when visiting at Ashe, at the shouts of the reapers, and their cry after finishing cutting the wheat on the estate, "We have'n we have'n!" The cider tax occurred to him. Lord North is said to have looked upon himself as a dead man, and Sir Robert Hamilton, the husband of Lady Drake's sister, seized a sword for defence, till the steward explained the local custom.* In conclusion of cider just as the Breton, in whatever quarter of the world he may be placed, amidst the choicest luxuries and cuisine sighs for his galette, even so does the man of the cider counties remember and regret his native liquor. Nothing is to him equal to the beverage of his boyhood.

SPIRITS used to be called "comfortable waters," and strong waters," in the reign of James I. When a poor country person begs for spirit now-a-day at the rich man's door, for some one who is sick, he asks by a general term for 66 some comfortable stuff."

Spirits are not mentioned any more than cider at the great feast at Lyme, the Cobb ale, the dinner at Ford House to King Charles I., nor in any accompt of corporation dinners in the seventeenth century. When Sir George Summers, of Lyme, in 1609, was driven before a hurricane, which led to his discovery of the Bermudas or Summer Islands, there appeared no hope of saving the ship, so waterlogged was she at last. In this extremity we learn those who had "comfortable waters" drank to one another as taking their last leaves. Beer was shipped at Lyme when a party were about to sail against the pirates.

The invention of this or that kind of drink is not a subject to be here discussed. It is the coming into general use, and its effect upon society of each beverage, that we wish to describe.

Rum could only have been made after that molasses or treacle became abundant, from the great growth of the sugar-cane about the middle of the seventeenth century.

*See Pulman's Book of the Axe.

When the Duke of Monmouth was being conducted to London in 1685 as a prisoner, having a bad cold, he took at Romsey, while remaining in the saddle, a hot glass of rum and eggs. This "Jamaica" was a fashionable spirit in James the Second's and following reign. In 1856 there is no demand for rum even by spirit drinkers.

Punch, which has rum for its chief ingredient, was all the rage when its due proportions began to be discovered. This compound was adopted at the corporation dinners at Lyme.

We find that the novelty was the rage at its introduction. When Coade was mayor, in 1737, at a feast of the corporation, sixteen bowls of punch were drunk, at a charge of one shilling each. Brandy was sold for many years at one shilling a gallon.

Rum, brandy, Hollands, and wine now being subject to a heavy duty, the smuggling trade began to be brisk. These commodities were brought across from the Channel Islands in small barrels or tubs, and landed at once or sunk in rafts to be taken up when an opportunity offered. The custom house establishments were large, and provided with long boats, in which the officers sailed after smugglers, and crept for sunk rafts.

This smuggling trade during the reigns of the first King Georges threw into the country, at the back of the south coast of England, a great quantity of spirit. The drinking of spirits and water became a common practice, where ale or strong beer was indulged in before. Either in excess is bad. Very generally does an opinion prevail that strong beer drinking, even in excess, could hurt no one. This is incorrect, as is a sweeping charge against the moderate use of spirit, as if any use of it must be hurtful.

The introduction of cheap foreign spirit created a very pernicious habit that of dram drinking. At Lyme, in 1774, the vestry determined "to afford no relief to those who frequent houses where drams are sold." Dram drinking created private drunkards, who were a rare class in

DRUNKENNESS.

RAGE FOR COFFEE-HOUSES.

447

Drunkenness and conviviality were before

former ages.
that closely allied.

Old women fell under the imputation of liking raw spirits. When the Isle of Man was sold by the Duke of Atholl to the Crown, that it might no longer continue to be a nest of smugglers, the song containing these lines was composed:

"There's not an old wife loves a dram,

But must lament for the Isle of Man."

The use of wine, beer, and cider for a meal the morning and evening draught - has given way to the decoctions made from foreign products.

The far-famed Sir Anthony Shirley, when he arrived at Aleppo in 1598, first tasted a drink that he described as being "made of a seed which will soon intoxicate the brain," and which, though "nothing toothsome, was wholesome." This was coffee.

I detected the first entry in a mayor's account, in 1686, of that functionary having at the Dorchester assizes taken coffee. Coffee-houses became quite the rage in the metropolis. There was a floating coffee-house opposite Somerset House, called the "Folly." The borough towns of the country soon emulated London in being provided with coffee-houses, where every one was admitted who laid down a penny at the bar. Though coffee was only introduced. from Turkey in 1650, it became fashionable in the reign of Charles II., and is thus spoken of by Pope in his "Rape of the Lock:"

"Coffee, which makes the politician wise,

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes."

The "Kingdom's Intelligencer" contains these prices:

In 1662, at a new coffee-house, the "Great Turk," right coffee powder sold at from 4s. to 6s. 8d. per lb.; that pounded in a mortar at 2s. a lb.

Chocolate, an Indian drink, was charged 2s. 6d. a lb.

Tea was to be had from 6s. to 60s. a lb.

All gentlemen that were customers were invited the next New Year's Day to partake of coffee there "on free cost." See Burn's account of the Tokens in the collection of Mr. Beaufoy. When made, the drink paid 4d. a gallon to the

excise.

Tea began to be mentioned in the diaries of gentlemen residing in the country after the year 1700; so slowly was the new beverage introduced in parts remote from the great cities.

Drinking when transacting Business.

THE principal men of boroughs, in the Tudor reigns, drank when transacting business of every kind; and this at a tavern, just as the lower orders do in the present day. The sober only complied with a general practice; the intemperate, doubtless, as their modern representatives, seized an opportunity thus offered for inordinate indulgence. The practice once admitted, it was better that the pottle of sack should be drank at a tavern than at the house of business, over which was the family residence. For instance, Mr. William Tudbold, Mayor of Lyme, 1551, enters:

Item, paid at Robert Davy's when we new agreed with Whytte the mason, vid.

We may in fairness add, that the parties transacting business felt more independent at a tavern than they would in the private residence of either party, and were bound to make some return to the landlord for the use of his house. At home, when wine was produced, many of the family might have been expected to partake. Thus an injurious and expensive habit may have been acquired, or the foundation laid at all events.

REGULATIONS AS TO BAKING.

449

Regulations for the Baking and Sale of Bread.

BREAD occupies much less space than beer in our borough archives. Few are found faulty in respect of their making the former; and scarcely any regulations have come down to us, while the latter article occasioned many local legislative enactments, deemed, no doubt, to be no more necessary than important. We early read of horse bread and sale bread. These were, perhaps, much the same, the latter being bread not baked for home consumption, but for sale, and the former sale bread carried about the country on horse-back. A horse-loaf weighed 18 oz. troy, and sold, in 1588, for 1d. Nearly every one used to bake for his own use. There was

in the 18th century no white bread baker at Lyme, as lately, perhaps still, at Penrith, a town of 8000 inhabitants. There was a great distinction made between the white and black bread bakers in by-gone years. In the archives of Canterbury it appears, that if the white bread and black bread bakers interfered with each other before the Reformation, the fine was 40s.; a very considerable sum.'

Henry Palmer and Joan Sampford, widow, were ordered at Lyme, in 1592, from that time to bake no more sale bread; subpœnâ, 58.

The entry runs thus: quod deinceps non pincernant panem

vocatum SALE-BREAD.

There is in some archives mention made of ranged bread. Why these worthies were debarred from carrying on their particular, perhaps newly taken up trade or line of business, nowhere appears. So, in 1610, there is a presentment of Widow Dare and John Sprake's wife, dwelling in Dolman's house, as being common hedge tearers, and that they doth bake buns contrary to the statute.

Very probably these individuals were not regular bakers who could be under the eye of authority with respect to keeping the assize, or selling at the price or in the form assigned by the magistrates.

Archæological Society, Report, 1844.

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