Woollens.
The only Irish manufacture of much importance was that of woollens, though frequent attempts were made to introduce others. Linen was made to a limited extent, and furnished the material for the enormous shirts, ‘thirty or forty ells in a shirt, all gathered and wrinkled and washed in saffron, because they never put them off till they were worn out,’ which fashion died out with the sixteenth century; but flax continued to be grown and yarn exported chiefly from Ulster, and it was upon this foundation that Strafford built. Irish frieze and other coarse woollens had been famous in the middle ages. Drugget is said by French antiquaries to have been so called from Drogheda. In the sixteenth century Ireland had come to be specially famous for a kind of rug, of which Moryson says the best were made at Waterford. They were thought worthy of kings’ houses, and Vice-Chamberlain Heneage asked Sir George Carew to ‘provide half-a-dozen of the finest and lightest Irish rugs to lay upon beds, that can be gotten.’ The little sheep of the country were numerous, but it is agreed that the wool was coarse. The making of the rugs was a craft in itself, and was probably known to few. Petty, who wrote under Charles II., remarks that the rebellion had injured the cloth trade, and that making the ‘excellent, thick, spungy, warm coverlets’ was a lost art. In Elizabeth’s time restraints were placed on the export of wool, with a view to encourage manufactures, but the prohibition was never really effective.[425]
Drinking.
Wine.
Whisky.
Ale and beer.
Hard drinking was but too common, and the materials were abundant. The trade in claret had gone on from the time when Gascony belonged to the kings of England. But sherry and other strong vintages of the Peninsula were even more popular. ‘When they come to any market town,’ says Moryson, ‘to sell a cow or a horse, they never return home till they have drunk the price in Spanish wine (which they call the King of Spain’s daughter) or in Irish usquebagh, and till they have outslept two or three days’ drunkenness. And not only the common sort, but even the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink at home, the more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as beggars.’ Usquebagh, that is whisky, was made in many places in the primitive fashion followed by illicit distillers in our own time. It was generally considered more wholesome than any spirit produced in England, and the damp climate was made the excuse for excessive indulgence. Raisins and fennel-seeds were used to flavour it. An Act of Parliament passed in 1556 recites that ‘aqua vitæ, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen; and thereby much corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted;’ and its manufacture was prohibited except with the Lord-Deputy’s licence. A fine of 4l. and imprisonment during pleasure were the prescribed penalties for each offence; but peers, landowners worth 10l. a year, and freemen of cities and boroughs were allowed to make enough for their own use; and the Act was probably a dead letter. Bodley, who wrote in 1603, tells us that it was usual for lay and cleric, churl and noble, in short ‘men and women of every rank, to pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity only (which would be praiseworthy), but for constant drunkenness, which is detestable. Beer made of malt and hops was not yet brewed in Ireland, and what the soldiers consumed was imported. But strong ale was produced in the country and was probably preferred by the people, for hops were not in general use even in 1690. Early in James I.’s reign nothing struck an Englishman more than the number of alehouses in Dublin. ‘I am now,’ says one, ‘to speak of a certain kind of commodity that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the selling of ale in Dublin: a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every house in the town every day in the week, at every hour in the day, and in every minute in the hour. There is no merchandize so vendible, it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit of the town stands upon ale-houses and selling of ale.’[426]
Description of the people.
Dymmok.
Moryson.