In the year 1468 the Prior of Canterbury and the commissaries made a visitation (the see being then vacant); and it was ordered that potations made in the churches, commonly called give-ales or bride-ales, should be discontinued, under penalty of excommunication.[86]
Bride-ale
was so called from the bride’s selling ale on the wedding day, and friends contributing what they liked in payment of it. Brand imagines that the expense was defrayed by the friends of the married pair when circumstances were such as to need help. It was also called bride-stake, bride-wain, and bride-bush; the bush sufficiently signifying the nature of the gathering, inasmuch as it was the ancient badge of a country ale-house. Before the festivities proper began on the return from the bridal ceremony, it appears that a curious drinking custom prevailed in the church. Wine, with sops immersed, was there drunk, and bowls were kept in the church for this purpose. Thus, in an inventory of goods belonging to Wilsdon church in the sixteenth century, occurs the item, ‘two masers (mazers) that were appointed to remayne in the church for to drink in at bride-ales.’ Shakespeare alludes to this custom in his Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio
Calls for wine:—‘A health,’ quoth he ...
... Quaff’d off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton’s face.
The practice continued in force for a long time, for we find allusion to the same custom in the year 1720 in the Compleat Vintner:—
What priest can join two lovers’ hands,
But wine must seal the marriage-bands?
As if celestial wine was thought
Essential to the sacred knot,
And that each bridegroom and his bride
Believ’d they were not firmly ty’d
Till Bacchus with his bleeding tvn,
Had finished what the priest begun.
The wine thus drunk is called by Ben Jonson a ‘knitting cup.’ After the ceremony they retired to a tavern or went home, and then the orgies begun. In the words of an old writer, ‘When they come home from the church, then beginneth excess of eatyng and drynking, and as much is waisted in one daye as were sufficient for the two newe-maried folkes halfe a year to lyve on.’
But these customs are not peculiar to England only. The Scotch have their ‘penny bride-ale’ to help those who cannot pay the expense of the wedding feast. In Germany, when a window was put in or altered, was the fenster-bier (window-beer). At the churchings of women was the kark-bier (church-beer). At funerals was the grab-bier (grave-beer), beer forming an essential part of all such observances.
Edward IV. died in 1488, the victim of mortified ambition. His habits of life were licentious and intemperate. He died under a violent fever aggravated by excess. We can only hope that he died, as it is reported, a penitent. An account is given in the Paston Letters (cccxliv.) of an intended progress of the king, probably to facilitate his benevolences. In this, Sir John Paston is urged to warn William Gogney and his fellows ‘to purvey them of wine enough, for every man beareth me in hand that the town shall be drank dry, as York was when the king was there.’
In this reign the Earls of Warenne and Surrey possessed the privilege of licensing ale-houses. Mention has already been made of the ‘Crown,’ in Cheapside. In 1467 this house was kept by one Walter Walters, who in harmless pleasantry gave it out that he would make his son ‘heir to the “Crown.”’ This so displeased his Majesty Edward IV. that he ordered the man to be put to death for high treason.