Chapter X: Stuart Period (2)

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.’

At this time people frequently ate no supper but took _buttered ale_, composed of sugar, cinnamon, butter, and beer brewed without hops. It was put into a cup, set before the fire to heat, and drunk hot.

_Cider_ was again coming into fashion. Butler (_Hudibras_) tells of Sidrophel that he knew--

... in what sign best sider’s made.

The manufacture being of sufficient moment for reference to astrology.

A new liquor now introduced from Brunswick was a sort of strong beer called _Mum_, or, sometimes, _Brunswick Mum_. The word has been derived from _mummeln_, to mumble, or from the onomatopœic _mum_, denoting silence, and from Christian Mummer by whom it was first brewed. It was brewed chiefly from malt made from wheat instead of barley. Pope writes of it:--

The clamorous crowd is hush’d with mugs of mum,
Till all, tuned equal, send a general hum.

This foreign drink was rivalled by Dorset beer.[160]

Lastly, we hear still of _Metheglin_. Pepys (1666) describes his dining with the king’s servants from meat that came from his Majesty’s table, ‘with most brave drink, cooled in ice; and I, drinking no wine, had metheglin, for the king’s own drinking, which did please me mightilye.’ It was an article of excise.

A good deal has been made of what is termed the _reaction_ in morals after the republican spell. For instance, Mr. Samuelson says (_Hist. of Drink_):--

These extreme measures of repression on the part of the Puritans
led to the result which might be anticipated. They gave courage to
those who were anxious for the return of royalty, and reconciled
many to its reinstatement who would otherwise have struggled for
the maintenance of republican institutions; and when Charles II.
was once more safely enthroned, there followed a reaction in morals
which has left to that period the unenviable notoriety of being the
most corrupt and dissolute in the whole history of our country.

One would almost imagine from this, and kindred statements, that vice was unknown to the Protector and his adherents; whereas it is matter of history that Cromwell’s early life was dissolute and disorderly, and that he consumed in gaming, drinking, debauchery, and country riots, the more early years of his youth.[161] The Roundheads liked ale as well as the Cavaliers. Does not Pepys tell of Monk’s troops (Feb. 13, 1659):--‘The city is very open-handed to the soldiers; they are _most of them drunk all day_’? Surely, then, bias must have possessed Lord Macaulay when he would have us believe that ‘in the Puritan camp no drunkenness was seen.’ Some prefer the evidence of a contemporary.

It _is_ possible to contrast the Courts of the two Charleses, and the contrast is terrible; but was no one responsible besides Charles II. for his wandering life, when he herded with inferiors? If he was a creature of frailty and vice, he was also a creature of circumstance.

Thus much prefaced, let it be freely admitted that drunkenness prevailed in every rank of society, and that the king set the example. Mr. Samuelson adduces from Evelyn, as an instance, a supper given by the Duke of Buckingham when the Prince of Orange was over on a visit, on which occasion the king made the prince drink hard (though he could not have required much making), under the influence of which, the Dutchman broke the windows of the chambers of the maids of honour, with other mischiefs.

Nor does the famous story in the _Spectator_ impress us with his bias towards temperance. The king had been dining with the Lord Mayor at Guildhall, where his cups did not prevent his observing that conviviality had occasioned familiarity; whereupon, with an abrupt farewell, he left the banquet. The mayor pursued the monarch, overtook him in the courtyard, and swore that he should not go till they had ‘drunk t’other bottle!’ The airy monarch looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and, with a smile and graceful air, repeated the line of the old song:--

And the man that is drunk is as great as a king!

and immediately turned back and complied with his host’s bidding.

But the veil is more thoroughly lifted by Pepys, who notes:--

_September 23, 1667._--With Sir H. Cholmly to Westminster; who by
the way told me how merry the King and Duke of York and Court
were the other day, when they were abroad a-hunting. They came to
Sir G. Cartaret’s house at Cranbourne, and there were entertained
and all made drunk; and, being all drunk, Armerer did come to the
king, and swore to him ‘By God, sir,’ says he, ‘you are not so
kind to the Duke of York of late as you used to be.’ ‘Not I?’ says
the king. ‘Why so?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you are, let us drink his
health.’ ‘Why let us,’ says the king. Then he fell on his knees and
drank it; and having done, the king began to drink it. ‘Nay, sir,’
says Armerer, ‘by God, you must do it on your knees!’ So he did,
and then all the company: and having done it, all fell a-crying
for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the king the
Duke of York, and the Duke of York the king; and in such a maudlin
pickle as never people were: and so passed the day.

Again he writes (1661):--

At Court things are in very ill condition, there being so much
emulacion, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose
amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion.

Two of the notables about Court have already been alluded to. Rochester--that is, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester--in the language of Dr. Johnson, ‘blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness,’ dying at the age of thirty-three. Some lines of his favour the notion that the origin of the term _toasting_, as given in the _Tatler_, may be the correct one. They are:--

Make it so large that, fill’d with sack
Up to the swelling brim,
Vast _toasts_ on the delicious lake,
Like ships at sea, may swim.

A confirmation of the same may be derived from a verse of Warton:--

My sober evening let the tankard bless,
With _toast_ embrown’d, and fragrant nutmeg fraught,
While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs,
Tobacco mild improves.

Of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the criticism of Dryden must suffice--lines well known:--

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long.
But in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
Then all for women, paintings, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.

Another drinking notoriety was Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (_n._ 1637, _ob._ 1684).

One of his frolics [says Dr. Johnson] has by the industry of Wood
come down to posterity. Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst,
with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock
in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony utterly
disgraced themselves. The public indignation was awakened; the
crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed drove in the
performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For
this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five
hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known.
Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from
the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute) they begged
the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat.

Lord Macaulay, in his _History of England_, chap. vi. has the following description of the same disgraceful event:--

The morals of Sedley were such as even in that age gave great
scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel, exhibited himself
without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a tavern near Covent
Garden, and harangued the people who were passing in language
so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of
brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was sentenced to a
heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King’s Bench in the
most cutting terms.

It is perfectly clear that the higher motives for restraint were lacking, though expediency acted as a curb upon occasions. The following passage from Evelyn’s _Diary_ will serve as an illustration:--

_October 30, 1682._--I was invited to dine with Mons. Lionberg,
the Swedish Resident, who made a magnificent entertainment, it
being the birthday of his king. There dined the Duke of Albemarle,
D. of Hamilton, Earle of Bathe, E. of Aylesbury, Lord Arran, Lord
Castlehaven, the sonn of him who was executed 50 yeares before, and
several greate persons. I was exceeding afraide of drinking (it
being a Dutch feast), _but the Duke of Albemarle, being that night
to waite on his Majestie, excesse was prohibited_; and to prevent
all, I stole away and left the company as soone as we rose from
table.

[Italics not in the original.]

From the same author we find that the same vice beset women of rank. The Duchess of Mazarine, he observes, is reported to have hastened her death by intemperate drinking of strong spirits.

The Lower House of Parliament seems to have been infected with the moral distemper. Evelyn writes:--

_December 19, 1666._--Among other things Sir R. Ford did make
me understand how the House of Commons is a beast not to be
understood, it being impossible to know beforehand the success
almost of any small plain thing.... He did tell me, and so did Sir
W. Batten, how Sir Allen Brodericke and Sir Allen Apsly did come
drunk the other day into the House, and did both speak for half
an hour together, and could not be either laughed, or pulled, or
bid to sit down and hold their peace, to the great contempt of the
king’s servants and cause; which I am grieved at with all my heart.

(What made this worse was that Sir Allen Brodericke was an official--Surveyor-General in Ireland to his Majesty.)

But there was a vast amount of drinking that is really intemperance, though it passes under another name. Very apposite are the words of a contemporary, Sir William Temple:--

Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy;
... the best guardian of youth, and support of old age; the precept
of reason as well as religion; and physician of the soul as well
as the body; the tutelar goddess of health, and universal medicine
of life, that clears the head and cleanses the blood, that eases
the stomach, and purges the bowels, that strengthens the nerves,
enlightens the eyes, and comforts the heart; in a word, that
secures and perfects the digestion.... I do not allow the pretence
of temperance to all such as are seldom or never drunk, or fall
into surfeits; for men may lose their health without losing their
senses, and be intemperate every day, without being drunk perhaps
once in their lives; nay, for aught I know, if a man should pass
the month in a college diet, without excess or variety of meats or
of drinks, but only the last day give a loose in them both, and
so far till it comes to serve him for physic rather than food,
and he utter his stomach as well as his heart, he may perhaps, as
to the mere considerations of health, do much better than another
that eats every day ... in plenty and luxury, with great variety
of meats, and a dozen glasses of wine at a meal, still spurring up
appetite when it would lie down of itself; flushed every day, but
never drunk.[162]

It is refreshing in reading Johnson’s _Lives_ to come upon a poet really free from a suspicion of fondness for drink. Such a one was Edmund Waller, born 1605, died 1687. Would he have lived so long had he been a drink-hard? Johnson remarks of him:--

In the first parliament summoned by Charles the Second (March 8,
1661) Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different
places in all the parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy
and gaiety were the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is
not likely that Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in the
company that was highest both in rank and wit, from which even his
obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank water,
he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth
of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said that ‘no man in
England should keep him company without drinking but Ned Waller.’

An excellent companion for the poet would have been Guy, Earl of Warwick, in whose ‘Tragical History’ occur the lines:--

_Phillis._ Give me some bread. I prithee, father, eat.

_Guy._ Give me brown bread, for that’s a pilgrim’s meat.

_Phillis._ Reach me some wine; good father, taste of this.