Its various good qualities are next explained, and finally:—
“Then when this bottle doth grow old,
And will no longer good liquor hold,
Out of its side you may take a clout,
Will mend your shoes when they are worn out,
Else take it and hang it upon a pin,
It will serve to put odd trifles in,
As hinges, awls, and candle ends,
For young beginners must have such things.”
| PLATE XV. | |||||
 |  |  | |||
| BELL AND HORNS. (Formerly in Brompton Road, circa 1830.) | RASP AND CROWN. (1780.) | HAND AND GLOVE. (Harleian Collection, 1708.) | |||
 | |||||
| GREEN MAN AND STILL. (Harleian Collection, 1630.) | |||||
 |  | ||||
| THE PUMP. (Harleian Collection, 1710.) | CROWN AND PATTEN. (Banks’s Collection, 1790.) | ||||
There is another ballad in the same collection, (vol i., fol. 107,) entitled “Time’s Alteration, or the Old Man’s Rehearsal,” which speaks of the black jack in the following terms:—
“Black jacks to euery man
Were filled with wine and Beere,
No pewter Pot nor Canne
In those days did appeare:
...... We took not such delight
In cups of silver fine;
No pewter Pot nor Canne
In those days did appeare:
...... None under the degree of a knight
In Plate drunk Beere or Wine.”
But we may glean more full and complete particulars from Heywood’s “Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized,” 1635, where we get a detailed inventory of all the various drinking vessels of the day:—
“Of drinking Cups divers and sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, etc. Mazers, broad mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins, creuzes, alebowles, wassel bowles, court dishes, tankards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest people of the countrey: small jacks wee have in many alehouses of the citie and suburbs lipt with silver: blackjacks and bombards at the Court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their return into their countrey that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of hornes of beastes, of cockernuts,[558] of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feaste to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flaggons, tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”
That they were of ancient use and high in price appears from an entry in the expenses of John, King of France, when prisoner in England after the battle of Poictiers, 1359-60:—
“Pour deux bouteilles de cuir achetées a Londres pour Monseigneur Philippe9s. 8d.”