God’s praises, and regulate the voices of the

worst singers in the world, which are the English in their churches

at present.... A great error undoubtedly in those who sit at the

helm, to permit this scandal; to suffer so many of these taverns

and occasions of intemperance, such leeches and vipers, to gratify

so sordid and base a sort of people with the spoils of honest and

well-natured men. Your lordship will not believe me, that the

ladies of greatest quality suffer themselves to be treated in one

of these taverns, where a courtezan in other cities would scarcely

vouchsafe to be entertained. But you will be more astonished when

I shall assure you that they drink their crowned cups roundly,

strain healths through their smocks, dance after the fiddle, &c.

Drinking is the afternoon’s diversion; whether for want of a

better, to employ the time, or affection to the drink, I know not.

But I have found some persons of quality whom one could not safely

visit after dinner, without resolving to undergo this drink-ordeal.

It is esteemed a piece of wit to make a man drunk, for which some

swilling insipid client or congiary is a frequent and constant

adjutant.

And later on, in order to contrast the two countries, the writer adds:--

I don’t remember, my lord, ever to have known (or very rarely) a

health drank in France, no, not the King’s; and if we say, _à votre

santé, Monsieur_, it neither expects pledge or ceremony. ‘Tis here

so the custom to drink to every one at the table, that by the time

a gentleman has done his duty to the whole company, he is ready

to fall asleep, whereas with us, we salute the whole table with a

single glass only.[145]

Other writers of the time notice the participation of the women in

the general drinking. M. Jorevin, another French author, writes of a

Worcester hotel:--

According to the custom of the country, the landladies sup with

the strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters they are

also of the company, to entertain the guests at table with pleasant

conceits, where they drink as much as the men; but what is to

me the most disgusting in all this is, that when one drinks the

health of any person in company, the custom of the country does not

permit you to drink more than half the cup, which is filled up and

presented to him or her whose health you have drunk.[146]

John Evelyn tells of the execrable habit of making servants drunk. He

remarks, under date July 19, 1654:--

Went back to Cadenham, and on the 19th to Sir Ed. Baynton’s at Spie

Park, a place capable of being made a noble seate; but the humorous

old knight has built a long single house of 2 low stories on the

precipice of an incomparable prospect, and looking on a bowling

greene in the park. The house is like a long barne, and has not a

window on the prospect side. After dinner they went to bowles, and

in the meanetime our coachmen were made so exceedingly drunk, that

in returning home we escap’d greate dangers. This it seems was by

order of the knight, that all gentlemen’s servants be so treated;

but _the custome is a barbarous one, and much unbecoming a knight,

still lesse a Christian_.

The same sort of thing happened to Evelyn again, March 18, 1669:--

I went with Lord Howard of Norfolk to visit Sir William Ducie at

Charlton, where we din’d; the servants made our coachmen so drunk

that they both fell off their boxes on the heath, _where we were

fain to leave them_, and were driven to London by two servants of

my Lord’s. _This barbarous custom of making the masters welcome by

intoxicating the servants_ had now the second time happen’d to my

coachmen.

[The italics are not Evelyn’s.]

A writer, by name Joseph Rigbie, slashingly exposes intemperance and

its incentives, the _tavern_ and _toasting_:--

The tap-house fits them for a jaile,

The jaile to the gibbet sends them without faile;

For those that through a lattice sang of late

You oft find crying through an iron grate.

And again:--

Yea every cup is fast to others wedged.

They always double drink, they must be pledged.

He that begins, how many so’er they be,

Looks that each one do drink as much as he.

And further on, to the same effect:--

Oh! how they’ll wind men in, do what they can,

By drinking healths, first unto such a man,

Then unto such a woman! Then they’ll send

An health to each man’s mistresse or his friend;

Then to their kindreds or their parents deare,

They needs must have the other jug of beere;

Then to their captains and commanders stout,

Who for to pledge they think none shall stand out;

Last to the king and queen they’ll have a cruse.

Whom for to pledge they think none dare refuse.[147]

‘We seem,’ wrote Reeve in his _Plea for Nineveh_, quoted in Malcolm’s

_Manners and Customs of London_, i. p. 286, ‘to be steeped in liquors,

or to be the dizzy island. We drink as if we were nothing but sponges

... or had tunnels in our mouths.... We are the grape-suckers of the

earth.’

That the ignorant and thoughtless should have been swept into this

vortex of dissipation is not surprising, but one marvels that a man of

power, and in some sort a philosopher, should have stooped to translate

an utterly frivolous and worthless poem of St. Amant, of which a mere

quotation is sickening:--

Wine, my boy; we’ll sing and laugh,

All night revel, rant, and quaff;

Till the morn stealing behind us,

At the table sleepless find us.

When our bones (alas!) shall have

A cold lodging in the grave;

When swift death shall overtake us,

We shall sleep and none can wake us.

Drink we then the juice o’ the vine,

Make our breasts Lyæus’ shrine;

Bacchus, our debauch beholding,

By thy image I am moulding,

Whilst my brains I do replenish

With this draught of unmixed Rhenish;

By thy full-branched ivy twine;

By this sparkling glass of wine;

By thy thyrsus so renowned,

By the healths with which th’art crowned;

* * * * *

To thy frolic order call us,

Knights of the deep bowl install us;

And to shew thyself divine,

Never let it want for wine.

It would be thoroughly to the liking of such a patient that Dr. Tobias

Whitaker (1638) should publish his _Blood of the Grape_, ‘proving

the possibility of maintaining Life from Infancy to Old Age without

Sickness, by the Use of Wine.’

In point of sobriety the Cavaliers have often been unfavourably

contrasted with the Roundheads. The evidence for this, apart from mere

recrimination (which in this case is a two-edged sword), has yet to be

produced. The manners of the two factions were doubtless diverse. ‘Your

friends, the Cavaliers,’ said a Roundhead to a Royalist, ‘are very

dissolute and debauched.’ ‘True,’ replied the Royalist, ‘they have the

infirmities of men; but your friends the Roundheads have the vices of

devils--tyranny, rebellion, and spiritual pride.’ We would fain hope

that they were sober all round, and that Cromwell’s description of his

troops was unassailable. The mother of Cromwell set up the brewery at

Huntingdon which is still flourishing. It was this slight connection

with ‘the trade’ which gained for Cromwell the agnomen of ‘the brewer.’

The story is told, ‘a tradition’ (Hume), that one day sitting at table,

the Protector had a bottle of wine brought him, of a kind which he

valued so highly that he must needs open the bottle himself; but, in

attempting it, the corkscrew dropt from his hand. Immediately his

courtiers and generals flung themselves on the floor to recover it.

Cromwell burst out laughing. ‘Should any fool,’ said he, ‘put in his

head at the door, he would fancy, from your posture, that you were

seeking the Lord, and you are only seeking a corkscrew.’ One sees here

that Cromwell is addressing his ‘men of religion.’ There was much of it

real or unreal; and a curious monument of the fashion then prevalent

of giving sacred names to everything and everybody is furnished by the

tavern sign of the ‘Goat and Compasses,’ which reveals the naked truth

that ‘Praise God Barebones’ preferred drinking his tankard of ale at

the tavern whose sign was ‘God encompasseth us’ to any other ale-house.

On the other hand it should be noted that, according to the late Thomas

Carlyle’s _Letters and Speeches of Cromwell_, ‘the stories of his wild

living while in town ... rest exclusively on Carrion Heath.... Of

evidence that he ever lived a wild life about town, or elsewhere, there

exists no particle.’

The funeral of the Protector is thus described by Evelyn:--

It was the joyfullest funerall I ever saw, for there were none that

cried but dogs, while the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous

noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streetes as they went.

_Club_ life was becoming more and more unfavourable to sobriety. The

‘Everlasting Club,’ instituted during the Civil War, was especially

bibulous and riotous. So much so, that a good-for-nothing devotee of

the bottle was satirically dubbed a member of that club. A writer cited

by Timbs notes that ‘since their first institution they have smoked

fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one thousand

hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and _one_

kilderkine of small beer.’ They sat night and day, one party relieving

another. The fire was never allowed to go out, being perpetuated by an

old woman in the nature of a Vestal. The delight of the members was in

‘old catches which they sang at all hours, to encourage one another to

moisten their clay, and grow immortal by drinking.’

But Eastern products were soon to create a revolution in the national

diet. Sir Anthony Shirley, one of the celebrated trio of brothers,

travellers, when he arrived at Aleppo in 1598, first tasted a drink

that he described as being made of a seed which will ‘soon intoxicate

the brain,’ and which, though nothing toothsome, was wholesome: this

was _coffee_. In 1650 was opened at Oxford the first coffee-house by

Jacobs, a Jew, at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter in the East;

and there it was, by some who delighted in novelty, drunk. Hence the

antiquary Oldys is incorrect in stating that the use of coffee in

England was first known in 1657.

Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London one

Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for him

every morning. But the novelty thereof drawing too much company to

him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law,

to sell it publicly, and they set up the first coffee-house in

London in St. Michael’s Alley in Cornhill.[148]

Of course it was a panacea for all ills. An original handbill of

Rosee’s, headed, ‘The Vertue of the Coffee Drink,’ thus sounds its

praises:--

The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and though it be a

drier, yet it neither heats nor inflames more than hot posset. It

so encloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat

within, that it is very good to help digestion; and therefore of

great use to be taken about three or four o’clock afternoon, as

well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes

the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better

if you hold your head over it and take in the steam that way. It

suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the

headache, and will very much stop any defluxion of rheums that

distil from the head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help

consumptions and the cough of the lungs. It is excellent to prevent

and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy.... It is better than any

other drying drink for people in years, or children that have any

running humours upon them, as the king’s evil, &c. It is a most

excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the

like. It will prevent drowsiness.... It is observed that in Turkey,

where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the

stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and that their skins are exceeding

clear and white. It is neither laxative nor restringent.

And indeed its virtues must have been generally conceded, for it became

fashionable in the reign of Charles II., and is thus alluded to by

Pope, who attributes to it an additional virtue:--

Coffee, which makes the politician wise,

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.[149]

The authors of the _History of Signboards_ state that the ‘Rainbow,’

in Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane, is the oldest coffee-house in

London:--

I find it recorded that one James Farr, a barber, who kept the

coffee-house, which is now the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple gate

(one of the first in England), was, in the year 1657, presented by

the inquest of St. Dunstan’s in the West, for making and selling

a sort of liquor called Coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice

to the neighbourhood, &c., and who would have thought London would

ever have had near three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee

would have been (as now) so much drank by the best of quality and

physicians.

The presentation here alluded to is still preserved among the records

of St. Sepulchre’s church. It says:--

We present James Farr, barber, for making and selling a drink

called coffee, whereby, in making the same, he annoyeth his

neighboors by evill smells, and for keeping of fire the most part

night and day, whereby his chimney and chamber has been set on

fire, to the great danger and affreightment of his neighboors.[150]

Roger North, attorney-general to James II., says:--

The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention

called chocolate houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of

all the quality; where gaming is added to all the rest, ... as if

the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges

of its professors, as well as his school of discipline.[151]

Chocolate was advertised as a new drink in 1657:--

In Bishopsgate Street in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s

house, is an excellent West India drink called chocolate to be

sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at

reasonable rates.

The reputation of chocolate upon its introduction was fluctuating. This

appears in the letters of Madame de Sévigné, who at one time recommends

it to her daughter with all fervour, whilst at other times she decries

it as the root of all evil.

But however much the introduction into our country of such drinks was

destined to discover a rival to intoxicants, the fact remains that the

public taste had by the habit of long ages become vitiated, and England

had earned for herself the distinction of the ‘land of drunkards.’

True it is that the Protector strove to repress intemperance by fines

and punishments. The rigid restrictions of the republican rule were

manifested in the strict surveillance maintained over the people, with

the view of securing temperance. Convictions for drunkenness were of

daily occurrence; and it was often the practice to remove all doubts

of the sufficiency of testimony by producing the delinquent in court

under the influence of drink. Many are the instances in which it is

recorded by the convicting justice that some offender was ‘drunk in my

view.’ They were in the habit, moreover, of making nice distinctions as

to the grades of intoxication.

The ‘drunkard’s cloak’ was an instrument of punishment then in use,

which might with advantage be revived. It was a cask with a hole at the

top, through which the drunkard’s head protruded, and one on each side

for either hand. The legs were free for the offender to perambulate

with the instrument of disgrace about him.[152]

Some strong language was uttered from the pulpit against drunkenness.

Dr. Robert Harris, President of Trinity College, Oxford, in the

dedication to the _Drunkard’s Cup_, a sermon, speaks of the _ars

bibendi_ as having become a great profession:--

There are lawes and ceremonies to be observed both by the firsts

and seconds. There is a drinking by the _foot_, by the _yard_, &c.,

a drinking by the _douzens_, by the _scores_, &c., for the _wager_,

for the _victory_, _man against man_, _house against house_, _town

against town_. There are also terms of art, fetched from hell, for

the better distinguishing of the practitioners; one is _coloured_,

another is _foxt_, a third is _gone to the dogs_, &c.

In the sermon he speaks of ‘the strange saucinesse of base vermine,

in tossing the name of his most excellent Majesty in their foaming

mouthes, and in daring to make that a shooing-horne to draw on drink by

drinking healths to him.’[153]

Dr. Grindrod draws attention in his _Bacchus_ to a prominent appeal

of about the same date entitled, _The Blemish of Government, the Shame

of Religion, the Disgrace of Mankind_: ‘or, a charge drawn up against

Drunkards, and presented to his highness the Lord Protector, in the

name of all the sober party in the three nations,’ by R. Younge. The

book is not procurable; but assuming the quotation to be correct the

statistic is astounding:--

It is sad to consider how many will hear this charge for one that

will apply it to himself, for confident I am that fifteen of

twenty, this city over [London] are _drunkards_, yea, seducing

drunkards, in the dialect of Scripture, and by the law of God which

extends to the heart and the affections.... Perhaps by the law of

the land, a man is not taken for drunk except his eyes stare, his

tongue stutter, his legs stagger; but by God’s law, he is one that

goes often to the drink, or that tarries long at it (Prov. xxiii.

30, 31). He that will be drawn to drink when he hath neither _need

of it_ nor _mind to it_, to the spending of _money_, wasting of

precious _time_, discredit of the _Gospel_, the stumbling-block of

_weak ones_, and hardening associates ... is a drunkard.

Presuming that Younge’s statement is at all within the mark, it will

account for the effort put forth at the London sessions in 1654,

wherein it was ordered that ‘no new licences shall be granted for two

years.’

* * * * *

Great was the magnificence of the pageant upon the restoration of King

Charles II. The conduits flowed with a ‘variety of delicious wines.’

At the Stocks was a fountain, of the Tuscan order, ‘venting wine.’ The

event was commemorated at Charing Cross by the sign of the Pageant

Tavern, which represented the triumphal arch there and then erected,

and which remained some time after. Various were the forms that

exuberance assumed. At the rejoicings at Edinburgh for the Restoration,

at the Lord Provost’s return he was at every bonfire complimented

with the _breaking of glasses_--one of the concomitant formalities of

toasting.

Beyond the natural outburst of rejoicing at so great an occasion,

there is abundant corroboration of the remark of Fosbroke, that

‘drinking healths was _uncommonly_ prevalent, and productive of much

intemperance, immediately after and _on account of_ the Restoration.’

Royalty will be always prominently recognised at our public rejoicings,

as a matter of course, and of right. May the health of the Sovereign

and Royal Family always be proposed! Always, when the concomitant of

_drinking it_ has become obsolete.[154] What a volume could be written

on the customs which have gathered about the toasting of our monarchs

alone! One of these comes at once to mind in connection with the Second

Charles. Pepys, in his _Diary_ (1662-3), describes his own dining at

‘Chirurgeons’ Hall.’ He tells that:--

Among other observables we drunk the King’s health out of a gilt

cup given by King Henry VIII. to this Company, with bells hanging

at it, which every man is to ring by shaking after he hath drunk up

the whole cup.

Another curious circumstance will be mentioned presently in connection

with the toasting his successor, James.

But it is time again to review the material of all this rejoicing. At

this period of the seventeenth century the importation of French wines

into England was two-fifths of her consumption.[155] Mr. Cyrus Redding

states that in 1675, there came to England 7,495 tuns of French wine

to 20 of those of Portugal; and in 1676 no less than 9,645 French, to

83 Portuguese; soon after which date French wines were prohibited for

seven years.[156]

Navarre wine, which the same author mentions among other wines of

the Basses Pyrénées as of good quality, was coming into fashion.

Pepys mentions his dining at Whitehall with the Duke of York, who

did ‘mightily commend some new sort of wine lately found out, called

Navarr wine, which I tasted, and is, I think, good wine.’ Bacharach was

becoming a favourite Rhenish wine. Redding tells that German writers

pretend that this Bacharach derived its name from the deity of wine, a

stone still existing in the river, which they call Bacchus’ altar.

The famous author of _Hudibras_ introduces us to the names of some of

these wines which had recently come into vogue:--

Those win the day that win the race;

And that which would not pass in fights,

Has done the feats with easy flights,

Recover’d many a desp’rate campaign

With Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champaign;

Restor’d the fainting high and mighty

With brandy, wine, and _aqua vitæ_;

And made ‘em stoutly overcome

With Bacchrach, Hockamore, and Mum.

What a satirist was Butler, of drink, drinkers, everybody!

Of drink:--

Drink has overwhelmed and drowned,

Far greater numbers on dry ground,

Of wretched mankind, one by one,

Than e’er the flood before had done.

Of drinkers--_e.g._ ‘on a Club of Sots’:--

The jolly members of a toping club,

Like pipestaves, are but hooped into a tub,

And in a close confederacy link

For nothing else but only to hold drink.

Of everybody (to whom he was politically opposed)--appealing to the

Muse:--

Thou that with ale, or viler liquors,

Didst inspire Withers, Prynne, and Vickers,

And force them, though it was in spite

Of Nature, and their stars, to write.[157]

Other light wines are sung of in John Oldham’s _Works_ (1684):--

Let wealthy merchants when they dine,

Run o’er their witty names of wine:

Their chests of Florence and their Mont Alchine,

Their Mants, Champaigns, Chablees, Frontiniacks tell;

Their aums of Hock, of Backrag, and Mosell.

No wonder that the doctors complained that their efforts would be

fruitless to patch up constitutions so utterly weather-beaten by heat

and wet, as we find from Sir Charles Sedley’s _The Doctor and his

Patients_, where it is told of the family Æsculapius:--

One day he called ‘em all together,

And, one by one, he asked ‘em whether

It were not better by good diet

To keep the blood and humours quiet,

With toast and ale to cool their brains

Than nightly fire ‘em with Champains.

And whilst these wines were injurious to their bodies they failed

to give any real or permanent relief to their minds, as even the

licentious tragedian of the period, Etheridge, admitted:--

At the plays we are constantly making our court,

And when they are ended we follow the sport

To the Mall and the Park,

Where we love till ‘tis dark;

Then Sparkling Champagne

Puts an end to their reign;

It quickly recovers

Poor languishing lovers;

Makes us frolic and gay, and drowns all our sorrow;

But alas! _we relapse again on the morrow_.[158]

We obtain an incidental estimate of the market price of French wine

from the _Tatler_, No. 147, where we read:--

Upon my coming home last night, I found a very handsome present of

French wine left for me, as a taste--of 216 hogsheads which are to

be put to sale at 20_l._ a hogshead, at Garraway’s coffee-house, in

Exchange Alley.

These wines were sold _by the candle_--_i.e._ the property was put up

by the auctioneer, an inch of candle was lighted, and the last bidder

when the light went out was the purchaser.

English vineyards were still here and there attempted. Thus Evelyn

(_Diary_, 1655) ‘went to see Col. Blount’s subterranean warren, and

drank of the wine of his vineyard, which was good for little.’

The consumption of French _Brandy_ was very great, and discontent was

excited from the notion that the country was suffering from the lack of

encouragement to home distillation; permission was accordingly granted

to a company to _distil brandy_ from wine and malt.

Besides wine and brandy, ale was drunk in various forms.

Chamberlayne states that in 1667 no less than 1,522,781 barrels of beer

were brewed in the city of London, each of them containing from 32 to

36 gallons, and that the amount yearly brewed in London had since risen

to nearly 2,000,000 barrels; and that the excise for London was farmed

out for 120,000_l._ a year.[159]

Jorevin de Rochefort, whose travels were published at Paris in

1672, says:--‘The English beer is the best in Europe’ (_Antiquarian

Repertory_, vol. iv. p. 607). At Cambridge he had a visit from the

clergyman, ‘during which,’ says he, ‘it was necessary to drink two

or three pots of beer during our parley; for no kind of business is

transacted in England without the intervention of pots of beer.’