NINETEEN CENTURIES
OF
DRINK IN ENGLAND

A HISTORY

BY
RICHARD VALPY FRENCH
D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A.
RECTOR OF LLANMARTIN AND RURAL DEAN
AUTHOR OF ‘THE HISTORY OF TOASTING’ ETC.

SECOND EDITION—ENLARGED AND REVISED

LONDON
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE PUBLICATION DEPOT
33 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

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EDINBURGH:
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PREFACE.

The earlier part of this slight contribution to the literature of an inexhaustible subject has already appeared in a series of numbers in a London weekly journal. The best acknowledgment of the writer is due to the Rev. Arthur Richard Shillito, M.A. (late Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge), who has from time to time during the progress of this work most kindly furnished him with valuable notes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

The object of this work is to ascertain the part which Drink has played in the individual and national life of the English people. To this end, an inquiry is instituted into the beverages which have been in use, the customs in connection with their use, the drinking vessels in vogue, the various efforts made to control or prohibit the use, sale, manufacture, or importation of strong drink, whether proceeding from Church, or State, or both: the connection of the drink traffic with the revenue, together with incidental notices of banquets, feasts, the pledging of healths, and other relevant matter.

It must interest every thoughtful being to know how our national life and national customs have come to be what they are. They have not sprung up in a night like a mushroom. They have been forming for ages. Each day has contributed something. The great river of social life, ever flowing onward to the ocean of eternity, has been constantly fed by the tributaries of necessity, appetite, fashion, fancy, vanity, caprice, and imitation. Man is a bundle of habits and customs.

With some, it is true, life is mere routine, a round of conventionalities; literally ‘one day telleth another;’ with others, each day is a reality, has its fresh plan, is a rational item in the account of life. To these nothing is without its meaning; there is a definiteness, a precision, about its hours of action, of thought, of diversion, of ministering to the bodily claims of sustenance by eating and drinking. Around the latter, social life has fearfully encircled itself. The world was, and still is,—

‘On hospitable thoughts intent.’

The latter days are but a repetition of the former. ‘As it was ... so shall it be also. They did eat, they drank.’

Social life is intimately connected with the social or festive board; in short, with eating and drinking, because these are a necessity of nature. Other customs and habits may be fleeting, but men must eat, men must drink. Food ministers not only to the principle of life, but to that of brain force also. Thought is stimulated, activity is excited, man becomes communicable. He then seeks society and enjoys it. Thus has social intercourse gathered round the social board. Eating and drinking are two indispensable factors in dealing with the history of a nation’s social life. Adopting the adage by way of accommodation, ‘In vino veritas,’ truth is out when wine is in, once know the entire history of a nation’s drinking, and you have important materials for gauging that nation’s social life.

For obvious reasons, a division has been adopted of the subject into periods, in some respects artificial so far as the present inquiry is concerned. The Romano-British period has been selected as the terminus a quo. It might have been speculatively interesting to penetrate further into the arcana of the past, to have inquired who were the earliest inhabitants of this country? Were they aborigines, natives of the soil, or were they colonists? Had they an independent tribal existence, or were they originally a part of that great Asiatic family who emigrated into and peopled Western Europe, and to whom the Romans gave the name of Gauls?

Had such an inquiry been relevant, the question would have been of immense importance; for drawing, as one must, considerably upon imagination in dealing with any period not strictly historic, one must either regard the primitive inhabitants as independent aborigines, and accommodate their supplies to their wants, or, regarding them as an offshoot from another nation, suppose them to have carried with them the customs of their parent tribe, and find the sought-for habits of the child in the ascertained habits of the parent.

But we are concerned with fact; and must therefore date from a period when facts, however meagre and involved, are forthcoming.

A chapter of Bibliography is appended for the benefit of any who might wish to prosecute a study, of which the present effort is a mere outline.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DRINK.

NINETEEN CENTURIES OF DRINK IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

ROMAN PERIOD.

Little is known of the manners and customs of our island inhabitants before the Saxon period; hence, there can be no wonder that all is obscure before the Roman invasion. For the hints that have come to light we are indebted to such foreign historians as wrote in the century before the Christian era, the century of the invasion, and the age immediately subsequent.

These hints, utterly meagre, but generally consistent, are supplied by such writers before Christ as Diodorus and Cæsar, and such historians of the first century as Strabo, Dioscorides, and Pliny.

Diodorus (lib. v.) notes the simplicity in the manners of the British, and their being satisfied with a frugal sustenance, and avoiding the luxuries of wealth. He further observes:—‘Their diet was simple; their food consisted chiefly of milk and venison. Their ordinary drink was water. Upon extraordinary occasions they drank a kind of fermented liquor made of barley, honey, or apples, and when intoxicated never failed to quarrel, like the ancient Thracians.’

Cæsar (De Bell. Gall. v.) observes that the inhabitants of the interior do not sow grain, but live on milk and flesh.

Strabo, whose description of Britain in his fourth book is barren, and not apparently independent (for he seems mainly to follow Cæsar), writes in the early part of the first century (probably about a.d. 18), that the Britons had some slight notion of planting orchards.

Dioscorides, in the middle of the same century, affirms that the Britons instead of wine use curmi, a liquor made of barley. Pliny the Elder speaks of the drinks in vogue in his time of the beer genus, variously called zythum, celia, cerea, Cereris vinum, curmi, cerevisia. These, he says (lib. xiv.), were known to the nations inhabiting the west of Europe. He exclaims against the wide-spread intemperance: ‘The whole world is addicted to drunkenness; the perverted ingenuity of man has given even to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procurable. Western nations intoxicate themselves by means of moistened grain.’

It is important to add that Tacitus asserts (Vit. Agricol.) that the soil of this country abundantly produces all fruits except the olive, the grape, and some others which are indigenous to a warm climate.

Putting together these scattered allusions we gather,—(1) that wine was unknown to the Britons before the Roman conquest. It is absurd to suppose that a people as simple as the Britons, and holding so little intercourse with other nations, should as yet obtain from abroad such an article of luxury as wine, or prepare it from a fruit not a native of the soil. Indeed, it was only about a century before the Roman invasion of England that vines were cultivated to any extent in the Roman empire; so scarce had wines been previously that the libations to the gods were directed to be made with milk.

(2) That the inhabitants of the interior used no intoxicant, unless possibly metheglin. The language of Cæsar implies this. Above the borders of the southern coast, which were inhabited by Belgæ, and by them cultivated, there were few traces of civilisation. The midlanders were unacquainted with agriculture, contenting themselves with pasture; whilst the northerners depended on the produce of the chase, or upon that which grew spontaneously. And everywhere it is the same. The earliest savage inhabitants of any district eat without dressing what the earth produces without cultivation, and drink water (dwr, ὕδωρ). Savage nature is simple and uniform, whereas art and refinement are infinitely various.

(3) That the southerners made some kind of intoxicant from grain, from honey, and from apples.

Before the introduction of agriculture, metheglin was the only strong drink known to our inhabitants, and it was a favourite beverage with them long after they had become acquainted with other drinks. The rearing of bees became an important branch of industry; and we shall find later on, that in the courts of the ancient princes of Wales the mead-maker held an important position in point of dignity.

Metheglin (Welsh Meddyglyn), also called hydromel and mead, was a drink as universal as it was ancient. Testimony is afforded to this by the Sanscrit mathu, Greek μέθυ and μέλι, Latin mel, Saxon medo and medu, Danish miod, German meth. And here one must regret to demur to the suggested derivation of Metheglin from Matthew Glinn, who possessed a large stock of bees that he wished to turn into gain. The modes of the manufacture of this drink vary much in different countries. In the times to which we refer, the principal ingredients were rain-water and honey. Somewhat later it is described as wine and honey sodden together.

After the introduction of agriculture, ale (called by the Britons kwrw or cwrw) became a common drink. An early writer thus describes its manufacture: ‘The grain is steeped in water and made to germinate; it is then dried and ground; after which it is infused in a certain quantity of water, which being fermented becomes a pleasant, warming, strengthening, and intoxicating liquor.’

Cider became known to the Britons at an early date. John Beale, a seventeenth-century authority on orchard produce, thought seider to be a genuine British word; but it is generally referred to the Greek σίκερα, which, curiously enough, is rendered in Wycliffe’s version of the Bible, sydyr:—‘For he schal be gret before the Lord; and he schal not drinke wyn ne sydyr.’[1] Macpherson, in his Annals, rightly says that cider extracted from wild apples was early known to the British in common with other Northern nations, whilst Whitaker (History of Manchester) thinks that this beverage was introduced by the Romans. The opinion entertained by some that it was a Norman invention is entirely a mistake. The principal cider districts of the present day are Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Monmouth, Somerset, and Devon. Its medicinal qualities are variously stated. Lord Bacon accounted it to promote long life. Sir George Baker considered it a cure for dropsy. On the other hand, Dr. Epps (Journal of Health and Disease) speaks of dropsy and insanity as common diseases in Herefordshire, and says it is easy to understand how diseased kidneys are produced by the acid in the cider, and how dropsy follows from these diseased kidneys.

We next inquire what kind of Inns were known to the Ancient Britons. During the time of the Druids there was an order of people called Beatachs, Brughnibhs, or keepers of open houses, established for the express purpose of hospitality. These were pretty much of the same character as the chaoultries in India, and the caravanseries in the East. In Ireland, the bruigh was a person provided with land and stock by the prince of the territory, to keep beds, stabling, and such amusements as backgammon boards. The character of these houses was, as we shall find, vastly altered in Saxon times, when their names, Eala-hus, Win-hus, &c., sufficiently betokened the rationale of their existence.

We have seen that wine was unknown in this country before the Roman occupation. But the tide of emigration soon set in from Rome to Britain. The new-comers brought with them the arts and manufactures of their own country. The importation of wines presented to our islanders a new species of luxury. Evidently contrasting the simple habits of her subjects with those of the Roman invaders, Queen Boadicea (a.d. 61), making ready for battle, appeals in an impassioned speech to the heart of her troops, in which she exclaims: ‘To us, every herb and root are food, every juice is our oil, and water is our wine.’ For well-nigh three centuries of Roman occupation, wine continued to be an import. It remained for a Roman emperor to give permission to the Britons to cultivate vines and to make wine. The circumstances were these: The Emperor Domitian (a.d. 81), in order to check the growth of intemperance, issued an edict for the destruction of half the vineyards, and prohibited any more planting of vines without licence from the emperors. Probus acceded to the imperial purple, a.d. 276. This emperor, having conquered Gaul, revoked the edict of Domitian, and allowed the provinces to plant vines and make wine. Britain was included in the licence. From that time the purple grape twined around many a British homestead. But whether it ever really thrived in our soil and climate is more than conjectural. Pliny throws doubt upon the whole subject.[2] Camden regards the boon as affording shade rather than produce.[3] Still there is a chain of evidence that for centuries vineyards were planted in various districts, which would not have been the case had they been a complete failure. Five centuries after the edict of Probus, Bede testifies to their existence;[4] whilst Holinshed, in the sixteenth century, writes:—‘that wine did grow here, the old notes of tithes for wine that yet remain, besides the records of sundry sutes commenced in diverse ecclesiastical courts; ... also the enclosed parcels almost in every abbeie yet called vineyards, may be a notable witnesse. The Isle of Elie also was in the first times of the Normans called le ile des vignes.’[5] Nor can we wonder at the efforts to establish the grape as a native production when we consider the almost universal attachment to the fruit in one or other of its forms. If mead was in general demand, still more so was wine. The common appetite found fitting expression in a common nomenclature, and we find the names given to wine in every country bearing a striking similarity. Compare the English wine with the Gaelic fion, the French vin, Italian vino, Welsh gwin, Danish viin, German wein, Latin vinum, Greek οἶνος, Hebrew yayin, the root term conveying the notion, according to some, of boiling up, ferment, whilst others refer it to the Hebrew verb signifying to press out.

Whether an advantage or otherwise, to the Romans undoubtedly we owe signboards. The bush, which was for ages with us the sign of an inn, we owe immediately to them. Our proverb, ‘Good wine needs no bush,’ is of course own child to the Latin ‘Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est’—‘Wine that will sell needs no advertisement.’ Our sign of ‘Two Jolly Brewers’ carrying a tun slung on a long pole is the counterpart of a relic from Pompeii representing two slaves carrying an amphora.[6]

Again, our country owes to Roman influence the national custom of toasting or health-drinking.

The present writer has observed elsewhere[7] that among the Romans luxury was carried to unbounded excess. Many were their forms of revelry; amongst these were comissationes, or drinking bouts pure and simple. At these no food was taken, save as a relish to the wine. Specimens of their toasting formalities will be found in several classical authors.[8]

It were idle to imagine that the Britons were uninfluenced by such marked features of social life. If these customs had not been adopted by them before the time of Agricola, it is certain that when that most diplomatic of governors held sway here, he would teach the jeunesse dorée to drink healths to the emperor, and to toast the British belles of the hour in brimming bumpers. Sensual banquets, with their attendant revelry, no less than spacious baths and elegant villas, speedily became as palatable to the new subjects as to their corrupt masters.[9]

Intemperance was no stranger to any rank of society. Not even the imperial purple was stainless.[10] Thus was the soil prepared for the seed so abundantly to be sown when the Saxon, the Roman’s successor, should incorporate himself with our British population.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] σίκερα is of course akin to the Hebrew shâkar שֵׁכָר, and it is at least curious that the three important potables may be referred to Hebrew origin: Wine, to the Greek οἶνος, Hebrew יַיִן Yayin, and Beer possibly to the Hebrew בר corn without the vowel point.

[2] Natural History, iv. 17.

[3] Britannia, London, 1590. ‘Quas in Britannia ex Probi Imperatoris tempore umbraculi magis quam fructus gratiâ habuimus.’

[4] ‘Vineas etiam quibusdam in locis germinant.’

[5] Chronicles, i. 186.

[6] A mass of information upon the subject of signboards has been collected by Messrs. Larwood and Hotten in their History of Signboards.

[7] History of Toasting; London, 1881.

[8] E.g.—

‘Te nominatim voco in bibendo.’

‘Bene te! Bene tibi!’

‘Salutem tibi propino.’

‘Bacchi tibi sumimus haustus.’

Compare also Tibul. II. i. 33: ‘Bene Messalam! sua quisque ad pocula dicat.’

Plautus. Curcul. ii. 3, 8: ‘Propino poculum magnum, ille ebibit.’

Cicero. Tuscul. Disput. i. 40: ‘Propino hoc pulcro Critiæ, qui in eum fuerat teterrimus; Græci enim in conviviis solent nominare cui poculum tradituri sint.’

Zumpt interprets ‘Græco more’ as ‘Mos propinandi,’ or the custom of addressing the person to whom you wish well, and offering him a glass to empty, after having first put it to your lips.—Cf. Martial, lib. i. Ep. 72, Horace iii. Ode 19.

[9] The moral depravity and social degradation of the Roman world at this time is forcibly described by Salvian, the Bishop of Marseilles, in his De Gubernatione Dei. This treatise was translated into English, London, 1700.

[10] It is recorded of the Emperor Bonosus that so notorious a drinker was he that when he committed suicide, a.d. 281, after his defeat in Banffshire, it was the common jest with the soldiers that there hung a tankard and not a man.

CHAPTER II.

SAXON PERIOD.

It is to the heroic songs of the day that we must at this period mainly look for the history of manners and of convivial life. The chieftains assembled on the mead-bench, and were diverted by the literary genius of the ‘scóp’ or poet. Whether in the capacity of household retainer or wandering minstrel, he commanded protection, respect, and admiration. He was the popular exponent of the fashion of the time, and from his productions we can form a tolerable estimate of the prodigious part which drink played in the social life of the Anglo-Saxon. In this respect it is not too much to say that we inherit from the Saxons a perfect legacy of corruption; it is therefore with considerable qualification that we can accept the eulogies passed upon our forefathers by some historians, and notably by Sharon Turner, who represents our Saxon ancestors as bringing with them a superior domestic and moral character, as well as new political, juridical, and intellectual blessings.

One record we have of the manners of the Saxons before they occupied Britain; from it we are able to gather what were their essentially individual usages, and thus are able to draw a definite line between their native customs and those derived after their settlement amongst us from the Romanised Britons.

This poem is the romance of Beowulf, the oldest specimen of Anglo-Saxon literature—indeed, the oldest epic in any modern language.[11] The scene is laid in the Cimbric Chersonese. A certain king, Hrothgar by name, determined to build a palace, ‘a great mead-hall.’ In the neighbourhood lived a giant monster who used to make nightly incursions upon the palace during the ale-carouse; on one occasion killing thirty of its inmates. Beowulf, the brother of Hrothgar, resolved to deliver them from this scourge. With fifteen of his followers he proceeded to his brother’s palace. Hrothgar and his retainers were found drinking their ale and mead. The poem describes the visit:—‘There was a bench cleared in the beer-hall.... The thane observed his office. He that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup, he poured the bright, sweet liquor.’ Meanwhile the bard strikes up; the queen enters the hall; she serves the liquor, first presenting the cup to the king, then to the guests. Thus do the festivities continue till nightfall. Beowulf and his company sleep in the hall, ‘the wine-hall, the treasure house of men, studded with vessels.’ The giant appeared in the night, and after a struggle was slain by Beowulf. The next day there were great rejoicings at the death of the monster. ‘The lay was sung, the song of the gleeman, the noise from the benches grew loud; cupbearers gave the wine from wondrous vessels.’ The queen again presented the cup to the king and to Beowulf; the festivities were prolonged into the night. Soon, however, was vengeance on the track; the mother of the giant appeared at the palace and carried off a counsellor of Hrothgar, one of the ‘beer-drunken heroes of the ale-wassail.’ Beowulf is again the deliverer, and subsequently ascends the throne of his brother. A sketch of early manners like this, in the general dearth of documentary evidence, is invaluable. It is an outline, but one we can readily fill in.

From this same Cimbric peninsula came the Saxon leader Hengist, whose feast in honour of the British king Vortigern is familiar to every one, though it rests mainly on the very questionable authority of Nennius.[12] This writer states that the Saxon chief prepared an entertainment to which he invited the king, his officers, &c., having previously enjoined his daughter to serve them so profusely with wine and ale that they might soon become intoxicated. The plan succeeded; Vortigern demanded the hand of the girl. The province of Kent was the price paid. This account, as given by Nennius, is supplemented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a British historian, or rather romancer, of the twelfth century. The story is always worth repeating. He says[13] that when the feast was over, ‘the young lady came out of her chamber bearing a golden cup full of wine, with which she approached the king, and making a low courtesy, said to him: “Lauerd king wacht heil!” The king, at the sight of the lady’s face, was on a sudden both surprised and inflamed with her beauty; and calling to his interpreter, asked him what she said, and what answer he should make her. “She called you ‘Lord King,’” said the interpreter, “and offered to drink your health. Your answer to her must be, ‘Drinc heil!’” Vortigern accordingly answered, “Drinc heil!” and bade her drink; after which he took the cup from her hand, kissed her, and drank himself. From that time to this (says the chronicler) it has been the custom in Britain that he who drinks to any one says, “Wacht heil!” and he who pledges him answers, “Drinc heil!” Vortigern, being now drunk with the variety of liquors, the devil took this opportunity to enter into his heart, and to make him in love with the damsel, so that he became suitor to her father for her.’[14]

We have seen that drink was a prominent link in the chain whereby Kent passed from British into Saxon hands. If Nennius may be trusted, it played an equally important part in the cession of East-Sex, South-Sex, and Middle-Sex. The substance of the story as told by this chronicler is, that Hengist proposed to ratify a treaty of peace with the British king Vortigern, by a feast to which he invited him and his nobles. He bade his Saxons who feasted with them, at a given signal, when the Britons were sufficiently inebriated, each to draw his knife and kill his man. The plot succeeded. Three hundred British nobles were slain in a state of intoxication, while the captive king purchased his ransom at the cost of the three above-mentioned provinces. The Welsh bard evidently alludes to this in the lines:—

When they bargained for Thanet, with such scanty discretion,
With Hors and Hengys in their violent career,
Their aggrandisement was to us disgraceful,
After the consuming secret with the slaves at the confluent stream.
Conceive the intoxication at the great banquet of mead;
Conceive the deaths in the great hour of necessity.[15]

We can judge from the above incidents the kind of influence which the Saxons would be likely to exercise upon the Romanised Briton. Not that intemperance was a new plant of Saxon setting, for we have already found that the seed sown of Roman debauchery was beginning to yield the rank crop of excess in every grade of society. Ancient British poetry affords ample proof of this indictment. One of the most important fragments of ancient Cymric literature is The Gododin of Aneurin, a poem of the sixth century, the first poem printed in the Welsh Archæology. It recounts a mighty patriotic struggle of the Britons under Mynyddawr with the Teutonic settlers in the district, which may be loosely described as lying between the Tees and Forth. The ever-recurring subject in this poem is the intoxication of the Britons from excessive drinking of mead before the battle fought at Cattraeth. A few quotations will suffice:—

The warriors marched to Cattraeth, full of words;
Bright mead gave them pleasure, their bliss was their bane.
* * * *
The warriors marched to Cattraeth, full of mead;
Drunken, but firm in array; great the shame.
* * * *
Just fate we deplore.
For the sweetness of mead,
In the day of our need,
Is our bitterness; blunts all our arms for the strife;
Is a friend to the lip and a foe to the life.
* * * *
I drank the Mordei’s wine and mead,
I drank, and now for that I bleed.[16]

Unquestionable allusion to this poem of Aneurin is made in Owen Cyveilioc’s Hîrlas, written in the twelfth century:—

Hear how with their portion of mead, went with their Lord to Cattraeth,
Faithful the purpose of their sharp weapons,
The host of Mynydauc, to their fatal rest.

To the sixth century are also to be referred the poems of Taliesin, which tell of the battles between the Britons and Saxons. One is preserved which is commonly called the Mead Song, which he wrote to obtain Elphin’s release from prison. It is thus rendered[17]:—

I will implore the Sovereign, Supreme in every region,
The Being who supports the heavens, Lord of all space,
The Being who made the waters, to every body good;
The Being who sends every gift and prospers it,
That Maelgwyn of Mona be inspired with mead, and cheer us with it
From the mead horns—the foaming pure and shining liquor
Which the bees provide, but do not enjoy.
Mead distilled I praise—its eulogy is everywhere,
Precious to the creature whom the earth maintains.
God made it for man for his happiness;
The fierce and the mute, both enjoy it.
The Lord made both the wild and the gentle,
And has given them clothing for ornament,
And food and drink to last till judgment.
I will implore the Sovereign, Supreme in the land of peace,
To liberate Elphin from banishment,
The man that gave me wine, ale, and mead,
And the great princely steeds of gay appearance,
And to me yet would give as usual:
With the will of God, he would bestow from respect
Innumerable festivities in the course of peace.
Knight of Mead, relation of Elphin, distant be thy period of inaction.[18]

A satire is also preserved of the same Taliesin, upon the wandering minstrels of his time. He imputes to them all kinds of vice:—

In the night they carouse, in the day they sleep;
Idle, they get food without labour;
They hate the churches, but seek the liquor houses;
From every gluttony they refrain not;
Excesses of eating and drinking is what they desire.[19]

Another early British poet, Llywarch Hên, who flourished in both the sixth and seventh centuries, affords further proof that strong drink, ale or mead, was the one thing needful. In his elegy on Urien of Reged we find—

He was a shield to his country;
His course was a wheel in battle.
Better to me would be his life than his mead.

And again—

This hearth; no shout of heroes now adheres to it:
More usual on its floor
Was the mead; and the inebriated warriors.

And here we naturally pause to inquire whether it is fair to gauge the habits of the day from extracts such as these. May they not have been the heated effusions of the moment? May not these bards have cast the shadows of their own excited brains on all around? Alas! the pages of contemporary history, and the censures of the Church, too surely confirm the impressions of the poet. Thus, Gildas, the British monk, writing in the latter half of the sixth century (Epist. De Excid. Britann.), laments (§ 21) that ‘not only the laity, but our Lord’s own flock, and its shepherds, who ought to have been an example to the people, slumbered away their time in drunkenness, as if they had been dipped in wine.’ Again (§ 83), ‘Little do ye put in execution that which the holy prophet Joel hath spoken in admonishment of slothful priests, saying, Awake ye who are drunk from your wine, and weep and bewail ye all, who have drunk wine even to drunkenness, because joy and delight are taken away from your mouths.’ And once more (§ 109), ‘These are the words, that with apparent effect should be made good and approved—deacons in like manner, that they should be not overgiven to much wine.... And now, trembling truly to make any longer stay on these matters, I can, for a conclusion, affirm one thing certainly, which is, that all these are changed into contrary actions, insomuch that clerks are shameless and deceitful in their speeches, given to drinking.’

Do we wonder that this state of things was condemned? The British Church could no longer keep silent. Decrees respecting intemperance were issued in the Synod held by St. David (a.d. 569), interesting as the only legislative relic of the British Church upon this subject; unless, as Mr. Bridgett remarks in his useful little book, The Discipline of Drink, we admit the monastic penance of St. Gildas the Wise (a.d. 570): ‘If any monk through drinking too freely gets thick of speech so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.’

The following are among the canons of St. David:—

(1) Priests about to minister in the temple of God and drinking wine or strong drink through negligence, and not ignorance, must do penance three days. If they have been warned, and despise, then forty days.

(2) Those who get drunk through ignorance must do penance fifteen days; if through negligence, forty days; if through contempt, three quarantains.

(3) He who forces another to get drunk out of hospitality must do penance as if he had got drunk himself.

(4) But he who out of hatred or wickedness, in order to disgrace or mock at others, forces them to get drunk, if he has not already sufficiently done penance, must do penance as a murderer of souls.

Enough has been adduced to prove that the lovers of debauch among the Anglo-Saxons could have found no uncongenial soil in Britain. But their settlement in our island did not tend to any moral millennium. They found matters bad; they made them ten times worse. At meals, after meals, by day, by night, the brimming tankard foamed. When all were satisfied with their dinner, says the chronicler, they continued drinking till the evening. Drinking was, in short, the occupation of the after part of the day. A cut taken from the Anglo-Saxon calendar[20] represents a drinking party. The lord and the two principal guests are sitting at the high seat, or daïs, drinking after dinner. The excess to which they yielded at banquets may be illustrated from a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon poem, entitled ‘Judith,’ which is thus translated[21]:—

There were deep bowls
Carried along the benches often,
So likewise cups and pitchers
Full to the people who were sitting on couches:
The renowned shielded warriors
Were fated, while they partook thereof....
Then was Holofernes,
The munificent patron of men,
In the guest hall;
He laughed and rioted,
Made tumult and noise,
That the children of men
Might hear afar,
How the stern one
Stormed and shouted.
Moody and drunk with mead,
Thus this wicked man
During the whole day
His followers
Drenched with wine,
The haughty dispenser of treasure,
Until they lay down intoxicated,
He over-drenched all his followers
Like as though they were struck with death,
Exhausted of every good.

An important collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry is still preserved under the title of the Exeter Book, the original MS. of which is kept at Exeter: being a portion of the gift of books to the Church at Exeter by Bishop Leofric in the eleventh century. It is a medley of legends, religious songs, apophthegms, riddles, &c. These riddles, commonly called Symposii Ænigmata, were very popular among the Saxons, whether the meaning of the title be ‘Riddles composed by Symposius,’ or ‘Nuts to crack after dinner.’ Two specimens will suffice. The first, probably taken from the story of Lot—

There sat a man at his wine
With his two wives,
And his two sons,
And his two daughters,
Own sisters,
And their two sons,
Comely first-born children;
The father was there
Of each one
Of the noble ones,
With the uncle and the nephew:
There were five in all
Men and women
Sitting there.

The second is a very ancient specimen of that kind of ballad of which the modern John Barleycorn is the anti-type:—

A part of the earth is
Prepared beautifully,
With the hardest,
And with the sharpest,
And with the grimmest
Of the productions of men,
Cut and ...
Turned and dried,
Bound and twisted,
Bleached and awakened,
Ornamented and poured out,
Carried afar
To the doors of people,
It is joy in the inside
Of living creatures,
It knocks and slights
Those, of whom before while alive
A long while
It obeys the will,
And expostulateth not,
And then after death
It takes upon it to judge,
To talk variously.
It is greatly to seek
By the wisest man,
What this creature is.[22]

The principal drinks which the Saxons adopted were wine, mead, ale, cider, and piment.

The permission granted by the Emperor Probus to plant vines has already been mentioned, as well as the testimony to their existence by the historian Bede. John Bagford, a book collector and antiquary of the seventeenth century, says:—

I have often thought, and am now fully persuaded, that the planting of vines in the adjacent parts about this city was first of all begun by the Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture and gardening, as may appear from their rei agrariæ scriptores, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden (which at this time is called Vine Street), and a third in St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Many places in the country bear the name of the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the Romans.[23]

But whatever amount of evidence be forthcoming that vineyards existed in the time of the Saxons, though there is no doubt that they were in the main attached to the monasteries, still it is certain that wine was not a common drink among them; but when introduced into their feasts it usually led to intemperance. It may also be added that Bede mentions warm wine as a drink. But their most common beverage was mead. The extent to which this drink prevailed amongst them is curiously indicated by the nature of the fine that was imposed upon the members of their friendly societies whose conduct was called in question. It appears that for seven out of thirteen descriptions of offence, the members were fined a quantity of honey, varying in measure with the nature of the offence, e.g.—

Any member calling another names was fined a quart of honey.

For using abusive language to a non-member, one quart of honey.

A knight for waylaying a man, a sextarius of honey.

For setting a trap for any person’s injury, a sextarius of honey.

Any member neglecting when deputed to fetch a fellow-member who might have fallen sick, or died at a distance from home, forfeited a sextarius of honey. And so forth. No doubt this honey was turned into mead, and drunk on the gala days of the society.

Of ale three kinds are mentioned at this time: viz. clear ale, mild ale, and Welsh ale. Accordingly we find the Abbot of Medeshamstede letting certain land to Wulfrid upon this condition, that Wulfrid should each year deliver into the minster, among other items, two tuns full of pure ale and ten measures of Welsh ale, an agreement at which, adds the Saxon Chronicle, the king, archbishop, and several bishops were present. Welsh ale is mentioned at a much earlier date in the laws of Ine.

It was stated in a former section that cider became known to the Britons at an early date. The Anglo-Saxons knew it under the name of Æppelwin. Its origin is not fully substantiated. Africa has been suggested as its birthplace, probably because the fathers SS. Augustine and Tertullian mention it. St. Jerome, too, speaks of an intoxicating drink made of the juice of apples.

Lastly, the Saxons drank piment, but not generally. This was a mixture of acid wine, honey, sugar, and spices. We find it mentioned in the romance of Arthour and Merlin, in the lines—

There was piment and claré,
To heighe lordlinges and to meyne.

Piment and wine were both at this time imports. Thus in a volume of Saxon dialogues (Tib. A. iii.), one of the characters, a merchant, describes himself and his occupation. To the question ‘What do you bring us?’ he replies, ‘Skins, silks, costly gems, and gold; various garments, pigment, wine, &c.’

Of Saxon festivals none were more celebrated than their Jule or Yule (to which corresponds our Christmas), a strange combination of conviviality and religion. It appears to be a Saxon adaptation of an ancient Celtic festival. The Celts worshipped the sun. At the winter solstice the people testified their joy that the ‘greater light’ had returned to this part of the heavens, by celebrating a festival or sun-feast, which took its name from Heol, Hiaul, Houl, dialectic varieties of the Celtic expression for ‘sun.’ The prefix of the article will account for the Gothic forms Gehul, Juul, and hence again the softened forms, Jul, Yule. Upon this heathen festival the Christians engrafted their great festival, the anniversary of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon a dark world.[24]

Before leaving this subject notice should be taken of the grafol, or rent, paid upon lands. It furnishes some incidental details of the social life of our ancestors. Upon a certain estate in Lincolnshire we find that the following yearly rent was reserved:—(1) To the monastery, two tuns of bright ale, two oxen fit for slaughter, two mittan, or measures, of Welsh ale,[25] and six hundred loaves. (2) To the abbot’s private estate, one horse, thirty shillings of silver, or half a pound, one night’s pastus, fifteen mittan of bright and five of Welsh ale, fifteen sesters of mild ale.

Anglo-Saxon guilds, or social confederations, were associated with drink. Every member was compelled to bring a certain amount of malt or honey. The fines they imposed also imply that the materials of conviviality were not forgotten.

Amidst such surroundings it is scarcely matter for surprise that we occasionally read of profuseness in the high places of the Church as well as the State. Some of the leading ecclesiastics had been brought up in the lap of plenty. Wilfrid (consecrated Archbishop of York, a.d. 669) is described by his biographer, Eddius, as the most luxurious prelate of his age, but it should be remembered that he was the son of a Bernician noble, taught in his childhood to serve the cup in the mead-hall. His fame, however, for sanctity is abundantly attested. He has been called the first patron of architecture among the Anglo-Saxons. Hexham and Ripon owe to him their sacred piles. At the dedication of the latter was a disgraceful scene of riotous festivity in which the kings Ecgfrid and Aelwin with the principal nobles were engaged. Such a scene upon such an occasion would now happily be impossible. And it is by comparisons of this kind that one is able definitely to estimate the improvement or retrogression of moral tone. It should be added by way of extenuation that such festivities were continuations of the heathen paganalia, were countenanced—indeed, with certain modifications commanded—by order of Gregory the Great (a.d. 601), to Mellitus, the abbot, who accompanied Augustine to England. His words, as given by Bede (Eccl. Hist. i. 30), are—‘On the day of dedication, or the birthday of holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited, let the people build themselves booths of the boughs of trees, round about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting.... For there is no doubt that it is impossible to efface every thing at once from their obdurate minds.’

FOOTNOTES:

[11] A translation of this poem by John Mitchell Kemble was published in 1837; one by Thomas Arnold in 1876; another more recently by Colonel Lumsden; another by Rev. S. Fox, 1864.

[12] A chapter is devoted to the question of the genuineness and chronology of Nennius in Wright’s Biographia Britannica Literaria.

[13] Geoffrey of Monmouth: British History, chap. xii.

[14] For Robert de Brunne’s metrical version of this story, cf. Warton, Hist. Poet., i. 73. For Robert of Gloucester’s account, see Knight, Old Eng., p. 70.

[15] Golyddan: Arymes Prydein Vawr, 2 (as rendered by Turner).

[16] Professor Morley’s rendering is here adopted. Part of the Gododin was translated by Gray. A version of the whole is to be found in Davies’s Mythology of the Druids. It was translated by Probert in 1820, and by Rev. John Williams ap Ithel in 1858. It should be mentioned that Davies strangely maintains that the poem does not refer to the battle of Cattraeth, but to the massacre of the Welsh chieftains by Hengist’s command at a banquet at Stonehenge.

[17] Turner, Vindication of the Ancient British Poems.

[18] The poems of Taliesin are printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, collected out of ancient MSS.

[19] An incident in his life also illustrates the intemperance of the time. Fishing at sea in a skin coracle, he was seized by Irish pirates, who carried him off towards Ireland. Escaping from them in his coracle while they were engaged in drunken revelry, he was tossed about at the mercy of the waves till the coracle stuck to the point of a pole in the weir of the Prince of Cardigan, at whose court he remained till the time of the great inundation which formed Cardigan Bay.

[20] MS. Cotton, Julius A. vi. inserted in Wright’s Homes of other Days.

[21] The original is given in Thorp’s Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, London, 1834.

[22] Exeter MS. fol. 107, vo.

[23] Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. 75.

[24] See Christmas Festivities, by the present writer.

[25] Warner mentions this drink as in his days a speciality (1797). He says: ‘We now reached the Beaufort Arms (Crickhowel), where we refreshed ourselves with a bottle of cwrrw or Welsh ale.... I cannot say that it proved agreeable to our palates, though the Cambrians seek it with avidity, and quaff it with the most patient perseverance. Their ancestors, you know, displayed a similar propensity eighteen hundred years ago, and the old Celt frequently sunk under the powerful influence of the ancient cwrrw. It was then, as now, made from barley, but the grain was dried in a peculiar way which gives it a smoky taste, and renders it glutinous, heady, and soporiferous.’ Cf. Pliny, lib. xiv.: ‘Est et occidentis populis sua ebrietas, fruge madida’; and Strabo, lib. iv.: ‘Ligures utuntur potu hordeaceo.’

CHAPTER III.

SAXON PERIOD—continued.

Amongst the kings who, in the seventh century, governed parts of Anglia, Edwin stands out prominently as a beacon of beneficent rule. Two stories concerning him are treasured from childhood, viz. his conversion to Christianity, through the bringing back to his recollection a mysterious vision by Paulinus, and the speech of the royal counsellor, who compared human life to the flitting of a sparrow through a festal hall. But one of his philanthropic measures is of special interest in the present connection. Edwin had been by compulsion a wanderer. He knew the trials of a fugitive’s life. He had experienced the hardships of long journeys on tedious roads which lacked accommodation for travellers; so, with a heart full of sympathy, he caused to be set up in the highways stakes, and ladles chained to them, wherever he had observed a pure spring. Bede remarks that he carried a tufa before him; he deserves that it be never displaced.

The entertaining of strangers seems in these times to have fallen to the clergy: hence the constant injunction to them to attend to hospitality. It is in this sense that Mr. Soames is justified in saying (Anglo-Saxon Church) that clergymen were in fact the innkeepers of those ancient times. One of the Excerpts of Ecgbright enjoins ‘that bishops and priests have an house for the entertainment of strangers, not far from the church.’

It would be naturally expected that the Church should have made some effort to stem the wide-spread inebriety of the Saxon population. And such was the case. We have on record an almost continuous series of ecclesiastical canons, decrees, and anathemas bearing upon the national intemperance. Theodore, seventh Archbishop of Canterbury (668-693), decrees that if a Christian layman drink to excess, he must do a fifteen days’ penance. In the following century, Bede, in a letter to Egbert, Archbishop of York, writes: ‘It is commonly reported of certain bishops that the way they serve Christ is this—They have no one near them of any religious spirit or continence, but only such as are given to laughter, jokes, amusing stories, feasting, drunkenness, and the other snares of a sensual life—men who feed their belly with meats, rather than their souls with the heavenly sacrifice.’

In the middle of the same century, Winfrid, Archbishop of the Germans (upon whom the Pope conferred the name of Boniface), writes to Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘It is reported that in your dioceses the vice of drunkenness is too frequent; so that not only certain bishops do not hinder it, but they themselves indulge in excess of drink, and force others to drink till they are intoxicated. This is most certainly a great crime for a servant of God to do or to have done, since the ancient canons decree that a bishop or a priest given to drink should either resign or be deposed. And Truth itself has said: “Take heed to yourselves lest at any time your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness;” and St. Paul, “Be not drunk with wine wherein is luxury;” and the Prophet Isaias, “Woe to you that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength at drunkenness.” This is an evil peculiar to pagans, and to our race. Neither the Franks, nor the Gauls, nor the Lombards, nor the Romans, nor the Greeks commit it. Let us then repress this iniquity by decrees of synods and the prohibitions of the Scriptures, if we are able. If we fail, at least, by avoiding and denouncing it, let us clear our own souls from the blood of the reprobate.’

This great Anglo-Saxon missionary not only preached but practised. His Benedictine monks he describes as men of strict abstinence, who used neither flesh, wine, nor strong drink.

The Excerptions of Ecgbright date about the middle of this century. Johnson, English Canons, assigns them to 740; Sir H. Spelman to 750.

Amongst these are several sayings and canons of the fathers respecting intemperance. Thus (No. 14)—‘That none who is numbered among the priests cherish the vice of drunkenness; nor force others to be drunk by his importunity.’ (No. 18)—‘That no priest go to eat or drink in taverns.’

In the supplemental Excerptions of the same Ecgbright (MS. marked K.2, in the CCCC. Library), we have (No. 74) ‘A canon of the fathers. If a bishop, or one in orders, be an habitual drunkard, let him either desist or be deposed.’

In the same Excerpts, penal intoxication is defined—‘This is drunkenness, when the state of the mind is changed, the tongue stammers, the eyes are disturbed, the head is giddy, the belly is swelled, and pain follows.’

In 747 a council was convened by Cuthbert at Cloves-hoo. The 9th canon bids priests ‘by all means take care, as becomes the ministers of God, that they do not give to the seculars or monastics an example of ridiculous or wicked conversation; that is, by drunkenness, love of filthy lucre, obscene talking, and the like.’

The 21st canon ordains ‘that monastics and ecclesiastics do not follow nor affect the vice of drunkenness, but avoid it as deadly poison.... Nor let them force others to drink intemperately, but let their entertainments be cleanly and sober, not luxuries, ... and that, unless some necessary infirmity compel them, they do not, like common tipplers, help themselves or others to drink, till the canonical, that is the ninth hour, be fully come.’

Canon 20 enacts: ‘Let not nunneries be places of secret rendezvous for filthy talk, junketing, drunkenness, and luxury, but habitations for such as live in continence and sobriety.’

In the year 793 Alcuin gave good advice to the brethren at Jarrow: ‘Absconditas comessationes et furtivas ebrietates quasi foveam inferni vitate.’

One of the Saxon drinks to which reference has been made, viz. piment, seems to have been drunk to excess in the eighth and ninth centuries. Piment was a fascinating compound; it was in fact a liqueur. The word is probably derived from pigmentarii, apothecaries who originally prepared it. The most common varieties of it were hippocras and clarry. In the year 817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle forbad the use of piment to the regular clergy, except on solemn festival days.

In the eighth century, taverns or ale-houses where liquor was sold had been established, and very soon fell into disrepute. Hence the injunction of Ecgbright that no priest go to eat or drink at a tavern (ceapealethelum).

A good idea of the proportionate consumption of meats and drinks can be obtained from the sales and gifts of provisions to the monasteries. For instance, as has been already alluded to, we find from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in the year 852, Ceolred, Abbot of Medeshamstede (Peterborough), and the monks let to Wulfred the land of Sempringham, on the condition that, after his decease, the land should return to the minster, and that Wulfred should give the land of Sleaford to Medeshamstede, and each year should deliver into the minster sixty loads of wood, twelve of coal, six of faggots, and two tuns full of pure ale, and two beasts fit for slaughter, and six hundred loaves, and ten measures of Welsh ale.

But the regulations of the various monasteries widely differed, as did the regulations of each monastery at different periods. It would appear that at one time the use of wine was prohibited in the monastic houses; thus, in the year 738, wine was permitted to the monks of England by a decree of Bishop Aidan, founder of Lindisfarne monastery. Sometimes a large allowance was granted; thus Ethelwold allowed his monastery a great bowl from which the obbæ of the monks were filled twice a day for their dinner and supper. On their festivals he allowed them at dinner a sextarium of mead between six of the brethren, the same at supper between twelve of them. On certain great feasts he gave them a measure of wine.

It will be necessary when dealing with the times of King Edgar to advert at some length to Benedictine Monachism, so we may postpone for the present an estimate of conventual morality.

It is instructive to observe how a courageous and virtuous soul may maintain its purity unsullied amidst surroundings the most calculated to tarnish it. To live in any century of Saxon times was a moral ordeal. To possess certain tastes was to enhance the probation. The life of King Alfred furnishes us with a lesson of the type intended. His intellectual powers and tastes would have strewn the path of most men with briars, if not precipitated them into pitfalls. The love of music and poetry, the concomitants of which were the ruin of so many of his contemporaries, was conscientiously treasured by him as a talent to be occupied. At a time when the horn of mead circulated at a festival as freely as the harp; at a time when the song of the Northmen too often became the pretext for intoxication and its kindred vices, Alfred was seeking wisdom from its true source; his life was an embodiment of temperance, soberness, and chastity. Many of his renderings of the Roman philosopher Boethius, whose work, De Consolatione Philosophiæ, he translated, or rather paraphrased, display his own sentiments on such matters. In transmitting them, he has transmitted himself. In some cases the thoughts of his author are widely expanded. His description, for instance, of the golden age: ‘Oh! how happy was the first age of this world, when every man thought he had enough in the fruits of the earth. There were no rich homes, nor various sweet dainties, nor drinks. They required no expensive garments, because there were none then; they saw no such things nor heard of them. They cared not for luxury; but they lived naturally and temperately. They always ate but once a day, and that was in the evening. They ate the fruits of trees and herbs. They drank no pure wine. They knew not to mix liquor with their honey. They required not silken clothing with varied colours. They always slept out under the shade of trees. The water of the clear spring they drank.’ Such is the paraphrase of the king. The following is the language of Boethius:—‘Too happy was the prior age, contented with their faithful ploughs, nor lost in sluggish luxury; it was accustomed to end its late fasts with the ready acorn; nor knew how to confuse the present of Bacchus with liquid honey; nor to mingle the bright fleece of the Seres with the Tyrian poison. The grass gave them healthful slumbers. The gliding river their drink.’

One more example may be given; the passage which treats of tyrannical kings: ‘If men should divest them of their clothes, and withdraw from them their retinue and their power, then might thou see that they be very like some of their thegns that serve them, except that they be worse. And if it was now to happen to them, that their retinue was for a while taken away, and their dress and their power, they would think that they were brought into a prison, or were in bondage; because from their excessive and unreasonable apparel, from their sweetmeats, and from the various drinks of their cup, the raging course of their luxury is excited, and would very powerfully torment their minds.’

What other king would thus have caricatured his own order? What other man would have treated his own surroundings with such persiflage? Surely here he must have blindly adhered to the text of his author. Is it so? The English of Boethius is, ‘If from the proud kings whom you see sitting on the lofty summit of the throne ... any one should draw aside the coverings of a vain dress, you would see the lord loaded with strong chains within. For here greedy lust pours venom on their hearts; here turbid anger, raising its waves, lashes the mind; or sorrow wearies her captives, or deceitful hope torments them.’

And yet the life of Alfred, so full of achievement as well as purpose, was brought to a premature close. He died at the age of fifty-two. The disease which had clung to him in boyhood was replaced in manhood by another, equally grievous. The protracted banquets, ‘day and night,’ of his nuptial festivities are assigned as the probable cause. His biographer, Asser, remarks:—‘His nuptials were honourably celebrated in Mercia, among innumerable multitudes of people of both sexes; and after continual feasts, both by night and by day, he was immediately seized, in presence of all the people, by sudden and overwhelming pain, as yet unknown to all the physicians.’ We further learn that this complaint attached to him for more than twenty years. If this historian intends that the king’s malady was the result of debauchery, the whole tenor of his life is a flat contradiction. The panegyric of the poet Thomson in his Seasons is unimpeachable:—

Whose hallow’d name the virtues saint,
And his own Muses love; the best of kings!

Allusion has been made to native vineyards. The vine is mentioned in the laws of Alfred, ‘Si quis damnum intulerit vineæ vel agro, vel alicui ejus terræ, compenset sicut ejus illud æstimet’ (cap. xxvi.). In the Saxon Calendar there is a set of drawings illustrating the various employments and pastimes of the year; the one attached to the month of February gives some men pruning trees, vines apparently among them. However, this proves little, for the cuts appended to the months for gathering in the vintage represent scenes of hawkings and boar-huntings; the labours of the husbandmen being evidently subordinate. (A copy of this is inserted in Strutt’s Horda, vol. i. pl. xi.)

Something less than half a century from the death of Alfred brings us to the tragical end of King Edmund the Elder, for which unquestionably strong drink has to answer. Amidst much variety of statement on the part of the chroniclers, certain details seem fairly established. The day of the occurrence was the anniversary or Mass-day of St. Augustine (May 26), a day always observed among the Anglo-Saxons whose apostle he was. A banquet was held at which Leof, a noted outlaw, was present. While the cup was circulating the king observed the intruder. Heated with wine he started from his seat, seized the outlaw, and felled him to the ground. Leof grappled with the king, and with his concealed dagger stabbed his royal antagonist, a.d. 946. The event is said to have happened at Pukelechirche (Pucklechurch), in Gloucestershire, where was a palace of the Saxon kings.

Hard indeed it was for a king to escape such surroundings if even his disposition so prompted him. Of this the narrative of King Edwy affords abundant proof. On his coronation day, he retired from the revels of the banquet (linquens læta convivia), to his own apartments, much to the chagrin of the guests, who peremptorily sent to fetch him back. Dunstan and Cynesius were the agents employed. The king, probably loathing the drunkenness of a Saxon debauch, declined to return, upon which he was dragged by Dunstan from his seat to the hall of revelry. We may wonder that so distinguished an ecclesiastic should thus have urged the king to a scene of intemperance, but it is not wholly inconsistent with other details of his actions, of which the following narrative will serve as an illustration. King Athelstan dined with his relative Ethelfleda. The royal providers came to see if all was ready and suitable. Having inspected all, they told her, ‘you have plenty of everything, provided your mead holds out.’ The king came with numerous attendants. In the first salutation the mead ran short. Dunstan’s sagacity had foreseen the event, and provided against it. Though the cupbearers, as is the custom at royal feasts, were all the day serving it up in cut horns and other vessels, the liquor held out. This delighted the king, and much credit redounded to Dunstan (Turn. A. S., lib. vii. c. iii. who cites MS. Cott. Cleop. B. 13).

But the very name of Dunstan at once conveys us to the arcana of Monachism, and to the consideration of some of its alleged vices. Our business is to confine ourselves to the aspersions cast upon it on the score of intemperance. Two cautions are here necessary. First, in estimating the morality of the monks, it must be remembered that in the tenth century the monastic system had acquired a vast development, some of the monasteries containing several hundred inmates, many of whom were laymen. To these latter the intemperance is attributed by some Roman Catholic writers, whilst others do not hesitate to charge the monastic orders with excesses. In the next place it was the interest of Dunstan and his party to expose the irregularities of the secular priests, whom he hated as much as he despised, and whose ejection he compassed to make room for the regular monks, his pets. The harangue of King Edgar to the council convened by Dunstan may be taken as the saint’s indictment of the clergy, of whom the king says:—‘They spend their days in diversions, entertainments, drunkenness, and debauchery. Their houses may be said to be so many sinks of lewdness. There they pass the night in rioting and drunkenness.’[26]

Verily, King Edgar nearly anticipated by a thousand years the legislation proposed by the United Kingdom Alliance. Strutt says of him that, by the advice of Dunstan, he put down many ale-houses, suffering only one to exist in a village or small town; and he also further ordained that pins or nails should be fastened into the drinking-cups or horns, at stated distances, so that whosoever should drink beyond these marks at one draught should be liable to a severe punishment.[27] We shall have occasion to notice, when discussing the canons of Anselm, how this very pin-drinking, devised as a prohibitive measure, became a source of drunkenness.

Bad as was Edgar in some respects, we must clear him from a charge preferred against him by Palgrave, and to some extent by Lappenberg—that the vices of the foreigners who were incorporating themselves received encouragement from the king. Whatever countenance he gave to the Danes, it was not through them that the English became drunkards; that vice they had been already schooled in, and independently. The imputation, however, of these modern writers is readily traceable to the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury.

The Church certainly in this reign vied with the throne in checking intemperance. Thus the following canons occur in a code drawn up by Dunstan:—

(26) ‘Let no drinking be allowed in the Church.’

(28) ‘Let men be very temperate at Church-wakes, and pray earnestly, and suffer there no drinking or unseemliness.’

(57) ‘Let Priests beware of drunkenness, and be diligent in warning and correcting others in this matter.’

(58) ‘Let no Priest be an ale-scop, nor in any wise act the gleeman.’

In some penitential canons which Mr. Johnson assigns to Archbishop Dunstan, with the date a.d. 963, occur in canon vi. the words, “I confess Intemperance in eating and drinking, early and late.”

The following injunctions occur in Elfric’s canons:—

(29) ‘Let no Priest sottishly drink to Intemperance, nor force others so to do, for he should be always in readiness if a child is to be baptized, or a man to be houseled. And if nothing of this should happen, yet he ought not to be drunk, for our Lord hath forbidden drunkenness to His ministers.’

(30) ‘Let no Priest drink at taverns as secular men do.’

(35) ‘Nor ought men to drink or eat intemperately in God’s house, which is hallowed to this purpose, that the Body of God may be there eaten with faith. Yet men often act so absurdly as to sit up by night, and drink to madness within God’s house.’

But for them ‘twere better that they
In their beds lay,
Than that they God angered,
In that ghostly house.
Let him who will watch,
And honour God’s saints,
With stillness watch,
And make no noise,
But sing his prayers,
As he best can;
And let him who will drink,
And idly make noise,
Drink at his home,
Not in the Lord’s house,
That he God dishonour not,
To his own punishment.[28]

Other enactments may be discovered by the curious, scattered about the pages of early synods, e.g. nunneries were not to be houses of gossiping and drunkenness, and beds of luxury, but of sober and pious livers. An injunction this, evidently necessary, for Fosbroke (British Monachism, p. 22) speaks of the nuns of Coldingham as using oratories for feasting, drinking, and gossiping. The same author introduces us to the austere rule, as followed by the Britons, of Pachomius, that singular institutor of the cenobitic life in Upper Egypt in the fourth century. Abstinence seems to have been in force; at any rate there was a clause forbidding wine and liquamen (probably cider or perry) out of the infirmary. The inmates were also prohibited taverns[29] when necessity called them abroad. On such occasions they were restricted to ‘consecrated’ places. We have already seen that taverns at this time were anything but respectable, so ordinary travellers rarely used them; hence the propriety of this inhibition.

The requirements of Fulgentius, the African anchorite and bishop, were less severe. Among regulations of diet we find: ‘To have no more meat, drink, or clothes, than the rule allowed.’ ‘Not to eat or drink but at stated times.’ ‘No one to take any meat or drink before the abbot.’ The monastic rules of Dunstan were certainly laxer. The ordinary times for drinking were not too few, whilst special solemnities called for special refreshment. In the latter category we become acquainted with their caritates or charities—that is, cups of wine, to drink which the monks were summoned by sound of bell into the refectory, and which must have been rendered peculiarly palatable by their listening to the collation, which signified a reading of the lives of the fathers or devout books; from which edification late suppers have derived their name. These charities varied in their composition: sometimes they consisted of beer, sometimes a kind of honey compôte. Such indulgences or allowances of drink were also called misericord.

In the great monasteries the Poculum Caritatis was placed at the upper end of the refectory, on the abbot’s table. It was nothing more nor less than the old wassail-bowl, the latter word obtaining its name from the verbal formality adopted in health-drinking.’[30]

Enough has been said to correct the very common impression that the Benedictine orders were self-mortifying ascetics. Wealthy and learned, at times useful to souls as well as bodies, their virtues have often been overstated, whilst their vices no less frequently have been palliated or denied.

The canons of King Edgar’s reign furnish an almost complete epitome of the manners of the time. His twenty-eighth canon enjoined strict temperance at

Church Wakes.

Much confusion has been displayed by various writers in treating of the origin and rationale of these observances. Sir H. Spelman saw in them such occasions of gross intemperance, that he derives the word ‘wake’ from a Saxon word meaning drunkenness. But the derivation is to be found in the fact that wake and watch are the same words. The feast obtained its name from the night spent in watching—waking. Mr. Bourne rightly remarks[31] that at the conversion of the Saxons by Augustine, the heathen Paganalia were continued among the converts, with certain regulations, by order of Gregory the Great. This pope enjoined that on the day of dedication, or the birthday of holy martyrs, whose relics are there placed, the people should make to themselves booths of the boughs of trees, round about those very churches which had been the temples of idols, and should observe a religious feast; that beasts be no longer sacrificed to the devil, but for eating, and for God’s glory; that when the people were satisfied, they should return thanks to the Giver of all good things.[32] Here is the origin of the wake. The abuse of the original solemnity followed in accordance with the moral law of gravitation. At first, all was decorum; the people assembled at the church on the vigil or evening before the saint’s day, with burning candles, where they were wont devotionally to wake during the night. In process of time ‘the pepul fell to letcherie, and songs, and daunses, with harping and piping, and also to glotony and sinne; and so tourned the holyness to cursydness; wherefore holy faders ordeyned the pepull to leve that waking, and to fast the evyn. It is called vigilia—that is, waking in English—and eveyn, for of eveyn they were wont to come to churche.’[33] We shall find that in the reign of Edward III. Archbishop Thoresby adopted drastic measures to remedy such like abuses; whilst about the same time Chaucer, in his Ploughman’s Tales, censures the priests for caring more for pastimes than for their duty. He says they were expert

At the wrestlynge, and at the wake,
And chief chantours at the nale.[34]

The end of all this was that they were suppressed, and fairs were instituted on or near the saint’s day, to which the original name attaches in many villages.

Upon the whole, the action of King Edgar was favourable to the cause of temperance, and the perpetuation of his name on a tavern sign in the city of Chester, which, according to the legend, has existed ever since his time, could only be regarded as a piece of irony, were it not that it treasures the memory of the Saxon king being rowed down the Dee, as some report, by eight tributary kings.

An incident in the reign of Edward, the son and successor of Edgar, is especially worthy of note as introducing us to the origin of the custom called pledging in drinking. Strutt (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Britons), who evidently accepts the opinion of William of Malmesbury, gives us the old form or ceremony of pledging, as follows:—The person who was going to drink asked the one of the company who sat next to him whether he would pledge him, on which he, answering that he would, held up his knife or sword to guard him whilst he drank; for while a man is drinking he necessarily is in an unguarded posture, exposed to the treacherous stroke of some secret enemy. Thus a pledge was a security for the safety of the person drinking. This is said to have dated from the death of King Edward (commonly called Edward the Martyr), a.d. 978, who was murdered by the treachery of his step-mother Elfrida. The motive for her act is well known. Of the two claimants to the throne, Edward and Ethelred, she had preferred the latter, her own son, to his elder half-brother, her stepson. The story is told very differently by the chroniclers Gaimer, William of Malmesbury, and others; but the general purport is that Edward, when out hunting, determined to visit Elfrida, who was living with her son Ethelred at Corfe Castle. The queen went out on his arrival, received him with hypocritical kindness, and pressed him to alight, which he declined. ‘Then drink while you are on horseback,’ said the queen. ‘Willingly,’ said the king, ‘but first you will drink to me.’ The butlers filled a horn of claret and handed it to her. She drank the half of the filled horn, and then handed it to the king. While he was eagerly drinking from the cup presented, the dagger of an attendant pierced him through. Dropping the cup, he spurred his horse and fled. Soon he fainted through loss of blood, and fell from his saddle. His feet hung in the stirrups, by which he was dragged till life was extinct. It is only right to state that Mr. Brand (Popular Antiquities) takes a different view of the meaning of pledging. He imagines the phrase ‘I pledge myself’ to mean simply ‘I follow your example.’ But while most writers refer the custom to the Saxon incident of Edward’s death, Dr. Henry, in his History of Great Britain, refers the custom to the fear of the Danes; while Francis Wise, in his Further Observations upon the White Horse, with eclectic caution remarks: ‘The custom of pledging healths, still prevalent among Englishmen, is said to be owing to the Saxons’ mutual regard for each other’s safety, and as a caution against the treacherous inhospitality of the Danes when they came to live in peace with the natives.’

FOOTNOTES:

[26] The whole harangue may be found in Rapin’s History of England, vol. i. p. 108 (2nd ed. 1732).

[27] W. of Malmesbury (§ 149) quaintly adds as the reason for the gold or silver pegs:—‘That whilst every man knew his just measure, shame should compel each neither to take more himself, nor oblige others to drink beyond their own proper share.’

Compare some lines to be found in Holborn Drollery, 1673—

‘Edgar, away with pins i’ th’ cup
To spoil our drinking whole ones up.’

Cf. also the account of these tankards in Pegge’s Anonymiana, 1809.

[28] This last metrical passage is added by Thorpe (Ancient Laws and Institutes, vol. ii. p. 356). Sir H. Spelman gave it up as irrecoverable. His words are ‘reliqua abscidit nequam aliquis plagiarius.’ See Johnson’s Collection of Laws and Canons, sub-canon 35 of Elfric.

[29] A like prohibition occurs in Apost. Can., 46.

[30] The explanation given by Selden in a note on Drayton’s Polyolbion, song 9, is perhaps as good as any. He says:—‘I see a custome in some parts among us. I mean the yearly Was-haile in the country on the vigil of the new yeare, which I conjecture was a usuall ceremony among the Saxons before Hengist, as a note of health-wishing.’

[31] Antiquitates Vulgares.

[32] The copy of this letter, which Gregory sent to the Abbot Mellitus (a.d. 601), will be found in Bede, Eccles. Hist., lib. i. ch. xxx. It is not to be supposed that Pope Gregory originated such an ordinance. Festivals or dedications, called encænia, were well known to the early Church, e.g. Sozomen (ii. 26) gives an account of the dedication festival in memory of Constantine’s Church at Jerusalem. Cf. also Hospinianus: De festis Christianorum, p. 113.

[33] Homily for the vigil of St. John Baptist. Harl. MS.

[34] i.e. ale-house.

CHAPTER IV.

DANISH PERIOD.

It was at the close of this tenth century that the Danes made their determined resolve to invade this kingdom. Here again we shall see how closely the destinies of our country have been associated with strong drink and its surroundings. It was at a riotous banquet that Sweyne vowed to kill or expel King Ethelred. The mode in which a Scandinavian heir took possession of his heritage was this: he gave a banquet, at which he drank to the memory of the deceased, and then seated himself in the daïs which the previous master of the house always occupied. In conformity with this usage, Sweyne gave a succession banquet. On the first day of the feast he filled a horn and drank to his father’s memory, making at the same time a solemn vow that before three winters had passed he would sail with a large army to England, and either murder Ethelred or drive him out of the country. After all the guests had drunk to King Harold’s memory, the horns were again filled and emptied in honour of Christ. The third toast was given to Michael the Archangel, and so on. There is much in this to shock, and still more when we know that this custom was perpetuated. But Mr. Mallet (Northern Antiquities, p. 113), speaking of one of the religious ceremonies of the North, says: ‘They drank immoderately; the kings and chief lords drank first, healths in honour of the gods; every one drank afterwards, making some vow or prayer to the god whom he named.’ Hence came that custom among the first Christians in Germany and the North, of drinking to the health of our Saviour, the Apostles, and the Saints: a custom which the Church was often obliged to tolerate.

May we infer that retributive justice was at work, and found its expression in the vow of Sweyne? The character of Ethelred transpires in the official message sent by the Danish settler Turkill (called also Turketul), to Sweyne, inviting him to England. In this he lures him by describing the country as rich and fertile, the king a driveller, wholly given up to wine, &c., hateful to his own people, and contemptible to foreigners.

Under such a king we cannot wonder at the Danes landing and plundering at will. Nor are we surprised, knowing their character for excesses, that the Danes should have acted as they did with barbarous atrocity to one of the holiest saints whose name adorns the pages of the Roman martyrology. St. Elphege had for some few years been transferred from the see of Winchester to the primacy. The Danes took Canterbury by storm, and massacred the inhabitants, in spite of the earnest protests of the archbishop. Nor did their vengeance spare the mediator; after brutally ill-treating him they confined him in irons in a filthy dungeon. After the lapse of several months they offered him freedom upon the payment of a ransom. This he stoutly refused, predicting at the same time the downfall of their usurpation. Thereupon the Danish chiefs, drunken with wine from the South, hurled at their victim stones, bones, and the skulls of oxen, and felled him to the earth with the back of their battle-axes. One of his converts mercifully released him from his misery on the 19th of April, 1012. The parish church of Greenwich, named in his honour, marks the site of his martyrdom.[35]

But the deeds of blood with which drink is connected, and which signalise this reign, are not yet all told. Two of the noblest thanes of the Danish burghs were accused of treachery to the king, at a grand political congress held at Oxford in the year 1015. In the banquet chamber, when, as Malmesbury states, they were drunk to excess, they were slain by attendants prepared for the purpose, with the assent of Ethelred. The horrible massacre of the Danes by this king in 1002 is commonly thought to have originated the holiday known as Hoke-day or Hock-day. This is a mistake, as will be shown in treating of this festivity in connection with the death of Hardicanute.

Not only did strong drink minister to the conviviality of the time, but it is evident that then, as ever, virtue was conceived to attach to its use. The medical knowledge of the time was almost confined to superstitious recipes; and in these ale was often an ingredient, as was wine. For the cure of sore eyes a paste of strawberry plants and pepper was prescribed, to be diluted for use in sweet wine.[36] Again, patients, while sitting in a medicated bath, were to drink a decoction of betony and other herbs, which were to be boiled in Welsh ale. To betony were ascribed extraordinary virtues. Its fresh flowers are said to have an intoxicating effect. Ale also formed an ingredient in religious charms, e.g. ‘Take thrift-grass, yarrow, elehtre, betony, penny-grass, carruc, fane, fennel, church-wort, Christmas-wort, lovage; make them into a potion with clear ale, sing seven masses over the plants daily,’ &c. This was a recipe for a person labouring under a disease caused by evil spirits, and was to be administered in a church bell.

Ethelred’s life scarcely harmonised with his laws. In the year 1008, it is ordered, among other monitions, that diabolic deeds be shunned, ‘in gluttony and drunkenness.’ Again, at the council of Enham, the 28th ordinance cautions to the same effect. The Church also spoke out boldly. Thus, in the 13th injunction of Theodulf’s Capitula, we read, ‘It very greatly concerns every mass-priest to guard himself against drunkenness; and that he teach this to the people subject to him. Mass-priests ought not to eat or drink at ale-houses.’ One piece of the then legislation is worthy of attention to-day; an ale-house was regarded as a privileged spot; quarrels that arose there were more severely punished than elsewhere.[37]

Whether or no the custom of pledging in drinking, to which reference has already been made, originated in consequence of the treacherous murder of Edward, certain it is that the usage owed its revival and perpetuation to the perfidious inhospitality of the Danes when they gained a footing in England. Shakespeare alludes to their dastardly practice of stabbing the English while drinking, when he makes Apemantus say:—

‘If I
Were a huge man, I should fear to drink at meals,
Lest they should spy my windpipe’s dangerous notes:
Great men should drink with harness on their throats.’[38]

So haughty were the Danes at first that they would not brook the English drinking in their presence unless invited; indeed, they are said to have punished such an act of supposed discourtesy with death. No wonder, then, that our people would not venture to lift the cup until the Danes had guaranteed their safety by a pledge.

The absurd custom of toasting received from the Danes a mighty impulse. The drinking of healths was an important element in their civil and religious banquets. After their conversion to Christianity, the toast of the saints took the place of that of their gods Odin and Thor. Thus, to take an example from the life of St. Wenceslaus, ‘Taking the cup, he says with a loud voice, “Let us drink this in the name of the holy Archangel Michael, begging and praying him to introduce our souls into the peace of eternal exaltation.”’[39] St. Olave, to whom they owed their conversion, was another favourite toast. St. John the Baptist was also thus commemorated. The old expressions, Drink-heil, Was-heil, had given place to Pril-wril,[40] the precursors of the more modern hob-nob, a term which now is used to denote close and familiar friendship, but which once under the form of ‘habbe or nabbe’ denoted ‘have or have not,’ and then became narrowed in meaning to the convivial question whether a person will have a glass to drink, or not, and so passed to its present intention.[41]

The chronicler, John Brompton, is right in saying, ‘by nature the Danes are mighty drinkers,’ but he errs like the rest of them in saying that they left that quality as a perpetual inheritance to the English. The Saxons had already done this. And it is a question whether in this respect the Danes did not learn quite as much as they taught. Iago was probably right in his dialogue with Cassio, ‘Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander, drink, oh! are nothing to your English.’[42] At any rate, the Danish kings adopted the Saxon drinks—ale, cider, mead, wine, morat, and pigment, and half the Danish dynasty adopted them to their ruin.

The tragical end of Hardicanute is characteristic of the age in which he lived, and was in keeping with his life. A wedding-feast was given at Lamhithe (Lambeth) by Osgod Clapa, a great lord, in celebration of the marriage of his daughter Githa with Tovi Pruda, a Danish nobleman; when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the king Harthacnut, as he stood at his drink, suddenly fell to the earth with a terrible convulsion ... and after that spake not one word. Others add that he fell in the act of pledging the company in a huge bumper.[43] Smollett attributes his immediate end to over-eating at this banquet, at the same time asserting that he was particularly addicted to feasting and drinking, which he indulged to abominable excess. To the same effect, Rapin writes: ‘All historians unanimously agree, he spent whole days and nights in feasting and carousing.’

We cannot leave this short-reigned votary of the cup without noticing the celebrated antiquarian hoax played upon Richard Gough, the famous English antiquary of the last century, by the fabrication of an inscription purporting to record the death of the Saxon king, Hardicanute. Steevens, as an act of revenge, obtained the fragment of a chimney slab, and scratched upon it the inscription in Anglo-Saxon letters, of which all I can make is, ‘Here Hardnut cyning gedronge vin hyrn’—i.e. ‘here Harthcanute, king, drank wine horn,’ &c.[44]

It was alleged to have been discovered in Kennington Lane, where the palace of the monarch was said to be situated, and the fatal drinking bout to have taken place. Gough fell into the trap, exhibited the curiosity to the Society of Antiquaries; Mr. Pegge, F.S.A., wrote a paper on it; the society’s draughtsman, Schnebbelie, drew the inscription, and it was engraved in the Gentleman’s Magazine.

A curious festival is said to commemorate King Hardicanute’s death. John Rouse relates that the anniversary of it was kept by the English as a holiday in his time, four hundred years afterwards, and was called

Hock-day.

This festival in its various intentions is found variously described as hoke-day, hock-tide, hob-tide, hog’s-tide, hawkey, hockey, horkey. As numerous as its names are the derivations suggested for them. Thus, Dr. J. Nott, in a note to Herrick’s Ode, The Hock-Cart, speaks of Hock-tide or Heag-tide as signifying high-tide, the height of merriment (from heag or heah, high). Bryant (cited in Nares’ Glossary) derives it from the German hoch, high. Fosbroke (Encyc. Antiq.) speaks of the hocking on St. Blaze’s Day (Feb. 3) as taken from the women who were torn by hokes and crotchets mentioned in his legend. Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1634) derives Hoc-tide from Heughtyde, which, he says, means in the Netherlands a festival season. Sir H. Spelman derives it from the German hocken, to put in heaps: a derivation which would well suit the application of the term to a harvest festival, as would the German hocke, a heap of sheaves. But surely S. D. Denne is right (Hist. Particulars of Lambeth) in deriving it from hochzeit, wedding. As it was at the celebration of the feast at the wedding of a Danish lord Canute Pruden with Lady Pitha that Hardicanute died suddenly, our ancestors had certainly sufficient grounds for distinguishing the day of so happy an event by a word denoting the wedding-feast, the wedding-day, the wedding Tuesday. And if the justness of this conjecture shall be allowed, may not the reason be discovered why the women bore rule on this celebrity, for all will admit that at a wedding the bride is the queen of the day.

If we refer the original of this festival to the eleventh century, two occasions present themselves as claimants for the honour. The first is the massacre of the Danes under Ethelred, 1002. The old Coventry play of Hock-Tuesday points to this date. This play, which was performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1575, represented a series of skirmishes between the English and Danes, in which the latter, after two victories, were overcome, and many led captive in triumph by the women. This play the men of Coventry explained to be grounded on story, and to be an old-established pageant. The custom may, at any rate, be traced back to the thirteenth century. Two objections are lodged against the reference of the festival to this occurrence. In the first place it does seem a valid objection that a holiday could never have been instituted to commemorate an event which afforded matter rather for humiliation than for mirth and festivity. The measure was unwise as it was inhuman, for Sweyn terribly retaliated the next year, and inflicted upon the country unparalleled misery and oppression. The second objection is that of Henry of Huntingdon, who thinks the dates cannot be made to fit, the massacre of the Danes being on St. Brice’s Day (Nov. 13), and the death of Hardicanute June 8. But this difficulty would be removed if we accepted the statement of Milner (Hist. Winchester), that by an order of Ethelred, the sports were transferred from November to the Monday in the third week after Easter. And here the question opens as to the day of the week upon which the feast was celebrated. Dr. Plot (Hist. Oxon.) makes Monday the principal day; on the other hand Tuesday is of general acceptance: hence the special designations, Hock-Tuesday, Binding-Tuesday. The fact is, that the Monday was the vigil of the festival, and soon came to be kept in common with the festival.

In Ellis’s edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities will be found a number of financial extracts of ancient records referring to this feast—e.g. in the parish registers of St. Lawrence, Reading, in the year 1499, we find recorded:—

‘Item, received of Hock money gaderyd of women, xxs.

‘Item, received of Hok money gaderyd of men, iiijs.’

In the St. Giles’s parish register, under date 1535: ‘Hoc money gatheryd by the wyves, xiijs. ixd.’

In the register of St. Mary’s parish, 1559: ‘Hoctyde money, the men’s gathering, iijs. The women’s, xijs.’

These hoc-tydes came to be scenes of revelry and excess, causing their inhibition, in 1450, by the Bishop of Worcester. This would simply apply to his own diocese. They were still apparently in vogue in the seventeenth century; thus Wyther[45]:—

Because that once a yeare
They can affoord the poore some slender cheere,
Observe their country feasts or common doles,
And entertain their Christmass wassaile boles,
Or els because that, for the Churche’s good,
They in defence of Hock-tide custome stood,
A Whitsun-ale or some such goodly motion, &c.

The custom has now long been abolished.

One feature of the social life of the Saxons is especially interesting, in which we see the precursor of the modern club. Voluntary associations, or sodalitates, were frequently formed, the objects of which were variously, protection, conviviality, and relief, both for soul and body. Turner mentions a gild-scipe (guild-ship) at Exeter, which purported to have been made for God’s love and their soul’s need. The meetings were three times a year, besides the holy-days after Easter. Every member was to bring a certain quantity of malt, and every cniht was to add a less quantity and some honey. The fines of their own imposition imply that the materials of conviviality were not forgotten.[46]

Historians are for once unanimous in depicting the general character of the Anglo-Saxons. Perhaps none have painted it in blacker colours than Niebuhr. England, he says, at the time of the Conquest was not only effete with the drunkenness of crime, but with the crime of drunkenness. The soldiery, as was natural, shared in the general demoralisation. They laboured under a greater deficiency than any which can result from the want of weapons or of armour. Stout, well-fed, and hale, the Anglo-Saxon when sober was fully a match for any adversary who might be brought from the banks of the Seine or the Loire. But they were addicted to debauchery, and the wine-cup unnerves the stoutest arm.[47] These were the troops who fortified themselves for the fatal battle of Hastings with strong drink, and whose cries of revelry resounded throughout the night. In the quaint language of Fuller, ‘The English, being revelling before, had in the morning their brains arrested for the arrearages of the indigested fumes of the former night, and were no better than drunk when they came to fight.’[48]

FOOTNOTES:

[35] The life of St. Elphege may be found in Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., and a brief account of him in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, sub. April 19. An engraving of the saint is given in the Calendar of the Prayer Book Illustrated, taken from an effigy in Wells Cathedral.

[36] MS. Reg. 12, D. xvii., fol. 13-20. Cf. Wright, Biog. Britann. Liter., p. 98, &c.

[37] Hume: Hist. Eng., vol. i. 123.

[38] Timon of Athens, act i. sc. 2.

[39] Some interesting information on this head may be found in an article in Du Cange’s Glossarium ad Script. Lat., sub ‘Bibere in amore Sanctorum.’

[40] Cf. Fosbroke, British Monachism, who cites MS. Cott. Tiber, B. 13.

[41] Several examples are given in the article in Nares’ Glossary, edited by the distinguished antiquaries J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Esq., and the late Mr. Thomas Wright.

[42] Shakespeare, Othello, act ii. scene 3.

[43] See Cotton MSS., Tib., b. i. and Tib., b. iv. Allen, Hist. of Lambeth Chronicle of Florence of Worcester.

[44] Another interpretation is given in Book of Days, sub., Dec. 13. See engraving in Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lx. 1790, pt. 3, p. 217.

[45] Abuses Stript and Whipt, 1618.

[46] Anglo-Saxons, lib. vii. ch. x.

[47] Palgrave: Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, ch. xiv.

[48] Fuller: Church Hist. of Britain, lib. iii. § 1. The indictment is endorsed by Mr. Freeman upon the authority of William of Malmesbury: ‘The English spent the night in drinking and singing, the Normans in prayer and confession of their sins’—Norman Conquest of England, iii. 241.

CHAPTER V.

NORMAN PERIOD.

We have now arrived at a period which introduces a new element in the formation of our national social life. Information respecting the habits of the Normans is derivable not only from the chroniclers and historians of the period, but from illuminated manuscripts, Anglo-Norman fabliaux, the Bayeux tapestry, wood and other carvings in sacred edifices, and even from chessmen.[49]

The Norman historians insist that their countrymen introduced greater sobriety, and are ever contrasting their own morality with that of the Saxons to the disparagement of the latter. William of Malmesbury speaks of the Saxon nobility as given up to luxury and wantonness: ‘Drinking in parties was a universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed; hence it arose that when they engaged William, more with rashness and precipitate fury than military skill, they doomed themselves and their country to slavery, by one, and that an easy, victory.’[50] Some of our later writers, making little allowance for the national bias of Norman historians, have even intensified this contrast. Thus, a modern gleaner of English literature ventures to assert that the brutal intemperance to which the Saxon was so prone, the Norman was free from. But scenes and incidents which are ready to hand from Norman history must lead us to modify such an opinion, or at any rate compel the acknowledgment that the Normans very soon accommodated themselves to the luxurious habits of the English.[51] Among the many conspiracies formed in the reign of the first William, one at least was organised and developed amidst the surroundings of excess, which cost one of its noble projectors his life. The king had refused to give his consent to the alliance by marriage of the noble houses of Norfolk and Hereford. Opportunity was taken of the king’s absence from the country to cement the union. A splendid banquet marked the event. Among the many distinguished guests was Earl Waltheof. Norfolk and Hereford, fearing the anger of the king at their disobedience, formed a scheme to depose him, and communicated the same to their guests as soon as they saw them heated with wine. Waltheof, who had well drunk, readily entered into the conspiracy; but on the morrow, when the fumes of the drink were dispersed, he repented his rash precipitation. Betaking himself to Lanfranc he confessed all—he urged in extenuation that his intemperance on the occasion had prevented due reflection, and craved his mediation. All was of no avail; he was apprehended and publicly beheaded. Thus fell another of the long roll of victims to drink.

A scene in lower life is depicted in the life of Hereward. The hero in disguise is taken into King William’s kitchen to entertain the cooks. After dinner the wine and ale were freely distributed, and the result was a violent quarrel between the cooks and Hereward; the former used the tridents and forks for weapons, while he took the spit from the fire as a still more formidable weapon of defence.[52] On another occasion, when Hereward secretly returned to his paternal home, which had been taken possession of by a Norman intruder, he was aroused in the middle of the night by sounds of boisterous revelry and merriment. Stealthily approaching, he saw the new lord of Brunne with his knights overcome by deep potations, and enjoying the coarse songs and brutal jests of a wandering minstrel.

An anecdote producing the same kind of impression is told of Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester. In the time of the Conqueror he was obliged to retain a large retinue of men-at-arms through fear of the Danes. He would not dine in private, but sat in his public hall with his boisterous soldiers; and while they were drinking for hours together at dinner, he would keep them company to restrain them by his presence, pledging them, when it came to his turn, in a tiny cup which he pretended to taste, and in the midst of the din ruminating to himself on the Psalms.[53]

The illuminated manuscripts of the period abound with illustrations of banquets, cupbearers, servants in cellars, &c., that suggest that the life then was not more than either meat or drink. Rightly did John of Salisbury remark that William would have deserved more renown had he rather promulgated laws of temperance to a nation which he would not have subdued by arms had it not already been conquered by excess of luxury.[54]

As late as the year 1070 we are reminded of the intemperate propensity of the Danes. During that year Sweyn visited this country. According to the Saxon Chronicle they rifled the minster of Peterborough, put out to sea with the spoil, and were arrested by a storm which scattered their ships in all directions. Some of the spoil, it appears, was brought back for safety, and placed in the identical church. Then afterwards, continues the Chronicle, ‘through their carelessness and through their drunkenness, on a certain night the church and all that was within it was consumed with fire. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burnt and harried.’

We have already enumerated the drinks adopted by the Saxons and the Danes. They were principally ale, wine, mead, cider, morat, and pigment. To these their Norman successors added clarré, garhiofilac, and hippocras. Wine was perhaps more used than formerly, being chiefly imported from France; but ale and mead were the common drinks. The innumerable entries in Domesday Book show how large a proportion of the productions of the country at this time consisted in honey, which was used chiefly for the manufacture of mead.

New plantations of vines seem to have been made about the time of the Conquest, e.g. in the village of Westminster, at Chenetone in Middlesex, Ware in Hertfordshire, Hanten in Worcestershire. They are measured by arpents (arpenni). Holeburne had its vineyard, which came into the possession of the Bishops of Ely, and subsequently gave its name to a street which still exists. In Domesday Book (1086), among the lands of Suein in Essex, is an entry respecting an enclosure of six arpents, which in good seasons (si bene procedit) yielded twenty modii of wine.

Vineyards were attached to the greater abbeys, especially in the south. This is easily accountable: (1) The situation was in well sheltered valleys, (2) Many of the monks were foreigners, and would know the best modes of culture. Canterbury Church and St. Augustine’s Abbey had vineyards; so had Colton, St. Martin’s, Chertham, Brook, Hollingburn, and Halling, also Santlac near Battle, and Windsor.

William of Malmesbury, speaking of the fertility of the Vale of Gloucester, and the spontaneous growth of apple-trees, adds that vineyards were more abundant there (vinearum frequentia densior) than in any other district of England, the crops more abundant, and the flavour superior. Moreover, the wines were very little behind those of France. Mr. Barrington is clearly in error (Archæol. iii. p. 77) in imagining that Malmesbury intends orchards and cider, not vineyards and vines. Surely he would have used the terms then in use for these—viz. pomeria and poma. Indeed, in another passage, Malmesbury, speaking of Thorney in the Isle of Ely, says it was studded on the one side with apple-trees, on the other covered with vines, which either trail or are supported on poles. Knight remarks that this question of the ancient growth of the vine in England was the subject of a regular antiquarian passage-at-arms in 1771, when the Hon. Daines Barrington entered the lists to overthrow all the chroniclers and antiquaries from Malmesbury to Pegge, and to prove that English grapes were currants and that the vineyards of Domesday Book were nothing but gardens. The Antiquarian Society inscribed the paper pellets shot on the occasion as The Vineyard Controversy.

Speaking of the Windsor vines, William Lambarde says that tithe of them was yielded in great plenty, ‘accompts have been made of the charges of planting the vines that grew in the little park, as also of making the wines, whereof some parts were spent in the household and some sold for the king’s profit.’

The list of religious houses to which vineyards, and in many cases orchards likewise, were attached might be indefinitely extended. There is a record of a vineyard at St. Edmundsbury. The Saxon Chronicle states that Martin, Abbot of Peterborough, planted another. William Thorn, the monastic chronicler, writes that in his abbey of Nordhome the vineyard was profitable and famous. But notwithstanding all this, vine cultivation in this country could never commercially compete with France; and wine would have been to the mass of the people an unattainable luxury, had not the ports of Southampton and Sandwich been open to foreign exports.

A glance at the occupations of the servants will afford some idea of the monastic life of the period; e.g. in the time of William Rufus, the servants at Evesham numbered five in the church, two in the infirmary, two in the cellar, five in the kitchen, seven in the bakehouse, four brewers, four menders, two in the bath, two shoe-makers, two in the orchard, three gardeners, one at the cloister gate, two at the great gate, five at the vineyard, four who served the monks when they went out, four fishermen, four in the abbot’s chamber, three in the hall.[55]

The name of the second William is one of the blots on our regal history. He possessed, as is believed, his father’s vices without his virtues. 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 tells 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. In his reign excess and sensuality prevailed amongst the nobility as everywhere, unchecked and well-nigh unrebuked; the voice even of the Primate being stifled for the moment in the general profligacy, for, failing of the co-operation of his suffragans, he quitted the kingdom, powerless to cope with the depravity of the times.

An earnest desire on the part of Henry to curry favour and popularity with the people was the cause of the recall of the archbishop from his retirement at Lyons. His efforts after a reformation of manners were at once renewed. Among the canons of Anselm, decreed at Westminster 1102, appears the following:—‘That priests go not to drinking bouts, nor drink to pegs (ad pinnas).’[56] It will be remembered that Archbishop Dunstan had ordained that pins or nails should be fastened into the drinking-cups at stated distances, to prevent persons drinking beyond these marks. This well intended provision had been terribly perverted, and the pegs intended for the restriction of potations became the provocatives of challenges to drink, and thus the instruments of intemperance. This abuse, at first an occasional sport, developed into a custom, and was called pin-drinking or pin-nicking, and to it we owe the common slang, ‘He is in a merry pin.’ The cups thus marked with pins, usually called peg-tankards, held two quarts. Inside was a row of eight pegs, one above the other from top to bottom; thus was there half a pint between each peg. Each person in turn drank a peg-measure; thus, while the capabilities of the persons drinking were variable, the draughts were a fixed quantity, so this inevitably gave rise to intemperance, more especially as the tankards were renewed ad libitum.

The asceticism of Anselm met with the usual opposition. One of Queen Matilda’s letters to the Primate contained a strong effort to dissuade him from such a habit. She urged the comfortable advice to Timothy, besides quoting Greek and Roman philosophers. Nor would his views be palatable to many of the clergy, who in this respect fell under the impeachment of the chroniclers, whilst even the high places of the Church were open to animadversion. The story is told of Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, that when lodged in the White Tower he freed himself by stratagem. He provided himself in prison with stores of wine. Among the casks sent in was one which a confederate had filled, not with wine, but with a coil of rope. The gaolers he plied with drink, till overcome by it they left him free to act. Thus did the Bishop make his escape.

From incidental notices we gather that strong drink was used in profusion. Thus in the king’s progresses, when too often wholesale spoliation marked the action of his retinue, we read of his followers burning provisions, washing their horses’ feet with the ale or mead, pouring the drink on the ground, or otherwise wasting it.

The tragedy of the reign was the loss of the ‘Blanche Nef.’ King Henry and his heir, Prince William, embarked at Harfleur for England on the same night in separate vessels. The prince, to make the passage agreeable, took with him a number of the young nobility. All was mirth and joviality. The prince ordered three casks of wine to be given to the ship’s crew. The mariners were in consequence many of them intoxicated when they put out to sea at nightfall. It was the great desire of the prince to overtake his father, who had sailed considerably earlier, and this emulation was one of the causes of the disaster. The vessel, which was sailing dangerously fast, struck upon a rock and began to sink. The prince would, however, have been saved in a boat that was lowered, but, putting back in response to the cries of his half-sister, the boat sunk beneath the load of the numbers who tried to avail themselves of its succour. Of some three hundred passengers aboard the White Ship, only one escaped to tell the mournful tale. The king, it is said, was never after seen to laugh, though he survived the dismal wreck about fifteen years. Personally, he was a man of strictly regular habits. Never was he known to be guilty of any excess in eating or drinking, except that which cost him his life. A surfeit of lampreys is said to have hastened his end; but for this, all history endorses the testimony of the chronicler that he was plain in his diet, rather satisfying the calls of hunger than surfeiting himself by variety of delicacies. He never drank but to allay thirst, execrating the least departure from temperance both in himself and in those about him.

Allusions abound in this Norman period to convivial meetings of the middle and lower classes in inns or private houses. The miracles of St. Cuthbert, as related by Reginald of Durham, give an insight to their private life in the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus, a parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, is described as passing the evening drinking with the parish priest. Returning home late he was pursued by dogs, and reaching his own house in terror, shut the door upon them. He then mounted to a garret window to look at his persecutors, when he was seized with madness, and his family being roused carried him into the court and bound him to the seats (sedilia). On another occasion, a youth and his monastic teacher are represented as going to a tavern, and passing the whole of the night in drinking, till one of them becomes intoxicated, and cannot be prevailed on to return home.

Hospitality in these troublous times was freely exercised. The monasteries had their open guest-houses; the burgesses in the towns were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers, in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular taverns (hospitia).

Sir Walter Scott would be ready to defend the clergy, as we found him shielding the Norman nobles from any such imputation. The dialogue in Ivanhoe will be remembered. ‘An’ please, your reverence,’ said Dennet, ‘a drunken priest came to visit the sacristan at St. Edmund’s.’ ‘It does not please my reverence,’ answered the Churchman, ‘that there should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that a layman should so speak of him. Be mannerly, my friend, and conclude the holy man only wrapped in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine. I have felt it myself.’

For reasons to be mentioned immediately, home vineyards were beginning to be less cultivated, though they were not by any means discontinued. William of Malmesbury tells of a vineyard attached to his monastery, which was first planted in the eleventh century by a Greek monk who settled there. The Exchequer Rolls contain a discharge of the sheriffs of Northampton and Leicester, in the fifth year of Stephen, for certain expenses incurred on account of the royal vineyard at Rockingham.

The acquisition of the Duchy of Guienne (1152) naturally led to an interchange of commodities between England and France. Wine traffic with Bordeaux was at once established; and from this time our statutes are laden with ordinances concerning the importation of French wine, most of which, in conformity to the mistaken notions of political economy in those times, fix the maximum of price for which they were to be sold.