Dekker tells us, near this time, of regular ordinaries of three kinds: 1st. An ordinary of the longest reckoning, whither most of your courtly gallants do resort: 2nd. A twelvepenny ordinary, frequented by the justice of the peace, a young Knight; and a threepenny ordinary, to which your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney, doth resort. Then Dekker tells us of a custom, especially in the City, to send presents of wine from one room to another, as a complimentary mark of friendship. "Inquire," directs he, "what gallants sup in the next room; and if they be of your acquaintance, do not, after the City fashion, send them in a pottle of wine and your name." Then, we read of Master Brook sending to the Castle Inn at Windsor, a morning draught of sack.
Ned Ward, in the London Spy, 1709, describes several famous taverns, and among them the Rose, anciently, the Rose and Crown, as famous for good wine. "There was no parting," he says, "without a glass; so we went into the Rose Tavern in the Poultry, where the wine, according to its merit, had justly gained a reputation; and there, in a snug room, warmed with brash and faggot, over a quart of good claret, we laughed over our night's adventure."
"From hence, pursuant to my friend's inclination, we adjourned to the sign of the Angel, in Fenchurch-street, where the vintner, like a double-dealing citizen, condescended as well to draw carmen's comfort as the consolatory juice of the vine.
"Having at the King's Head well freighted the hold of our vessels with excellent food and delicious wine, at a small expense, we scribbled the following lines with chalk upon the wall." (See page [98].)
The tapster was a male vendor, not "a woman who had the care of the tap," as Tyrwhitt states. In the 17th century ballad, The Times, occurs:
"The bar-boyes and the tapsters
Leave drawing of their beere,
And running forth in haste they cry,
'See, where Mull'd Sack comes here!'"
The ancient drawers and tapsters were now superseded by the barmaid, and a number of waiters: Ward describes the barmaid as "all ribbon, lace, and feathers, and making such a noise with her bell and her tongue together, that had half-a-dozen paper-mills been at work within three yards of her, they'd have signified no more to her clamorous voice than so many lutes to a drum, which alarmed two or three nimble fellows aloft, who shot themselves downstairs with as much celerity as a mountebank's mercury upon a rope from the top of a church-steeple, every one charged with a mouthful of coming, coming, coming." The barmaid (generally the vintner's daughter) is described as "bred at the dancing-school, becoming a bar well, stepping a minuet finely, playing sweetly on the virginals, 'John come kiss me now, now, now,' and as proud as she was handsome."