Dr. Grindrod draws attention in his Bacchus to a prominent appeal of about the same date entitled, The Blemish of Government, the Shame of Religion, the Disgrace of Mankind: ‘or, a charge drawn up against Drunkards, and presented to his highness the Lord Protector, in the name of all the sober party in the three nations,’ by R. Younge. The book is not procurable; but assuming the quotation to be correct the statistic is astounding:—
It is sad to consider how many will hear this charge for one that will apply it to himself, for confident I am that fifteen of twenty, this city over [London] are drunkards, yea, seducing drunkards, in the dialect of Scripture, and by the law of God which extends to the heart and the affections.... Perhaps by the law of the land, a man is not taken for drunk except his eyes stare, his tongue stutter, his legs stagger; but by God’s law, he is one that goes often to the drink, or that tarries long at it (Prov. xxiii. 30, 31). He that will be drawn to drink when he hath neither need of it nor mind to it, to the spending of money, wasting of precious time, discredit of the Gospel, the stumbling-block of weak ones, and hardening associates ... is a drunkard.
Presuming that Younge’s statement is at all within the mark, it will account for the effort put forth at the London sessions in 1654, wherein it was ordered that ‘no new licences shall be granted for two years.’
Great was the magnificence of the pageant upon the restoration of King Charles II. The conduits flowed with a ‘variety of delicious wines.’ At the Stocks was a fountain, of the Tuscan order, ‘venting wine.’ The event was commemorated at Charing Cross by the sign of the Pageant Tavern, which represented the triumphal arch there and then erected, and which remained some time after. Various were the forms that exuberance assumed. At the rejoicings at Edinburgh for the Restoration, at the Lord Provost’s return he was at every bonfire complimented with the breaking of glasses—one of the concomitant formalities of toasting.
Beyond the natural outburst of rejoicing at so great an occasion, there is abundant corroboration of the remark of Fosbroke, that ‘drinking healths was uncommonly prevalent, and productive of much intemperance, immediately after and on account of the Restoration.’ Royalty will be always prominently recognised at our public rejoicings, as a matter of course, and of right. May the health of the Sovereign and Royal Family always be proposed! Always, when the concomitant of drinking it has become obsolete.[154] What a volume could be written on the customs which have gathered about the toasting of our monarchs alone! One of these comes at once to mind in connection with the Second Charles. Pepys, in his Diary (1662-3), describes his own dining at ‘Chirurgeons’ Hall.’ He tells that:—
Among other observables we drunk the King’s health out of a gilt cup given by King Henry VIII. to this Company, with bells hanging at it, which every man is to ring by shaking after he hath drunk up the whole cup.
Another curious circumstance will be mentioned presently in connection with the toasting his successor, James.
But it is time again to review the material of all this rejoicing. At this period of the seventeenth century the importation of French wines into England was two-fifths of her consumption.[155] Mr. Cyrus Redding states that in 1675, there came to England 7,495 tuns of French wine to 20 of those of Portugal; and in 1676 no less than 9,645 French, to 83 Portuguese; soon after which date French wines were prohibited for seven years.[156]