Chapter X: Stuart Period (1)

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:--