‘John Hodskins, a fine Scholler, a pretty fellow, yet wanted grace.
‘John Davis, a lusty stout personable man.
‘Francis Middlefield, a pretty youth, and a good Scholler, convicted of felonie.’
Several highwaymen, horse-stealers, and coiners, are also included in this gloomy list, which is adorned with a woodcut of an execution.
The regulation of the licensed victuallers’ trade and the Sunday closing movement appear to have been as troublesome questions in the seventeenth century as they are now. As early as 1641 the publican was uttering the complaints which he still continues to utter. In a pamphlet of that date there is a dialogue between a tapster and a cook, which sets forth the grievances of both these worthies. The pamphlet is entitled, ‘The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster and Rulerost the Cook, concerning the restraint lately set forth against drinking, potting, and piping on the Sabbath day, and against selling meate.’ The publican expresses himself thus:—‘I much wonder Master Rulerost why my trade should be put downe, it being so necessary in a commonwealth; why the noble art of drinking, it is the soul of all good fellowship, the marrow of a Poet’s Minervs, it makes a man as valiant as Hercules though he were as cowardly as a Frenchman; besides I could prove it necessary for any man sometimes to be drunk, for suppose you should kill a man when you are drunk, you shall never be hanged for it untill you are sober; therefore I think it good for a man to be always drunk; and besides it is the kindliest companion, and friendliest sin of all the seven, for most sins leave a man by some accident or other, before his death, but this will never forsake him till the breath be out of his body; and lastly a full bowle of strong beere will drown all sorrows.’
To which master Cook rejoins:—‘Master Nick, you are mistaken, your trade is not put downe as you seem to say; what is done is done to a good intent; to the end that poor men that worke hard all the weeke for a little money, should not spend it all on the Sunday while they should be at some church, and so consequently there will not be so many Beggars.’
| THE COMPLAINT OF THE LICENSED VICTUALLERS, 1641. |
Froth—‘Alack you know all my profit doth arise onely on Sundays, let them but allow me that privilege, and abridge me all the weeke besides; S’foot, I could have so scowered my young sparks up for a penny a demy can, or a halfe pint, heapt with froth. I got more by uttering half a Barrell in time of Divine service, than I could by a whole Barrell at any other time, for my customers were glad to take anything for money, and think themselves much ingaged to me; but now the case is altered.’
Cook—‘Truly Master Froth you are a man of a light constitution, and not so much to be blamed as I that am more solid: O what will become of me! I now think of the lusty Sirloines of roast Beefe which I with much policy divided into an innumerable company of demy slices, by which, with my provident wife, I used to make eighteene pence of that which cost me but a groat (provided that I sold it in service time,) I could tell you too, how I used my halfe cans and my Bloomsbury Pots, when occasion served; and my Smoak which I sold dearer than any Apothecary doth his Physick; but those happy days are now past, and therefore no more of that.’