Such beer brewers as occur during the fifteenth century almost all bear foreign names. For instance, in 1473, Thomas Seyntleger and John Goryng of Southwark recovered heavy damages for theft against John Doys of St. Botolph's-outside-Aldgate and Gerard Sconeburgh of Southwark, 'berebruers,' whose sureties were Godfrey Speryng and Edward Dewysse, also 'berebruers.'[697] Probably in this case the theft was an illegal seizure or distraint of goods for a debt for beer supplied, as although most of the goods said to be stolen were armour and objects of value, such as a book of Gower's poems and an illuminated Sege of Troye, there were also ten barrels of 'sengilbere,' thirty-five barrels of 'dowblebere,' ten lastys of barrels and kilderkins, and two great sacks for 'hoppys.' There was still a prejudice against beer, and in 1471, at Norwich, the use of hops and 'gawle' in brewing was forbidden,[698] while in 1519 the authorities at Shrewsbury prohibited the employment of the 'wicked and pernicious weed, hops.'[699] In the same way, in 1531, the royal brewer was forbidden to use hops or brimstone, but an Act of Parliament passed in the same year bore testimony to the establishment of the industry by exempting alien brewers from the penal statutes against foreigners practising their trades in England, and also by allowing beer brewers to employ two coopers while ale brewers might only employ one.[700] At the same time the barrel of beer was fixed at thirty-six gallons, and that of ale at thirty-two, the kilderkin and firkin being respectively half and quarter of those amounts.
From this time the brewing of beer steadily prospered, the Leakes of Southwark[701] and other alien brewers amassing great riches, English brewers following in their footsteps, and the taste for beer spreading through the country so rapidly that in 1577 Harrison in his Description of England could speak contemptuously of the old ale as thick and fulsome and no longer popular except with a few.
William Harrison, writing about 1577, says: 'In some places of England there is a kind of drinke made of apples, which they call cider or pomage, but that of peares is named pirrie, and both are ground and pressed in presses made for the nonce. Certes, these two are verie common in Sussex, Kent, Worcester, and other steads where these sorts of fruits do abound, howbeit they are not their onelie drinke at all times, but referred unto the delicate sorts of drinke.'[702] A generation earlier Andrew Borde, whom we have already quoted for ale and beer, wrote: 'Cyder is made of the juce of peeres, or of the juce of apples; and other whyle cyder is made of both; but the best cyder is made of cleane peeres, the which be dulcet; but the beste is not praysed in physycke, for cyder is colde of operacyon, and is full of ventosyte, wherfore it doth ingendre evyll humours and doth swage to moche the naturall heate of man and doth let dygestyon and doth hurte the stomacke; but they the whych be used to it, yf it be dronken in harvyst it doth lytell harme.'
Andrew Borde makes no distinction between cider and perry. We find mention of the latter in 1505, when a foreign ship entered Poole with a cargo of apples, pears, etc., and '3 poncheons de pery,' valued at 10s.,[703] but references to perry are not numerous. Cider, on the other hand, we find in constant demand from the middle of the twelfth century onwards. It figures on the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.,[704] and the contemporary historian and journalist, Gerald de Barri, alleged its use by the monks of Canterbury instead of Kentish ale as an instance of their luxury.[705] A little later, in 1212, the sale of cider is one of the numerous sources of the income of the Abbey of Battle;[706] part of this cider may have come from its estates at Wye, which produced a good deal of cider during the fourteenth century.[707]
Possibly the industry was introduced from Normandy, from which district large quantities of cider were imported into Winchelsea about 1270,[708] and this might account for the hold which it took upon Sussex. In the western part of the county, at Pagham, we find mention of an apple mill and press having been wrongfully seized by the escheator's officer in 1275,[709] and at the same place in 1313 the farmer of the archbishop's estates accounted for 12s. spent on buying four casks in which to put cider, on repairing a ciderpress, and on the wages of men hired to make cider.[710] It is, however, in the Nonae Rolls of 1341 that the extent of the cider industry in Sussex is most noticeable.[711] In no fewer than eighty parishes, of which seventy-four were in West Sussex, the tithes of cider are mentioned as part of the endowment of the church, and in another twenty-eight cases the tithes of apples are entered. Moreover the value of these tithes was very considerable, reaching 100s. in Easebourne, and as much as 10 marks (£6, 13s. 4d.) at Wisborough. In the last-named parish in 1385, William Threle granted to John Pakenham and his wife certain gardens and orchards, reserving to himself half the trees bearing fruit either for eating or for cider (mangable et ciserable), in return for which they were to render yearly a pipe of cider and a quarter of store apples (hordapplen); he also retained the right of access to the 'wringehouse,' or building containing the press, and the right to use their ciderpress for his fruit.[712]
Beyond an abundance of casual references to cider presses and to the purchases and sale of cider, there is little to record of the industry in medieval times; nor need we devote much attention to the manufacture of wine in England. Domesday Book shows us that the great Norman lords in many cases planted vines near their chief seats, and not many years later William of Malmesbury spoke of the Vale of Gloucester as planted more thickly with vineyards than any other part of England, and producing the best grapes, from which a wine little inferior to those of France was made. Vines continued to be grown by the great lords and monasteries, but the wine was used entirely for their own consumption, and in decreasing quantities. About 1500 an Italian visitor speaks of having eaten English grapes, and adds 'wine might be made in the southern parts, but it would be harsh,'[713] from which we may judge that such wine making as had existed was at an end by the sixteenth century.