“March 19. 1 Mary, 1554. No inhabitant shall buy nor no ship shall receive any beer brewed out of the town, under a penalty of 3s. 4d. per gallon.
“July 2. 1 Philip and Mary, 1554. No baker or brewer to bake or brewe in the town unless appointed by the bailiffs.
“Apl. 8. 15 Eliz., 1573. That brewers be ordered to brew with coals instead of wood, from the latter’s exhorbitant price.”
The Articles of the Free Fair (1658) held at Great Yarmouth, contain the following regulation:—
“Also that no brewer selle nor doe to be solde, a gallon of the beste ale above two pence: a gallon of the second ale above one pennye uppon the payne and perrille above sayde.”
The records of the old municipal corporations of England that have survived the destroying hand of time are very few, but it can hardly be doubted that they contained very similar regulations to those given above. In the Domesday Book of Ipswich an order of the reign of Edward I. provides as to Brewsters, that “after Michelmesse moneth, whan men may have barlych of newe greyn, the ballyves of the forseid toun doo cryen assize of ale by all the toun, after that the sellyng of the corn be. And gif ther be founden ony that selle or brewe a geyns the assise and the crye, be he punysshed be the forseyed ballyves and by the court for the trespas, after the form conteyned in the Statute of merchaundise (13 Edw. I., s. 3) of oure lord the kyng, and after law and usage of the same toun.”
Ricart’s Kalendar of the City of Bristol contains the following record: “Item, hit hath be usid, in semblable wyse, the seid maire anon aftir Mighelmas, to do calle byfore theym in the seide Counseill hous, all the Brewers of Bristowe; and yf the case require that malt be scant and dere, then to commen there for the reformacion of the same, and to bryng malte to a lower price, and that such price as shall be sette by the maier upon malte, that no brewer breke it, upon payne of XLs. forfeitable {104} to the Chambre of the Toune. And the shyftyng[42] daies of the woke, specially the Wensdaies and Satirdaies, the mair hath be used to walke in the morenynges to the Brewers howses, to oversee thym in servyng of theire ale to the pouere commens of the toune, and that they have theire trewe mesures; and his Ale-konner with hym to taste and undirstand that the ale be gode, able, and sety keeping their sise, or to be punyshed for the same, aftir the constitucion of the Toune.”
[42] The days when the ale was being moved to customers’ houses.
Sometimes a whole township was fined for the default of some of its members. In 1275 the township of Dunstable was fined 40s., because the brewers had not kept the assize.
Some curious and amusing entries are to be found in the Munimenta Academica of the University of Oxford, as to the regulations for the brewing trade in the fifteenth century. In the year 1434 we find it recorded that, “Seeing how great evils arise both to the clerks and to the townsmen of the City of Oxford, owing to the negligence and dishonesty of the brewers of ale,” Christopher Knollys, commissary, assembles the brewers together in the church of the Blessed Mary the Virgin, and commands them to provide sufficient malt for brewing; and that two or three shall twice or thrice in the week carry round their ale for public sale, under a penalty of 40s.; and John Weskew and Nicholas Core, two of their number, are appointed supervisors of the brewers. Each brewer is then made to swear on the Blessed Evangelists to brew good ale and wholesome, and according to the assize, “so far as his ability and human frailty permits.”