He who drank, too, a bumper on his knee to the health of his mistress was dubbed a knight for the evening. The word Samingo is either a corruption of, or an intended blunder for, San Domingo, but why this saint should be the patron of topers is uncertain.
Rouse. According to Gifford,[972] a rouse was a large glass in which a health was given, the drinking of which, by the rest of the company, formed a carouse. Hamlet (i. 4) says:
“The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse.”
The word occurs again in the following act (1), where Polonius uses the phrase “o’ertook in’s rouse;” and in the sense of a bumper, or glass of liquor, in “Othello” (ii. 3), “they have given me a rouse already.”
Sheer Ale. This term, which is used in the “Taming of the Shrew” (Induction, sc. 2), by Sly—“Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale”—according to some expositors, means “ale alone, nothing but ale,” rather than “unmixed ale.”
Sneak-cup. This phrase, which is used by Falstaff in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3)—“the prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup”—was used to denote one who balked his glass.
Earnest Money. It was, in olden times, customary to ratify an agreement by a bent coin. In “Henry VIII.” (ii. 3), the old lady remarks:
“Tis strange: a three-pence bow’d would hire me,
Old as I am, to queen it.”
There were, however, no threepences so early as the reign of Henry VIII.
Exclamations. “Charity, for the Lord’s sake!” was the form of ejaculatory supplication used by imprisoned debtors to the passers-by. So, in Davies’s “Epigrams” (1611):