Chapter X: Stuart Period (3)

_Guy._ Give me cold water, that my comfort is.
I tell you, Lady, your great Lord and I
Have thought ourselves as happy as a king,
To drink the water of a christal spring.

_Coffee_ came into general use in England, according to John Evelyn (_Diary_), about 1667. But he records, under date May 1637, that ‘one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, from Cyrill, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was the first he ever saw drink coffee.’

Tea became a fashionable beverage in England soon after the marriage of Catharine of Braganza with Charles II. It was not exactly introduced by her, as it was procurable in London some months, at any rate, before her marriage; for Pepys writes:--‘_Sept. 28, 1660._--I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I never had drank before.’ Yet she set the fashion for the use of it. Strickland rightly considers that the use of these simple luxuries, tea, coffee, and chocolate, had gradually a beneficial influence on the manners of all classes of society, by forming a counter-charm against habits of intoxication. Waller wrote a complimentary poem on the queen, commending tea, in which are the lines:--

The best of Queens and best of herbs we owe
To that bold nation, who the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise.

All sorts of things have been scribbled about it, good, bad, and indifferent. The same Waller writes:--

The Muses’ friend, _Tea_, does our fancy aid,
Repress the vapours which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul serene.

Young could write, on the other hand:--

_Tea_; how I tremble at thy fatal stream!
As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame.
What devastations on thy banks are seen!
What shades of mighty names which once have been!
A hecatomb of characters supplies
Thy painted altars’ daily sacrifice.

In sympathy with Young would be Dr. Parr, in the well-known line of gallantry:--

Nec _tea_-cum possum vivere, nec sine te.

or, in mother tongue--

When failing tea, my soul and body thrive,
But failing thee, no longer I survive.

The epigram is still more severe:--

If wine be poison, so is Tea--but in another shape--
What matter whether we are kill’d by canister or grape?

We still plump for tea.

One word before leaving the drink of the Restoration. Some may be curious to inquire the nature of their cups. Pepys, telling of his dining at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, says:--

Plenty of wine of all sorts; but it was very unpleasing that we
had no napkins nor change of trenchers, and drunk out of earthen
pitchers and wooden dishes (cups).

Chaffers remarks that probably pitchers and large pots were usually made of earth and leather, while the cups, or dishes, out of which the liquor was drunk, were of ash; or sometimes, among the more opulent, from cups or tankards of silver:--

His cupboard’s head six earthen pitchers graced,
Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed.
Dryden’s _Juvenal_.

It may be here mentioned that Dryden immensely prided himself on his Bacchanalian song entitled _Alexander’s Feast_. He wrote to his publisher, ‘I am glad to hear from all hands that my ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry.’ Stanza III. is a sufficient specimen:--

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet Musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums!
Flush’d with a purple grace
He shows his honest face.
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain:
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldiers’ pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

_Legislation._

The Wine Acts of Car. II. were those known as 12 Charles and 22 & 23 Charles. Early in his reign he issued that remarkable proclamation, which could not but reflect on his favourite companions and strongly mark the moral disorders of those depraved times.[163] It is against ‘vicious, debauch’d, and profane persons,’ who are thus described:--

A sort of men of whom we are sufficiently ashamed, who spend their
time in taverns, tippling-houses, and debauches, giving no other
evidence of their affection to us but in drinking our health, and
inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute
temper; and who in truth have more discredited our cause by the
license of their manners and lives, than they could ever advance it
by their affection or courage. We hope all persons of honour, or
in place and authority, will so far assist us in discountenancing
such men, that their discretion and shame will persuade them to
reform what their conscience would not; and that the displeasure
of good men towards them may supply what the laws have not, and,
it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the license
and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many
enormities, scandals, and impieties, which laws cannot well provide
against, which may, _by the example and severity of virtuous men,
be easily discountenanced and by degrees suppressed_.

Blackstone, speaking of the king’s ordinary revenue, observes that a seventh branch might also be computed to have arisen from wine licences, or the rents payable to the Crown by such persons as are licensed to sell wine by retail throughout England, except in a few privileged places. These were _first settled on the Crown_ by the statute 12 Car. II. c. 25, and, together with the hereditary excise, made up the equivalent in value for the loss sustained by the prerogative in the abolition of the military tenures, and the right of pre-emption and purveyance; but this revenue was abolished by 30 Geo. II. c. 19, and an annual sum of upwards of 7,000_l._ per annum, issuing out of the new stamp duties imposed on wine licences, was settled on the Crown in its stead.[164]

The prices of wines were fixed anew. By 12 Car. II. it was provided that no canary, muskadel, or aligant, or other Spanish or sweet wines, should be sold by retail for over 1_s._ 6_d._ the quart; Gascoigne and French wines limited to 8_d._ the quart, Rhenish wines to 12_d._

From the reign of the Norman kings here, to 1660, the wines of
Guienne, Poitou, and Gascony came in, subject to moderate dues,
until the reign of Charles II. The amount of duties by 12 Charles
II. c. 4, was 13_l._ 10_s._ per tun in London, and 16_l._ 10_s._
in the out-ports. This was at the rate of 13¼_d._ the gallon.
The trade with France after the Revolution seems to have been
carried on upon an equitable footing until 1675, when one of those
popular alarms that often disgrace this country was raised, that
France was ruining us, for there was a balance of trade against
us of 965,128_l._ Land happened at the time to have fallen in
price. The landed interest was shipwrecked; all, it was averred,
in consequence of the money of England going over to France for
the purchase of her productions. Cries were uttered like those
when the calendar was rectified, ‘Give us back our ten days,’ or
the old ‘No Popery,’ ‘the Church in danger,’ or more recently the
cry of ‘French invasion,’ echoed from all sides, amid the shouts
of the ignorant or interested. England was on the brink of ruin,
if they were to be credited. The treaty of commerce concluded was
soon hooted down, and in 1678, Parliament, the wisdom of which used
sometimes to be very problematical, came to a vote declaring that
the ‘trade with France was detrimental to the kingdom!’ An Act of
absolute wisdom in the legislative sense of that time followed,
the preamble of which ran, ‘Forasmuch as it hath been by long
experience found that the importing French wines, brandy, silks,
linen, salts, and paper, and other commodities of the growth,
product, or manufactures of the territories and dominions of the
French king, hath much exhausted the treasure of this nation,
lessened the value of the native commodities and manufactures
thereof, and caused great detriment to this kingdom, &c.’

It was also averred that, in consequence, rents fell. French wine
was therefore prohibited from 1679 to 1685.[165]

We form an idea of the _Ingredients put into wines_ from the order of 12 Car. II. c. 25:--

That no merchant, vintner, wine-cooper or other person, selling or
retailing any wine, shall mingle or utter any Spanish wine mingled
with any French wine, or Rhenish wine, cyder, perry, stummed wine,
honey, sugar, syrups of sugar, molasses, or any other syrups
whatsoever: nor put in any isinglass, brimstone, lime, raisins,
juice of raisins, water, nor any other liquor nor ingredients, nor
any clary or other herbs, nor any sort of flesh whatsoever.

The excise duties on superior beer was 1_s._ 3_d._; on inferior, 3_d._; on a hogshead of cider or perry, 1_s._ 3_d._; on a gallon of mead, ½_d._; on a gallon of aqua-vitæ, 1_d._; on a gallon of coffee, 4_d._; on a gallon of chocolate or tea, 8_d._ In 1670, brandy had a duty imposed on it of 8_d._ a gallon when imported.

Upon the accession of

_James II._

after the dinner at Guildhall, their Majesties were beset with numerous crowds whose shouts declared their joy. When they reached Ludgate, a rank of loyal gentlemen stood in a balcony, charged with full glasses, which they discharged in such excellent order, that caused all the guards to answer them with a huzza![166]

John Evelyn was ordered by the sheriff to assist in proclaiming the king. He thus describes the event:--

I met the Sheriff and commander of the Kentish Troop, with an
appearance, I suppose, of above 500 horse and innumerable people,
two of his Majesty’s trumpets, and a Sergeant with other officers,
who, having drawn up the horse in a large field neere the towne,
march’d thence with swords drawne, to the Market Place, where,
making a ring after sound of trumpets and silence made, the High
Sheriff read the proclaiming titles to his Bailiffe, who repeated
them aloud, and then, after many shouts of the people, his
Majesty’s health being drunk in a flint glass of a yard long by
the Sheriff, commander, officers, and chief gentlemen, they all
dispersed and I returned.

Here is an answer to the question, ‘What is a _yard of ale_?’ Before the standard measures were in general use, ale was measured out in this _ale-yard_, which was a flint-glass a yard long, of sufficient capacity to admit a saccharometer which was a test of its strength and quality.

Many of the old ceremonies observed at the coronation banquets of the early kings were revived by James. Amongst these, the following usage may be noted. After thrice flinging down the gauntlet, the champion made his obeisance to the king, who drank to him from a gilt bowl, which he then returned with the cover. The champion then pledged his Majesty, and rode out of the hall, taking bowl and cover as his fee.

But such ceremonies are not to be taken as any indication of a proneness of the king to high living. Hard drinking he hated. A contemporary writes that:--

The king, going to Mass, told his attendants he had been informed
that since his declaring against the disorder of the household,
some had the impudence to appear drunk in the queen’s presence ...
but he advised them at their peril to observe his order, which he
would see obeyed.[167]

Much light has been thrown upon the general habits of the period by Lord Macaulay, who, in describing the English country gentleman of 1688, remarks:--

His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He
examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and on market days made
bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief
pleasures were commonly derived from field sports, and from an
unrefined sensuality.... His table was loaded with coarse plenty,
and guests were cordially welcome to it. But as the habit of
drinking was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his
fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily
with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The
quantity of beer consumed in those days was indeed enormous, for
beer then was to the middle and lower classes not only all that
beer now is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are; it
was only at great houses, or on great occasions, that foreign drink
was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it
had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes
had been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco.
The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the
revellers were laid under the table.

Mr. Lecky observes:--

Among the poor ... the popular beverage was still ale or beer, THE
USE OF WHICH--especially before the art of noxious adulteration was
brought to its present perfection--HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE COMMON THAN
THE ABUSE. The consumption appears to have been amazing. It was
computed in 1688 that no less than 12,400,000 barrels were brewed
in England in a single year, though the entire population probably
little exceeded 5,000,000. In 1695, with a somewhat heavier excise,
it sank to 11,350,000 barrels, but even then almost a third part of
the arable land of the kingdom was devoted to barley.

More bluntly, of course, than Macaulay, did that scourge of iniquity, Jeremy Collier, express himself. Satirising dinner invitations, he writes:--

If the invitation was sent in a letter, and the truth spoken out,
it must run in the tenor following: ‘Sir, if you please to do me
the favour to dine with me, I shall do my best to drink you out
of your limbs and senses, to make you say a hundred silly things,
and play the fool to purpose, if ever you did it in your life. And
before we part you shall be well prepared to tumble off your horse,
to disoblige your coach, and make your family sick at the sight
of you. And all this for an opportunity of showing with how much
friendship and respect I am _your humble servant_.’

That the delights of the table were the one thing needful is well illustrated by a cross-examination recorded by Mr. Jeaffreson[168]:--

‘You know Lord Barrymore?’ Dr. Beaufort was asked by the lords
of the Privy Council. ‘Intimately, most intimately,’ replied the
Doctor. ‘You are continually with him?’ urged the questioner. ‘We
dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town.’ ‘What do
you talk about?’ ‘Eating and drinking.’ ‘_And_ what else?’ ‘Oh,
my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and drinking,
drinking and eating.’

The habit of _toasting_ had much to do with the excesses then so common. At the birth of the male heir to the throne, claret was drunk at the expense of the Crown, and endless glasses broken in drinking the health of their Majesties and the Prince Stuart at the Edinburgh town cross. Even the malcontent city of York drank deep potations.

Rhyming toasts were then in fashion. A Court gossip writes to Lady Rachel Russell:--‘I know not whether you have heard a health that goes about, which is new to me just now, so I send it you:--

The King God bless,
And each princess,
The Church no less,
Which we profess,
As did Queen Bess.’

No doubt great abuses attended this habit of health-drinking, or we should not find Dekker, Thomas Hall, and, indeed, the moralists almost to a man, inveighing against the custom. It was only a few years before this reign that the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Matthew Hale, left the injunction to his grandchildren:--

I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for it is become
one of the greatest artifices of drinking and occasions of
quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige
yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onward, and if you
pledge as many as will be drank, you must be debauched and drunk.
If they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair
answer--that your grandfather who brought you up, from whom under
God you have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command
with you that you should never begin or pledge a health.

What a contrast does Justice Hale present to the merciless Judge Jeffries, whose habitual intemperance may account for his actions. Nor should it be forgotten that Sir Henry Bellasyse, whose widow the king was so anxious to marry, was killed in a duel whilst in a state of intoxication.

A very important reminder is to be found in an Act of 1685, to the effect that--

The ancient true and principal use of ale-houses was for the
lodging of wayfaring people, and for the supply of the wants
of such as were not able by greater quantities to make their
provisions of victuals, and not for entertainment and harbouring of
lewd and idle people, to spend their time and money in a lewd and
drunken manner.

An event which occurred in this short reign immortalised a roadside inn. _The Revolution House_, at Whittington, obtained its name from the accidental meeting of the Earl of Danby, the Earl of Devonshire, Lord Delamere, and Mr. John D’Arcy, one morning in 1688, on Whittington Moor, near Chatsworth, to consult about the Revolution, then in agitation. A shower of rain happening to fall, they removed to the village for shelter, and finished their conversation at a public-house called _The Cock and Pynot_.[169]

A fashionable spirit in this and the following reign was Jamaica _Rum_. When the Duke of Monmouth was being brought to London as a prisoner, in 1685, he took for a bad cold, at Romsey, while staying on his saddle, a hot glass of rum and eggs. Hot coffee would probably have done him more good. We have already noticed that it came into use in Charles II.’s time. Sir Anthony Shirley described it as made of a seed which, though nothing toothsome, was wholesome. Pope went further, writing in his _Rape of the Lock_--

Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.

Upon the accession of

_William III._

the usual pageant was observed in London. The conduits ran with wine. The same reception greeted the king shortly after at Oxford. The drinking habits of the monarch are well known, though Evelyn speaks of him as naturally averse to drink. After the death of the queen, he became more addicted to his favourite drink, Hollands gin. The banqueting-house at Hampton Court, which was used by him as a drinking and smoking room, has been described as a royal gin-temple. Enemies he had in abundance, and so intense was their hatred, that, in their hours of debauch, they drank to the health of Sorrel, meaning the horse that fell with the king, and, under the appellation of the ‘little gentleman in velvet,’ _toasted_ the mole that raised the hill over which the horse had stumbled.[170] Let us hope that it was the same hostility that accused the queen of fondness for drink. However this may be, it is certain that her physicians warned her most plainly against a strong spirituous cordial to which she resorted in large doses when ill.

From highest to lowest intemperance raged in the reign of William and Mary. De Foe remarks:--

If the history of this well-bred vice was to be written, it would
plainly appear that it began among the gentry, and from them was
handed down to the poorer sort, who still love to be like their
betters. After the Restoration, when the king’s health became the
distinction between a Cavalier and Roundhead, drunkenness began to
reign. The gentry caressed the beastly vice at such a rate that no
servant was thought proper unless he could bear a quantity of wine;
and to this day, when you speak well of a man, you say he is an
honest, drunken fellow--as if his drunkenness was a recommendation
to his honesty. Nay, so far has this custom prevailed, that the
top of a gentlemanly entertainment has been to make his friend
drunk, and the friend is so much reconciled to it that he takes
it as the effect of his kindness. The further perfection of this
vice among the gentry appears in the way of their expressing their
joy for any public blessing. ‘Jack,’ said a gentleman of very high
quality, when, after the debate in the House of Lords, King William
was voted into the vacant throne, ‘Jack, go home to your lady, and
tell her we have got a Protestant king and queen, and go make a
bonfire as big as a house, and bid the butler make ye all drunk, ye
dog.’[171]

From highest to lowest, we repeat, intemperance raged. Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, writing upon the curse and terrorism of mendicancy, complains that many thousands of beggars ‘meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together.’[172]

The dissoluteness of the time found its expression, not only upon the stage, but among the actors themselves. Terribly significant is the following note by Derrick on a play written by Higden, to whom Dryden wrote a poetical epistle:--

This gentleman (Henry Higden, Esq.) brought a comedy on the stage
in 1693, called _The Wary Widow, or Sir Noisy Parrot_, which
was damned, and he complains hardly of the ill-usage; for the
bear-garden critics treated it with cat-calls. It is printed and
dedicated to the courtly Earl of Dorset; Sir Charles Sedley wrote
the prologue, and it was ushered into the world with several copies
of verses. The audience were dismissed at the end of the third act,
the author having contrived so much drinking of punch in the play,
that the actors all got drunk, and were unable to finish it.[173]

Even the offices of religion enjoyed no immunity. Apart from the annual item of ‘communion wine,’ a by no means uncommon charge upon the parish was ‘wine for the vestry.’ A dignitary of the Church, evidently of the _Mapes_ and _Still_ species, thought it not beneath the dignity of his office to compose the bibulous epigram:--

Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi;
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis; atque futura;
Et vini bonitas; et quælibet altera causa.[174]

which has been rendered into English:--

If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.

Plenty of voices were raised against the current vice. By far the most powerful warning was uttered by the Rev. Dr. William Assheton, Fellow of Brasenose,[175] who opens his discourse thus fearlessly:--

Their Majesties, being sensible that as Righteousness exalteth a
nation, so sin is a reproach to any people; and being desirous
to reform the lives and manners of all their subjects, have
commanded the clergy to Preach frequently against those particular
sins and vices which are most prevailing in this realm--viz.
against Blasphemy, Swearing, Cursing, Perjury, Drunkenness, and
Prophanation of the Lord’s day.

He reminds that the Act of Parliament calls the sin of drunkenness ‘odious and loathsom.’ He urges:--

The known ends of drink are these: the digestion of our meat,
chearfulness and refreshment of our spirits, and the preserving of
health. And whilst it contributes to those ends, so far Drinking
is regular and moderate; but when it destroys them, ‘tis irregular
and sinful. When therefore wine or any other drink is taken in such
excess that by overloading nature it hinders digestion, drowns
and suffocates the spirits, disorders the faculties, hinders the
free use of reason, and thereby makes men unfit for business, and
indisposeth them either for civil or religious duties, then its use
is irregular and immoderate, and consequently sinful.

He refers to Isaiah v. 11, 22, Prov. xxiii. 29, Luke xxi. 34, Rom. xiii. 13. He dilates on the sad consequence of excess to soul, body, estate, and good name. He asks:--

What sin is so heinous which a man intoxicated may not commit? The
reason is plainly this: _Erranti terminus nullus_. An intemperate
man is under no conduct: he is neither under God’s keeping, nor his
own. He hath quenched God’s Spirit, whilst he inflamed his own.

And again:--

When fancy is rampant, and sensual inclinations are let loose,
you little know what advantage the devil can make of such a
juncture.... Wine, if immoderately taken, is very Poyson, which,
though it destroys not immediately, yet kills as sure as the
rankest dose that was ever presented by Italian hand.

A medical writer, Dr. Richard Carr, inveighed, not only against strong drink, but against tobacco, milk, and nurses![176] And something may even be learnt from the once famous Tom Brown, classed by Thackeray with Thomas D’Urfey and Ned Ward, a writer of libels and ribaldry, but a man of humour and learning, from whose _Laconics_ many a useful maxim may be culled. The following extract is not unworthy of Joseph Hall:--

If your friend is in want, don’t carry him to the tavern, where you
treat yourself as well as him, and entail a thirst and headache
upon him next morning. To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of
Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace
ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back. _Put something
into his pocket._

Before estimating the causes of the prevalent declension of morals, it will be necessary to examine the legislation at the close of this seventeenth century, with which it was intimately associated.

Partly through hostility to France, and partly to encourage the home distilleries, the Government of the Revolution, in 1689, prohibited the importation of spirits from all foreign countries, and threw open the distillery trade, on payment of certain duties, to all its subjects. These measures laid the foundation of the great extension of the English manufacture of spirits.[177] Any person was permitted to set up a distillery, on giving ten days’ notice to the excise. The consequence of this was a general thriving of the distillery business, with a corresponding deterioration of the people. Indeed, legislative modification was soon found to be absolutely necessary to counteract the influence of these baneful measures upon health, sobriety, and public order.

We scarcely wonder that the king enthusiastically encouraged the new distilleries, although the measure was a reversal of all previous policy. From the Norman period downwards, the laws of the land had prohibited the conversion of malt into spirit, except a trifling quantity for medicinal uses. Elizabeth had so strictly enforced this statute as to treat an infringement of it as a moral offence.

A change so disastrous could not escape condemnation. The discursive Whiston, in his autobiographical Memoirs, laments:--

An Act of Parliament has abrogated a very good law for discouraging
the poor from drinking gin; nay, they have in reality encouraged
men to drunkenness, and to the murder of themselves by such
drinking. Judge Hale earnestly supported the restrictive law, and
opposed its abrogation, declaring that millions of persons would
kill themselves by these fatal liquors.[178]

By the 5th & 6th of William and Mary, the duties were raised in 1694 to 4_s._ 9_d._ on strong, and 1_s._ 3_d._ on table beer. In 1695, the Commons resolved that a sum not exceeding 515,000_l._ should be granted for the support of the civil list for the ensuing year, to be raised by a malt tax, and additional duties upon mum, sweets, cyder, and perry. In 1691, owing to the tension with France, further supplies were raised by impositions which included in their number a duty of sixpence a bushel on malt, and a further duty on mum, cyder, and perry.

The price of claret rose rapidly when war with France broke out. Soon the clarets were exhausted. A substitute had to be found, and was discovered in the red wine of Portugal, then imported for the first time.

‘Some claret, boy!’--‘Indeed, sir, we have none.
Claret, sir.--Lord! there’s not a drop in town.
But we have the best red port.’--‘What’s that you call
Red port?’--‘A wine, sir, comes from Portugal;
I’ll fetch a pint, sir.’

The next quotation throws light upon its composition:--

Mark how it smells. Methinks, a real pain
Is by its odour thrown upon my brain.
I’ve tasted it--‘tis spiritless and flat,
And has as many different tastes
As can be found in compound pastes.[179]

We are now in a position to determine the causes of the prevalent intemperance at the close of the seventeenth century:--

1. The Act to encourage distillation.

2. The exhaustion of light wines.

3. The influence of the Court.

4. The development of _toasting_.

5. Club life.

It remains only to notice the last two of the causes.

_Toasting_ was carried to an utter absurdity. Chamberlayne thus accounts for the fashion:--

As the English, returning from the wars in the Holy Land, brought
home the foul disease of leprosy, ... so, in our fathers’ days, the
English, returning from service in the Netherlands, brought with
them the foul vice of drunkenness.... This vice at present prevails
so much that some persons, and those of quality, may not safely be
visited in an afternoon without running the hazard of excessive
drinking of healths (whereby, in a short time, twice as much
liquor is consumed as by the Dutch, who sip and prate); and in some
places it is esteemed a piece of wit to make a man drunk, for which
purpose some swilling insipid buffoon is always at hand.[180]

An observant Frenchman, M. Misson, who in 1698 published his observations on England and the English, referred particularly to the custom of _toasting_--a custom (as he declared) almost abolished amongst French people of any distinction. He noticed that, with ourselves, to have drunk at table without making it the occasion of a toast would have been considered an act of gross discourtesy. The mode of observing the ceremony was that the person whose health was drunk remained perfectly motionless from the moment his name was uttered until the conclusion of the health. Or, as Misson sarcastically describes it:--

If he is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must
suddenly stop, return his fork or spoon to its place, and wait,
without stirring more than a stone, until the other has drunk ...;
after which an _inclinabo_, at the risk of dipping his periwig in
the gravy in his plate. I confess that when a foreigner first sees
these manners he thinks them laughable. Nothing appears so droll
as to see a man who is in the act of chewing a morsel which he has
in his mouth, or doing anything else, who suddenly takes a serious
air, when a person of some respectability drinks to his health,
looks fixedly at his person, and becomes as motionless as if a
universal paralysis had seized him.[181]

It is questionable if Misson was strictly correct in stating that health-drinking had gone out in good French society. Not long before this, Pepys had made this entry in his _Diary_:--

To the Rhenish wine-house, where Mr. Moore showed me the French
manner when a health is drunk to bow to him that drunk to you, and
then apply yourself to him whose lady’s health is drunk, and then
the person that you drink to--which I never knew before; but it
seems it is now the fashion.

On a sort of progress through the country that William III. made in 1695, he was entertained, among other places, at Warwick Castle, by Lord Brook. ‘Guy’s Tower was illuminated. A cistern containing a hundred and twenty gallons of punch was emptied to his Majesty’s health.’[182]

A good specimen of the convivial songs of the Jacobites at this time is to be found in Sir Walter Scott’s collection. It is entitled:--

_Three Healths._

To ane king and no king, ane _uncle_ and father,
To him that’s all these, yet allowed to be neither;
Come, rank round about, and hurrah to our standard;
If you’ll know what I mean, here’s a health to our landlord!

To ane queen and no queen, ane _aunt_ and no mother,
Come, boys, let us cheerfully drink off another;
And now, to be honest, we’ll stick by our faith,
And stand by our landlord as long as we’ve breath.

To ane prince and no prince, ane son and no bastard,
Beshrew them that say it! a lie that is fostered!
God bless them all three; we’ll conclude with this one,
It’s a health to our landlord, his wife, and his son.

To our monarch’s return one more we’ll advance,
We’ve a king that’s in Flanders, another in France;
Then about with the health, let him come, let him come, then,
Send the one into England, and both are at home then.[183]

And, lastly, the _Clubs_. Such was their influence that Doran even wrote:--‘The Clubs ... were the chief causes that manners were as depraved as they were.’[184] But it must be remembered that they were effect as well as cause. The Calves’ Head Club was probably as bad as any. Out of a calf’s skull filled with wine, the company drank ‘to the pious memory of those worthy patriots who killed the tyrant.’ An anniversary anthem was sung. That for the year 1697 concludes thus:--

Advance the emblem of the action,
Fill the calf’s skull full of wine;
Drinking ne’er was counted faction,
Men and gods adore the wine.
To the heroes gone before us,
Let’s renew the flowing bowl;
While the lustre of their glories
Shines like stars from pole to pole.[185]

Another famous club was supposed to obtain its name from the custom of pledging favourites after dinner. Thus, Arbuthnot writes:--

Whence deathless Kit-kat took his name,
Few critics can unriddle;
Some say from pastry-cook it came,
And some from Cat and Fiddle.

From no trim beaus its name it boasts,
Grey statesmen or green wits,
But from this pell-mell pack of toasts
Of old Cats and young Kits.

In the year 1703, which was the second year of

_Queen Anne_,

the famous Methuen treaty was formed; war between England and France again driving us to Portuguese vintages. And thus was cancelled one of the effects of the Peace of Ryswick, which allowed the reopening of trade with France. It was during this short open-trade period that Farquhar produced his aptly named tragedy, _Love and a Bottle_. In this comedy we are for the first time introduced to champagne as a _vin mousseux_, or sparkling wine. In act ii. scene 2, the lodgings of Mockmode, a country squire, are represented; he is conversing with his landlady, Widow Bullfinch:--

_Mock._ But what’s most modish for beverage now? For I suppose the
fashion of that always alters with the clothes.

_Bullf._ The tailors are the best judges of that; but Champaign, I
suppose.

_Mock._ Is Champaign a tailor? Methinks it were a fitter name for a
wig-maker. I think they call my wig a campaign.

_Bullf._ You’re clear out, sir--clear out. Champaign is a fine
liquor, which all great beaux drink to make ‘em witty.

_Mock._ Witty! Oh, by the universe, I must be witty! I’ll drink
nothing else; I never was witty in my life. Here, Club, bring us a
bottle of what d’ye call it--the witty liquor.

The widow having retired, Club, Mockmode’s servant, re-enters with a bottle and glasses.

_Mock._ Is that the witty liquor? Come, fill the glasses.... But
where’s the wit now, Club? Have you found it?

_Club._ Egad, master, I think ‘tis a very good jest.

_Mock._ What?

_Club._ Why, drinking, you’ll find, master, that this same
gentleman in the _straw doublet_, the same will o’ the wisp, is a
wit at the bottom. Here, here, master, how it _puns and quibbles in
the glass_!

_Mock._ By the universe, now I have it; the wit lies in the
jingling. Hear how the glasses rhyme to one another.[186]

Evident allusion is here to the effervescence of champagne.

In his _Constant Couple_, we have:--

Malice ne’er spoke in generous Champaign.

But champagne, we have said, suffered like other French wines from the War of Succession and the Methuen treaty. By this treaty we were bound to receive Portuguese wines in exchange for our woollen goods, and to deduct from the duty on importation one-third of the rate levied on French wines. The new demand led to an extension of Portuguese vineyards. The demand continued to increase; the supply was forthcoming, but too often with an article grossly mixed and adulterated. Counterfeits poured into this country, especially from Guernsey, and home manufactures of spurious wine abounded. Mr. Cyrus Redding, an acknowledged authority, in his treatise on French wines, inveighs against what he considers the short-sighted policy of our ministers in this reign. He says:--

We have only done now what wiser heads offered us nearly 150 years
ago. M. de Torcy, in vain, proposed an open trade, the advantages
of which (now obvious enough to every man of common sense) were
scouted by the Government here, and the proposition opposed,
not only by the Parliament, but by that suffrage satirically
denominated, if not profanely, the _vox populi, vox Dei_. It was
almost an axiom in the last century, in relation to trade, that
the success or ruin of our commerce continually inclined for or
against us, as the trade of France with England was shut or open.
Well and justly did the late Lord Liverpool remark that the trade
of England had flourished in spite of our legislation. When France
proposed, in 1713-14, that a tariff should be made in England
similar to that of France and England in 1664, Lord Bolingbroke
treated the proposal with disdain. This tariff was simply that the
duties and prohibitions in both countries should be reciprocal. The
duty to be paid on both sides was five per cent. After so much of
two centuries has elapsed since, we can hardly do otherwise than
admit that our ideas of the true principles of trade continued
to be erroneous too long, that the offer of de Torcy was a just
offer, and that any can still be found obtuse enough to deny this
fact shows that there must be exceptions even to the common run of
vulgar intellect.

Of the manners of the time we have abundant sources of information. An interesting description is given by Grose of the little country squire of about 300_l._ a year in Queen Anne’s days:--

He never played at cards but at Christmas, when a family pack was
produced from the mantel-piece. His chief drink, the year round,
was generally ale, except at this season, the fifth of November,
or some other gala days, when he would make a bowl of strong
brandy-punch, garnished with a toast and nutmeg.... In the corner
of his hall, by the fireside, stood a large wooden two-armed chair
with a cushion, and within the chimney corner were a couple of
seats. Here at Christmas he entertained his tenants, assembled
round a glowing fire.... In the meantime the jorum of ale was in
continual circulation.[187]

But Christmas was not what it had been. It struggled, almost in vain, to overcome the check it had sustained during the Commonwealth. Private hospitality and festivities were recovering, but the pageants and masks in the royal household and at the Inns of Court had received a death-blow. At the close of the century, a revel, which would once have been regarded as routine, was thought worthy to be recorded in a diary. Evelyn notes a riotous Christmas at the Inner Temple as late as 1697.

Such a falling off formed a common lament of the poets:--

Gone are those golden days of yore,
When Christmas was a high day;
Whose sports we now shall see no more,
‘Tis turn’d into Good Friday.[188]

To the same effect:--

Black jacks to every man
Were filled with wine and beer;
No pewter pot nor can
In those days did appear.

Good cheer in a nobleman’s house
Was counted a seemly show;
We wanted no brawn nor souse,
When this old cap was new.[189]

Perhaps the most sensible festivities of this period were certain annual feasts in London for natives of the several counties. The _London Gazette_, for May 30 to June 3, 1700, advertises ‘the annual feast for gentlemen of the county of Huntingdon.’ Another number announces ‘the anniversary feast for the gentlemen, natives of the county of Kent.’ On such occasions, bygone times would be recounted, mutual friends discussed, and the absent not forgotten in a _toast_.

Burton ale was celebrated at least as early as 1712. So remarks a writer who had probably found in the _Spectator_, No. 383, the remark:--‘We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice of hung beef.’ Had he forgotten that the author of _Ivanhoe_ carries back the fame of Burton ale to a date before the time of Richard I.? And the accuracy of Sir Walter is remarkable, for, in 1295, Matilda, daughter of Nicholas de Shobenhale, ‘released to the Abbot and Convent of Burton-on-Trent that service and custody of their abbey gate, together with the custody and annual rent thereto belonging, and all the tenements within and without the town of Burton which came to her by inheritance from Walter de Scobenhale.... For which release they granted her daily for life two white loaves from the monastery, two gallons of conventual beer, or cider, if they drank it, and one penny; also seven gallons of beer for the men,’ &c. These ales were brewed on the abbey premises, where probably the abbots had their own maltings: as it was a common covenant in leases of mills, where were abbey property, for the malt of the lords of the manor to be ground free.[190]

It is truly sad to contemplate the stream of talent which was polluted at this time by unrestrained indulgence in strong drink. The infernal compounds which were substituted for the light wines of a previous age played infinite havoc, not only with the Mohocks of aristocracy, but with the giants of intellect. Of the Court itself, Macaulay writes:--

All places where he could have his three courses and his three
bottles were alike to Prince George of Denmark, the husband of
Queen Anne.[191]

Of Harley, Earl of Oxford, who was successively Speaker of the House of Commons, Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord High Treasurer, and who will always be remembered as the collector of the Harleian Manuscripts, the same author, Macaulay, writes, that he was in the habit of ‘flustering himself daily with claret, which was hardly considered as a fault by his contemporaries.’[192]

Among the reasons given by the queen to the cabinet for dismissing her Lord Treasurer, she alleges that he neglected all business, was seldom to be understood; that when he did explain himself, she could not depend upon the truth of what he said; that he never came to her at the time she appointed: that he often came drunk.[193]

Notorious as a drunkard in high places was Lord Mohun, who was twice tried for committing murder whilst in a state of intoxication. The duel between this lord and the Duke of Hamilton--the wives of whom were sisters at variance--is spoken of as probably the last of the kind where the seconds were expected to engage as well as the principals, and fight to the death.

There is a wide discrepancy between the writings and the reputed actions of Joseph Addison. He was fond of wine, and indulged in it. His contemporary, Swift, acknowledges the weakness. Dr. Johnson does not conceal it. Macaulay laments the fact, Thackeray glories in it.[194] His biographer, Miss Aikin, is almost singular in trying to defend him from the imputation. She refers to the tone and temper, the correctness of taste and judgment, of his writings in proof of his sobriety, and doubts whether a man stained with the vice of intoxication would have dared to write the essay on drunkenness in the _Spectator_ [No. 569]. But the facts leave no room for doubt. He was from his youth a great man for toasts. Verses are extant, in honour of King William, from which we learn that it was his custom to toast that king in bumpers of wine. In a letter written at the age of 31 (1703), ‘to Mr. Wyche, his Majesty’s Resident at Hambourg,’ he says:--

My hand, at present, begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so
the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman
that set it a-shaking.... As your company made our stay at
Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction
that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking
your health will do you any good, we may expect to be as long-lived
as Methusaleh--or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye hoc in ye
cellar.

So much from himself. Dr. Johnson remarks of him:--

He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards
to Button’s.

Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick’s family,
who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the
south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden.
Here it was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is
said when Addison had suffered any vexation from the countess, he
withdrew the company from Button’s house. From the coffee-house
he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too
much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice
for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It is not unlikely
that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission
which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours.
He that feels oppression from the presence of those to whom he
knows himself superior, will desire to set loose his powers of
conversation; and who that ever asked succours from Bacchus was
able to preserve himself from being enslaved by his auxiliary?

And yet this was the man who could declare that ‘temperance and abstinence, faith and devotion, are in themselves, perhaps, as laudable as any other virtues.’[195] His essay on Drunkenness, in the _Spectator_, might well have proceeded from the pen of Hall or Taylor, Decker or Wither. He exclaims:--

A drunken man is a greater monster than any that is to be found
among all the creatures which God has made: as indeed there is no
character which appears more despicable and deformed, in the eyes
of all reasonable persons, than that of a drunkard.... This vice
has very fatal effects on the mind, the body, and fortune of the
person who is devoted to it. In regard to the mind, it first of
all discovers every flaw in it. The sober man, by the strength of
reason, may keep under and subdue every vice or folly to which he
is most inclined; but wine makes every latent seed sprout up in the
soul, and shew itself; it gives fury to the passions, and force
to those objects which are apt to produce them. Wine heightens
indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into
madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the
choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it
makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the
soul in its utmost deformity.

And more to the same effect. But a passage of his, to be found elsewhere, is far more terribly telling:--

Death, the King of Terrors, was determined to choose a Prime
Minister; and his pale courtiers, the ghastly train of diseases,
were all summoned to attend, when each preferred his claim to the
honour of this illustrious office. Fever urged the numbers he had
destroyed; Cold Palsy set forth his pretensions by shaking all
his limbs; Gout hobbled up and alleged his great power of racking
every joint; and Asthma’s inability to speak was a strong though
silent argument in favor of his claim; Stone and Colic pleaded
their violence; Plague his rapid progress in destruction; and
Consumption, though slow, insisted that he was sure. In the midst
of this contention the court was disturbed with the noise of
music, dancing, feasting, and revelry: when immediately entered a
lady, with a bold lascivious air and flushed countenance. She was
attended, on the one hand, by a troop of bacchanals, and on the
other by a train of wanton youths and damsels who danced half naked
to the softest musical instruments. Her name was Intemperance. She
waved her hand, and thus addressed the crowd of diseases:--‘Give
way, ye sickly band of pretenders, nor dare to vie with my superior
merits in the service of this monarch; am I not your Queen? Do
ye not receive your power of shortening human life almost wholly
from me? Who then so fit as myself for this important office?’ The
grisly monarch grinned a smile of approbation, placed her on his
right hand, and she immediately became his principal favourite and
Prime Minister.

Addison did another good service in exposing, in the Tatler,--

_Adulteration_.

He says (No. 131):--

There is in this city a certain fraternity of chemical operators,
who work underground in holes, caverns, and dark retirements,
to conceal their mysteries from the eyes and observation of
mankind. These subterraneous philosophers are daily employed in
the transmutation of liquors, and, by the power of magical drugs
and incantations, raising under the streets of London the choicest
products of the hills and valleys of France. They can squeeze
Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw Champagne from an apple. Virgil,
in that remarkable prophecy,

Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva.
Virg., Ecl. iv. 29.
(The ripening grape shall hang on every thorn),

seems to have hinted at this art, which can turn a plantation of
northern hedges into a vineyard. These adepts are known among one
another by the name of _wine-brewers_; and, I am afraid, do great
injury, not only to her Majesty’s customs, but to the bodies of
many of her good subjects.

But adulteration was no new expedient. In the reign of Edward III., a law was enacted, imposing penalties on adulterations, and directing that an essay of all the wines imported should be made, at least twice a year in every town.

In 1426, Sir John Rainewell, mayor, received information that the Lombard merchants were guilty of malpractices in the adulteration of wines; upon inquiry, he ascertained that the charge was well founded, and ordered that the noxious compound, to the quantity of 150 butts, should be thrown into the kennel.

In the sixteenth century, a similar enactment was passed in the fifth year of Mary. Much dread is expressed of adulteration of good wine, either with inferior wines or water, the penalty on discovery being the loss of their whole stock.

And besyde the samin sic wynes as are sould in commoun tavernis
ar commounlie mixt with auld corrupt wines and with watter, to
the greit appeir and danger and seikness of the byaris and greit
perrell of the saulis of the sellaris.

In the seventeenth century Sir William Hawkins writes:--

Since the Spanish sacks have been common in our taverns, which
for conservation are mingled with the lime in the making, our
nation complains of calentures, stone, dropsy, and infinite other
distempers not heard of before this wine came into common use.

Henderson observes that according to the Custom House Books of Oporto, for the year 1812, 135 pipes and 20 hogsheads of wine were shipped for Guernsey. In the same year, there were landed at the London Docks alone 2,545 pipes and 162 hogsheads from that island, reported to be port wine.

The subject of adulteration is much too large to attempt to do any justice thereto; it must suffice to draw attention to one or two specimens. The authorities shall be disinterested.

The following receipt for _Port_ is from a wine guide:--

Take of good cider 4 gallons; of the juice of red beet, 2 quarts;
logwood, 4 oz.; rhatany root brewed, ½ a pound; first infuse the
logwood and rhatany root in brandy and a gallon of cider for a
week; then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients;
keep in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle.

In the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ is given the chemical analysis of a bottle of cheap _Port_:--

Spirits of wine, 3 oz.; cider, 14 oz.; sugar, 1½ oz.; alum, 2
scruples; tartaric acid, 1 scruple; strong decoction of logwood, 4
oz.

Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his work on _Modern Wines_, lets us into the secrets of cheap _Sherry_:--It ‘is mingled with Cape wine and cheap brandy, the washings of brandy casks, sugar candy, bitter almonds, &c. The colour, if too great, is taken out by the addition of a small quantity of lamb’s blood; it is then passed off for best sherry.’

Professor Mulder, in his _Chemistry of Wine_, tells that during the process of wine-clearing such aids as albumen, blood, cream, gypsum, marble, nutgalls, lime, salt, gum-arabic, sulphuric acid, &c., are furnished.