Leland gives in his Collectanea a wine list which indicates the comparative prices of wines at this time:—

De Vino rubeo, VI dolia, prec. dol. 4l24 li
De Vino claret, IV dol. prec. dol. 7¾14 li138
De Vino alb. elect. unum dol3 li68
De Vino alb. pro coquina i. dol3 li
De Malvesey, i but4 li
De Ossey, i pipe3 li
De Vino de Reane, ii almes26s8

We get a good notion of the daily routine of court living in this reign from the ordinances of the royal household. There is nothing whatever in them indicative of excess, but they are interesting as matters of history, and records of etiquette. ‘When the king cometh from evensong into his great chamber on the even of the day of estate, the chamberlain must warn the usher before evensong that the king will take spice and wine in his great chamber.... Then shall the gentleman usher bring thither the esquire, and especially the king’s server (officer who set, removed, tasted, &c.) to bring the king’s spice plate.... And when the usher cometh to the cellar door, charge a squire for the body with the king’s own cup.’ This is simply a specimen of pages of like directions.

Entries in the Household Book of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, furnish details of a nobleman’s style of living at the beginning of the sixteenth century. On the Feast of the Nativity 290 persons dined and supped at Thornbury Castle, on which occasion were consumed eleven pottles and three quarts of Gascony wine, and 171 flagons of ale. This was not excessive for the times, the vices of which are admirably pictured in William Dunbar’s remarkable poem, The Dance. He describes a procession of the seven deadly sins in the lower regions. Gluttony brings up the rear:—

Then the foul monster Gluttony,
Of wame [belly] insatiable and gredy,
To dance he did him dress:
Him followed mony foul dronkart,
With can and collop, cup and quart,
In surfett and excess.
Fully many a wasteful wally-drag [outcast],
With wames [bellies] unwieldable did forth wag,
In creische [fat] that did incress:
Drink, aye, they cried, with mony a gape,
The fiends gave them hait leid to lap [hot lead to lap]
Their levery [reward] was no less.

The Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland is another capital illustration of the table life of the higher nobles. In reading the estimates, it must be taken into account that the household consisted of 166 persons. The allowance of grain per month gave 250 quarters of malt at 4s., two hogsheads to the quarter. This allowance may be thought to speak more for the temperance of the retainers than for the liberality of the lord. The wine was dispensed more liberally. An annual consumption showed ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gascony. A breakfast bill of fare appears thus: ‘Breakfastis for my lorde and my ladye. Furst a loof of brede in trenchers, two manchets, one quart of bere, a quart of wine, half a chyne of muton, ells a chyne of beif boyled.’

A searching visiting of monasteries, indeed of all ecclesiastics within the dominion, was entrusted by Henry VII. to his vicar-general and vice-gerent, Thomas Cromwell. The scrutiny was intended mainly for the monasteries. The eighty-six articles of instruction compass a large field of minute inquiry. The commissioners were doubtless much indebted to monastic factions and animosities for some of the information which they gained. The scrutiny revealed terrible irregularities in some cases, prominent among which were the vices of gluttony and drunkenness. The result of this official investigation was the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. And thus good was effected; for, however much we discount the charges alleged, for the reasons above suggested, the lives of the inmates had become a far and wide scandal. Innocent VIII. sent a bull to Archbishop Morton in 1490, in which he informs him that he had heard with great grief from persons worthy of credit, that the monks of all the different orders in England had grievously degenerated, that giving themselves up to a reprobate sense they led dissolute lives. But the archbishop was fully aware of the evil, for in 1487 he had convened a synod of the prelates and clergy of his province, for the reformation of the manners of the clergy. In this convocation many of the London clergy were accused of spending their whole time in taverns. But there is no disguising the fact that profuseness of living was countenanced in the highest places of the Church; which, if it does not excuse, at any rate explains the excesses of the ‘inferior clergy.’ As late as 1504, when William Warham was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury, a feast was given for which was procured—fifty-four quarters of wheat, six pipes of red wine, four of claret, one of choice white, one of white for the kitchen, one butt of Malmsey, one pipe of wine of Osey, two tierces of Rhenish wine, four tuns of London ale, six of Kentish ale, and twenty of English beer.

It is curious how many of our tavern signs originated from incidents in the history of our sovereigns. The ‘Red Dragon’ was in compliment to Henry VII., who adopted this device for his standard at Bosworth Field. It was in old times the ensign of the famous Cadwaller, the last of the British kings, from whom the Tudors descended. The field of Bosworth furnished matter for another sign. The hawthorn-bush crowned was adopted by Henry VII. in allusion to the crown of his predecessor which was found hidden in a hawthorn-bush after the battle. But the seventh Henry escaped the honour (?) conferred upon his successor and perpetuated, of being immortalised by his portrait as Bluff Harry on scores of tavern signboards. It is stated in the History of Signboards that at Hever, in Kent, one of these rude portraits of Henry VIII. may be seen. Near this village the Bolleyn, or Bullen, family held possessions, and old people in the district still show where Henry used to meet Anne Bolleyn. Anyhow, years after the sad death of Anne, the village ale-house had for its sign, ‘Bullen Butchered.’ When the place changed hands, the name of the house was altered to the ‘Bull and Butcher,’ which sign existed till recently, but was altered at the request of the clergyman of the parish, who suggested the ‘King’s Head,’ and the village painter was commissioned to make the alteration. The bluff features of the monarch were drawn; and in his hands was placed an axe, and so the sign remains at present.

In the collection of ordinances for the Royal Household we have an account of the ceremony of wasselling, as was practised at Court on Twelfth Night in the reign of Henry VII. The ancient custom of pledging each other out of the same cup had given place to the use of different cups. Moreover, ‘when the steward came in at the doore with the wassel, he was to crye three tymes, “Wassel, wassel, wassel,” and then the chappell (chaplain) was to answere with a songe.’ The custom of ‘toasting’ was in full force. Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII. contains several such allusions. Thus in act i., scene 4, the king exclaims—