[84] Jeaffreson: A Book about the Table.
[85] For a terrible account of the glutton-masses of the secular clergy, see Henry, Hist. Great Britain, book v. ch. 7.
[86] Warton (Hist. Poetry, iii. 414) cites the above from Archbishop Tanner’s manuscript Additions to Cowell’s Law Glossary.
CHAPTER IX.
TUDOR PERIOD.
The legislative enactments of the reign of Henry VII. demand minute attention. With a certain modification, it is true that the direct legislative sanction of the liquor traffic dates from this reign. The revival of the trade of England was a great object with this monarch. The greater part of the foreign trade of England had hitherto been carried on by foreigners in foreign vessels of burden. Henry was sensible that this prevented the increase of English ships and sailors; so, to remedy this in part, he got a law passed in his first Parliament, that no Gascony or Guienne wines should be imported into any part of his dominions, except in English, Irish, or Welsh ships, navigated by English, Irish, or Welsh sailors, which obliged them to build ships and go to sea, or to lack their favourite liquor. This law was enforced and enlarged by an Act made in his third Parliament (1487), when it was enacted that no wines of Gascony or Guienne, or woads of Tholouse, should be imported into England, except in ships belonging to the king or some of his subjects; and that all such wines and woads imported in foreign bottoms should be forfeited.
By 7 Henry VII., c. 7, it was enacted (in order to counteract the duty of four ducats a tun lately imposed by the Venetians) that ‘every merchant stranger (except Englishmen born) bringing malmseys into this realm, should pay 18s. custom for each butt, over and above the custom aforetime used to be paid.’ The price of the butt was fixed at 4l.
Of far more importance was the Act of 1496, passed ‘against vacabonds and beggars.’ This empowers two justices of the peace ‘to rejecte and put away comen ale-selling in townes and places where they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers of ale-houses of their gode behavyng, by the discrecion of the seid justices, and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the time of their sessions.’