————— nor of Jacke Dogge, Jack Date, Jacke foole, or Jack a Dandy, I relate: Nor of Black Jacks at gentle Buttry bars, Whose liquor often breeds household wars:
A variety of Black Jack was the Bombard, to which Ben Jonson refers in the lines from the Masque of Love Restored. “With that {397} they knocked hypocrisy on the pate and made room for a bombard-man, that brought bouge[73] for a country lady or two, that fainted, he said, with fasting.” Shakspere calls Falstaff “that swollen parcel or dropsies, that huge bombard of sack.” “Baiting of bombard” was a slang term for heavy drinking. Small Jacks were also in use. Decker, in his English Villaines Seven Times Pressed to Death, says: “In some places they have little leather Jacks, tip’d with silver, and hung with small silver bells (these are called Gyngle-Boyes), to ring peales of drunkennesse.”
[73] bouge = an allowance of meat and drink.
The Black Jack was frequently taken for a sign. The house with that sign-board in Clare Market, London, was once the haunt of Joe Miller, of comic fame, and from the window of this tavern Jack Sheppard is said to have made a desperate leap, in escaping from the clutches of Jonathan Wild and his myrmidons.
Heywood, in his Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized (1635), gives a very full list of the various drinking vessels in use in his day. “Of drinking cups,” he says, “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, ale-bowles, 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 mostly used amongst the shepherds and harvest people of the countrey; small jacks we have in many ale houses of the citie and suburbs tipt with silver: black-jacks and bombards at the court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their return unto their country that the Englishmen used to drink out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of horns of beastes, of cockernuts, 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 tavern can afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”
During the religious feuds that raged so fearfully in Holland, the Protestant party gave the name of Bellarmines to the bearded jugs {398} they used. This was done in ridicule of their opponent, Cardinal Bellarmine. The Cardinal’s figure was stout and squat, and well suited the form of the stone beer-jug in use. To make the resemblance more complete, the Cardinal’s face with his great square-cut beard was placed in front of the jug, which became known in England as the Bellarmine or Greybeard Jug. Many fragments of these jugs, of the reign of Elizabeth and James the First, have been exhumed, and the jug entire is not uncommon. Ben Jonson, alluding to the Greybeard, says of a drunkard that “the man with the beard has almost struck up his heels,” and an excellent description of this quaint old jug is to be found in Cartwright’s play The Ordinary (1651):—
——thou thing Thy very looks like to some strutting hill, O’ershadow’d with thy rough beard like a wood; Or like a larger jug that some men call A Bellarmine, but we a conscience, Wheron the tender hand of Pagan workman Over the proud ambitious head hath carved An idol large, with beard episcopal.
The Greybeard Jug is still to be found in some parts of Scotland, and the following tale, in which it figures, was taken down some years ago from the conversation of a Scotch Church dignitary. About 1770 there flourished a Mrs. Balfour, of Denbog, in the County of Fife. The nearest neighbour of Denbog was a Mr. David Paterson, who had the character of being a good deal of a humorist. One day, when Paterson came to the house, he found Mrs. Balfour engaged in one of her half-yearly brewings, it being the custom in those days, each March and October, to make as much ale as would serve for the ensuing six months. She was in a great pother about bottles, her stock of which fell far short of the number required, and she asked Mr. Paterson if he could lend her any? “No,” said Paterson, “but I think I could bring you a few greybeards that would hold a good deal, perhaps that would do.” The lady assented, and appointed a day when he should come again and bring his greybeards with him. On the proper day Mr. Paterson made his appearance, in Mrs. Balfour’s parlour.
“Well, Mr. Paterson, have you brought your greybeards?”
“O, yes, they are down stairs waiting for you.”