(4) A fourth cause of the intemperance of the time was the profusion of taverns. Decker writes that ‘a whole street is in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.’[140]
The Lord-keeper Coventry thus speaks of them:—‘I account ale-houses and tippling-houses the greatest pests in the kingdom. I give it you in charge to take a course that none be permitted unless they be licensed; and for the licensed ale-houses, let them be but few and in fit places; if they be in private corners and ill places, they become the den of thieves—they are the public stages of drunkenness and disorder. Let care be taken in the choice of ale-house keepers, that it be not appointed to be the livelihood of a large family. In many places they swarm by default of the justices of the peace.’[141] It may be remarked that by this time inns had become representative; that is, for the most part each inn attracted a particular species of customer. This did not escape the notice of that keen observer Heywood:—
The gentry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown;
The Churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Rose,
To the Drum the man of war;
To the Feathers, ladies, you; the Globe
The seamen do not scorn;
The usurer to the Devil, and
The Townsman to the Horn;
The Huntsman to the White Hart,
To the Ship the merchants go,
But you that do the Muses love
The sign called River Po;
The bankrupt to the World’s End,
The fool to the Fortune hie,
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,
The fiddler to the Pie;
The drunkard to the Vine,
The beggar to the Bush, then meet
And with Sir Humphrey dine.
Bishop Earle, whose Microcosmography is accounted a faithful delineation of characters as they existed in the seventeenth century, has bequeathed the following account of a tavern of his date:—‘A tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this music above is answered with a clinking below. The drawers are the civillest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. ‘Tis the best theatre of natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of the world, up and down; to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to see heads, as brittle as glasses, and often broken. Men come hither to quarrel, and come here to be made friends. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or the maker away of a rainy day. It is the torrid zone that scorches the face, and tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up. Much harm would be done if the charitable vintner had not water ready for the flames. A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries far in the north, where it is as clear at midnight as at midday. After a long sitting it becomes like a street in a dashing shower, where the spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running below. To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man’s recreation, the idle man’s business, the melancholy man’s sanctuary, the stranger’s welcome, the inns-of-court man’s entertainment, the scholar’s kindness, and the citizen’s courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of comedy their book, whence we leave them.’
(5) A fifth cause was the perpetuation of Wakes. Complaints were made in all directions of their evil tendency. The author of the Life of John Bruen (1641) laments that ‘Popery and Profannes, two sisters in evil, had consented and conspired in this parish, as in many other places, together to advance their idols against the arke of God, and to celebrate their solemne feastes of their Popish saints by their wakes and vigils, ... in all riot and excesse of eating and drinking.’
The outcry, it is evident, arose rather from the Puritan than the Temperance party, and became so irrepressible that at the Exeter assizes (1627), Chief Baron Walter and Baron Denham made an order for suppression of all wakes. Judge Richardson made a like order for the county of Somerset, 1631. But on Laud’s demurrer the King commanded this order to be reversed; which the judge declining to do, a report was required by the bishop of the diocese how the feast days, church-ales, wakes, and revels were observed within his jurisdiction. On receipt of these instructions the bishop advised with seventy-two of the most able of his clergy, who certified that on these feast days the service of God was more solemnly performed than on any other days, that the people desired their continuance, as did also the ministers, for that they preserved the memorial of the dedication of their several churches, civilised the people, composed differences, tended to the increase of love and unity, and to the relief of the poor. On the delivery of this certificate Judge Richardson was cited, and peremptorily commanded to reverse his former order. After this, King Charles I. gave new force to his father’s declaration:—
We do ratify and publish this our blessed father’s decree, the rather because of late, in some counties of our kingdom, we find that under pretence of taking away abuses there hath been a general forbidding, not only of ordinary meetings, but of the feasts of the dedications of the churches, commonly called Wakes. Now his Majesty’s express will and pleasure is that these feasts, with others, shall be observed; and that his justices of the peace shall look to it, both that all disorders there may be prevented or punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with manlike and lawful exercises, be used.
It should here be stated that malice even has not dared to impeach the private morals of Charles I. Chaste and temperate are epithets constantly applied to him. The most convincing testimony to the latter virtue is the statement of A. Wood, that the vintners illuminated at his death, made bonfires, and drank lusty carouses. He had evidently not favoured their trade; but the justice of his cause and the injustice of his treatment were engraven on many a publican’s sign, to which the ‘Mourning Crown and Mitre’ bore witness. The Mourning Bush was the sign set up by John Taylor, the ‘Water-Poet,’ over his tavern in Long Acre, to express his grief at the beheading of the King. But he was compelled to away with it; when, in its place, he put up the Poet’s Head, his own portrait, with this inscription:—
There is many a head hangs for a sign,
Then, gentle reader, why not mine?
The following is the testimony of Clarendon:—