PEPPER.

(1)	Hotspur.	Such protest of Pepper-gingerbread.
1st Henry IV, act iii, sc. 1 (260). (See Ginger, [9].)

(2)	Falstaff.	An I have not forgotten what the inside of achurch is made of, I am a Pepper-corn, abrewer's horse.
Ibid., act iii, sc. 3 (8).

(3)	Poins.	Pray God, you have not murdered some of them.
	Falstaff.	Nay, that's past praying for, for I have Peppered two of them.
Ibid., act ii, sc. 4 (210).

(4)	Falstaff.	I have led my ragamuffins, where they are Peppered.
Ibid., act v, sc. 3 (36).

(5)	Mercutio.	I am Peppered, I warrant, for this world.
Romeo and Juliet, act iii, sc. 1 (102).

(6)	Ford.	He cannot 'scape me, 'tis impossible heshould; he cannot creep into a halfpennypurse or into a Pepper-box.
Merry Wives, act iii, sc. 5 (147).

(7)	Sir Andrew.	Here's the challenge, read it; I warrant there'svinegar and Pepper in't.
Twelfth Night, act iii, sc. 4 (157).

Pepper is the seed of Piper nigrum, "whose drupes form the black Pepper of the shops when dried with the skin upon them, and white Pepper when that flesh is removed by washing."—Lindley. It is, like all the pepperworts, a native of the Tropics, but was well known both to the Greeks and Romans. By the Greeks it was probably not much used, but in Rome it seems to have been very common, if we may judge by Horace's lines—

"Deferar in vicum, vendentem thus et odores,
Et piper, et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis."

Epistolæ ii, 1-270.

And in another place he mentions "Pipere albo" as an ingredient in cooking. Juvenal mentions it as an article of commerce, "piperis coemti" (Sat. xiv. 293). Persius speaks of it in more than one passage, and Pliny describes it so minutely that he evidently not only knew the imported spice, but also had seen the living plant. By the Romans it was probably introduced into England, being frequently met with in the Anglo-Saxon Leech-books. It is mentioned by Chaucer—

"And in an erthen pot how put is al,
And salt y-put in and also Paupere."

Prologue of the Chanoune's Yeman.

It was apparently, like Ginger, a very common condiment in Shakespeare's time, and its early introduction into England as an article of commerce is shown by passages in our old law writers, who speak of the reservation of rent, not only in money, but in "pepper, cummim, and wheat;" whence arose the familiar reservation of a single peppercorn as a rent so nominal as to have no appreciable pecuniary value.[204:1]

The red or Cayenne Pepper is made from the ground seeds of the Capsicum, but I do not find that it was used to known in the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[204:1] Littleton does not mention Pepper when speaking of rents reserved otherwise than in money, but specifies as instances, "un chival, ou un esperon dor, ou un clovegylofer"—a horse, a golden spur, or a clove gilliflower.