As they were death slain,
Their property poured about.
So commanded the lord of men,
To fill to those sitting at the feast,
Till the dark night
Approached the children of men.”
Even the clergy and monks drank probably more than was good for them, for a priest was forbidden by law to eat or drink at places where ale was sold. But that did not prevent their drinking at home; their benefactors provided well for that, as one instance will show. Ethelwold allowed the Monastery of Abingdon a great bowl, from which the drinking vessels of the brothers were filled twice a day. At Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin, on the festivals of Saints Peter and Paul, and all the other saints, they were to have wine, as well as mead, twice a day; and taking the number of Saints in the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, it must have gone hard with them, if this was not almost an every-day occurrence.
The Northern nations did not lose their love of drink as time rolled on, as we may find in the pages of Olaus Magnus. They drank wine, but owing to the extreme cold it was not of native production, but imported. In this illustration we see the vessel that has brought it, and the bush outside, denoting that it was to be sold. They got it from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, but he says that the wine most in repute was a Spanish wine called Bastard, which Shakspeare mentions more than once, as (1 Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4) Prince Henry relating his adventures with a drawer, says, “Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint of Bastard in the Half Moon.”