Ale was not the only word employed in late Saxon times to signify the “oyle of barly,” for wœt, from the Saxon swatan, was in common use as a synonym, and now, perhaps, finds its representative in the slang phrase, “heavy wet.” The same term lingers in Scotland, and lovers of Burns will remember his line, “It gars the swats gae glibber doun.” In former times wheat and oats were malted, as well as barley, and though, as has been previously stated (p. 105), the law from time to time prohibited this use of wheat, as tending to enhance the price of bread, the practice was stronger than the precept, and continued to prevail down to a comparatively recent date.
Cogan, in The Haven of Health (1586), thus describes the effect of the different malts on the resultant liquor:—“For beere or ale being made of wheat inclineth more to heat, for wheat is hot. If it be made of barley malt, it enclineth more to cold, for barley is cold. And if it be made of barley and otes together it is yet more temperate and of less nourishment.” In the reign of Edward VI. even beans were used in brewing, for the Brewers’ Company, in a petition to the Common Council asking for a revision of the prices of ale and beer, complain that the articles they use in brewing, viz., “wheate, malte, oates, beanes, hoppes . . . . . . at these days are comen unto greate and exceeding pryces.”
It has been shown that for several hundred years the prices and qualities of ale were fixed by law. As a rule, only two kinds were allowed to be brewed for sale, the better and the second, or, as they were called in some places, and notably in London, the double and the single. The prices in Henry III.’s reign for the better kind were fixed at 1d. for two gallons sold within cities, and 1d. for three or four gallons sold in country places. In Edward III.’s reign three sorts of ale might be brewed, the best at 1½d. a gallon, the middling at 1d., and the third at three farthings; and these prices seem to have been in force in the City of London with slight variations down to the time of Henry VIII., when the Brewers upon several occasions stirred themselves to get the prices raised, but met with varying success. In the early part of the reign the retail price of the best ale was still 1½d. the gallon, and of the second, called threehalfpenny ale, 1d. per gallon. Double beer was to be 1d. per gallon, and single ½d. and a half-farthing. The wholesale price for beer was also fixed, and three kinds were allowed, viz., “Dobyll” at 15d. the kilderkin, “Threehalfpenny” at 12d., and “Syngyll” at 10d.
In the twenty-fourth year of Henry VIII. the Brewers, after much agitation, got the prices of beer raised to 2s. the kilderkin for the “doble,” {155} and 1s. for the “syngyll”; but even with that they were not satisfied, and expressed their dissatisfaction in protests to the Common Council, who listened to their complaint, “but after long consideration it was agreed, that whereas the Serjeaunt Gybson hath exhibited and rote a boke of the gaynes of the said bere-brewers,” their case should be remitted to the care of a committee appointed to look into it. In the result no alteration was then sanctioned, but five years afterwards the price was raised to 3s. 4d. the kil. for the best, and 2s. 8d. for the threehalfpenny. The strength of ale usually brewed about this time may be judged from answers given by London brewers when interrogated on the subject. John Sheffield, on being asked (36 Henry VIII.) how many kilderkins of good ale he draws from a quarter of malt, answers, “Little above five.” Other brewers say much the same thing, though Richard Pyckering evades the question by saying that “he commytteth the whole to his wife, and what she draweth from a quarter he knoweth not.” This would point to an ale of very considerable strength. In the thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII., another committee was appointed to consider this all-important question, “on account of the grete derthe and scarcitye at this present of all kinds of grayne;” but nothing resulted from their deliberations. The Brewers, however, seem to have stuck to their text with great pertinacity, and in the fifth year of Edward VI. obtained a decision of a committee of the Common Council, that they could no longer supply the City at the then existing prices. Two kinds of beer only are to be allowed, our old friends, “doble” and “syngyll,” and the strength and quality are defined as follows: “Of every quarter of grayne that any beare-bruer shall brewe of doble beare, he shall drawe fowre barrells and one fyrkyn of goode holsome drynke for mannes bodye,” and double that quantity of single beer. The price of the double beer is to be 4s. 8d. the barrel, and of single beer 2s. 4d., until the price of malt is reduced to 15s. the quarter, and of wheat to 12s., when the old prices are to be revived. Little variations of price occurred until the reign of Elizabeth, who seems, from contemporary accounts, to have been frequently exercised by the behaviour of the London Brewers. In a Royal proclamation of the second year of her reign, she complains that the Brewers have left off brewing any single beer, but brew “a kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble-doble-bere which they do commenly utter and sell at a very greate and excessyve pryce,” and orders the old rules and rates to be observed; and in particular that every Brewer shall once a week brew “as much syngyl as doble beare and more.” Twenty years later the “doble-doble” seems to have been {156} sanctioned in practice if not in name, for the Brewers are ordered to sell two sorts of beer only, the double at 4s. the barrel and “the other sort of beare of the best kynde at 7s. 6d.”
Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of the Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such lengths that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council brings back the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.
In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel, the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a fourth kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix the prices of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards finally discontinued.
The limitation and classification of ale and beer according to their strength, was maintained down to quite recent times because of the duties laid upon them, but on the repeal of those duties ales of every strength, kind and description were, and have since been, extensively manufactured. Every want, whim, and fancy of the ale-drinker may now be gratified. There is old Scotch or old Burton for the lover of strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and last, but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which, when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.
A tale is told of a man who asserted that tea was stronger than beer. “A pot of beer,” said he, “will seldom attract more than a couple of men about it, but a pot of tea will draw half-a-dozen or more old women.”
A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set their caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used to denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s Note on Dryden (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself Maximine?” Fulwel’s Art of Flattery thus mentions this variety of the juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched throtes, with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly called huff-cap, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name). Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English in 1587, also {157} mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in which our ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it, “that would make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are so nice in the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their is such headie ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse thereof among suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap, the mad dog, angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be noted, that when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled conscience, after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and dangerous estate; another thinking belike to change his colour and not his mind, carried him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s teats, till they lie still againe and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus sucke their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with such eger and sharpe devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be red as cockes, and little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called “Huff,” is still brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the fellows (not the boys) of that ancient institution.
Some idea of the strength of the ale usually drunk in the country districts in Elizabeth’s reign, may be gathered from a passage in a letter from Leicester to Burleigh, written while the Queen was on one of her famous progresses through the country: “There is not one drop of good drink here for her. We were fain to send to London, and Kenilworth, and divers other places where ale was; her own bere was so strong as there was no man able to drink it.”