It would have been well had he taken a lesson from the great Christina, who, it is said, occasionally passed days without drinking, detesting wine and beer, and having no special taste for any other liquid, with the exception of rose-water, of which she was extremely fond. Oftentimes when young she would repair to the Dowager’s toilet-table, and there refresh herself with her favourite cosmetic, until she was one day caught in the act, when “the dowager lady administered to her such a whipping that Christina could never think of it, to her latest hour, without a feeling of uneasiness.”
The able ruler of Denmark for sixty years, the defender of the Reformed religion—Christian IV.—was not above enjoying a carouse, and on his visit to this country in 1606 he was invited with his brother-in-law, James I., to a festival at Theobalds, the seat of the Prime Minister Cecil, Lord Salisbury, when it appears that the revels were marked by scenes of intemperance, an amusing account of which has been left by Sir John Harrington. He tells us that “the sports began each day in such manner and sort as well-nigh persuaded me of Mahomet’s Paradise. We had women, and indeed wine too, of such plenty as would have astonished each beholder. Our feasts were magnificent, and the royal guests did most lovingly embrace each other at table. I think the Dane had strangely wrought on our good English nobles, for those whom I could never get to take good liquor now follow the fashion, and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. In good sooth, the Parliament did kindly to provide his Majesty so seasonably with money, for there have been no lack of good living, shows, sights, and banquetings from morn to eve.” From this and similar accounts, the Danish and English monarchs seem to have had a good time, and not to have spared the costly liquor put before them, abandoning themselves to unrestrained excess. But some excuse must be made for the royal delinquents on this occasion, when it is remembered that it was a special gala time in honour of the Danish sovereign.
Charles V., Emperor of Germany, drank in proportion as he ate, excess in each case having hastened the termination of his failing health. Iced beer was one of his favourite drinks, which was often administered as soon as he rose in the morning. When Roger Ascham saw his Majesty on one occasion in Germany, on St. Andrew’s Day, sitting at dinner at the feast of the Golden Fleece, he writes: “He drank the best that I ever saw. He had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish”—a no mean performance.
But suffering, caused by chalk-stones and gout, did not induce him to moderate his mode of living, and to be more sparing in his tankards of ale and flasks of wine. And, unfortunately, his medical men had not the moral courage to dissuade him from drinking what was daily aggravating his gout, but allowed him to satisfy every appetite by providing palliations. And so he went on in his excesses, till his frame, worn out by disease, sank from exhaustion. It would appear that this monarch’s drinking proclivities were at the time well known in this country, as may be gathered from a return which was made by order on the occasion of his visit to Henry VIII. The city authorities appear “to have been afraid of being drunk dry by the swarming Flemings in the Emperor’s train. To avoid such a calamity, a return was made of all the wine to be found at the eleven wine merchants and the twenty-eight principal taverns then in London; the sum total of which was 800 pipes.”
In alluding to Henry VIII., it may be noted that history has given many anecdotes of the drinking habits of his predecessors on the English throne. Thus Rapin observes that William I. balanced his faults by “a religious outside, a great chastity, and a commendable temperance, but that his son was neither religious, nor chaste, nor temperate; whilst Malmesbury adds that he met with his tragical end in the New Forest after he had soothed his cares with a more than usual quantity of wine.”[14]
The tragedy of Henry I.’s reign was the loss of the ill-fated White Ship with Prince William, only one out of its 300 passengers surviving to tell the tale—a poor butcher of Rouen, named Berthould, who climbed to the top of the mast, and was rescued by some fishermen. To quote an oft-told story, King Henry and his heir embarked at Barfleur for England in separate vessels, when the Prince, to make the passage pleasant, not only took with him a number of the young nobility, but ordered three casks of wine to be given to the crew, with the result that the sailors were for the most part intoxicated when they put to sea at nightfall, and allowed the vessel to strike upon a rock. It is recorded that Henry was never again seen to smile, although he survived this terrible event fifteen years, having hastened his end by a surfeit of lampreys.
Unlike their father Henry II., Geoffrey, Richard, and John were far from abstemious. According to Giraldus, so dissolute and hot was Geoffrey in his youth, that “he was equally ensnared by allurements, and driven on to action by stimulants;” whilst one of the metrical romances of the period has left a graphic picture of the royal Yuletide revelry at this period, which lasted for twelve days, during which time excess rather than sobriety was the rule. D’Aubigné, quoting from Matthew Paris, declares that John died of drunkenness and fright—a statement endorsed by Sir Walter Scott in his “Ivanhoe,” where he writes: “It is well known that his death was occasioned by a surfeit upon peaches and new ale.” An amusing anecdote tells how, when King John made his last visit to Nottingham, he called at the Mayor’s residence, and at the house of the priest of St. Mary’s. But, finding neither ale in the cellar of the one nor bread in the cupboard of the other, he ordered every publican in the town to contribute sixpenny-worth of ale to the Mayor yearly, and every baker to provide the priest with a halfpenny loaf weekly.
Edward I. found little pleasure in the pleasures of the table; but his successor, Edward II., is said to have given way to intemperance, and it has been suggested that “had not the banqueting-room been oftener employed than the council-chamber, opportunities might not have occurred for the rebellion of favourites, for which the festal board was answerable.” The mad dissipation of Henry V. when Prince of Wales has been immortalised by Shakespeare, but, to his credit, the responsibility of the crown made him an altered man, and among his troops at Agincourt drunkenness was counted a disgrace. Indeed, so impressed was Henry with the bane of intemperance that it is said he would gladly have cut down all the vines in France. The last years of Edward IV.’s life were spent in luxurious and intemperate habits, which had most fatal effects on his health; and some idea of the lavish expenditure at this period may be gathered from the Paston Letters, where an account is given of an
