H.A. Monckton offers a taste of the beer of
Elizabethan England, a beverage reportedly, ‘dark in colour, not very
heavily hopped, and probably rather sweet and vinous’.
‘For a quart of ale is a dish for a King’ (A Winter’s Tale, IV, 3, 8)The beer that William Shakespeare drank was not far removed from the beer we drink today, if we exclude the obvious difference of strength—so much a feature of the Elizabethan brew. The basic raw materials of malt, water, hops and yeast remain the same today, with the exception that unmalted cereals and sugars have been added to the list of permissible ingredients. Naturally, the varieties of barley—from which malt is made—have enormously improved, as have the hops that provide the characteristic bitterness of beer.
The beer of Elizabethan England was dark in colour, not very heavily hopped by modern standards, and probably rather sweet and vinous. A few years before Shakespeare’s birth, a London brewer stated that he had made two-and-a-half barrels of beer from one quarter of malt, whereas today a brewer would draw perhaps ten barrels from the same amount.
An excellent description of the brewing process during this period is given, in his Preface to Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), by William Harrison, whose wife and servants carried out the process in very much the same way as is done today.
Beer brewed for private consumption underwent none of the rigorous tests that were imposed upon beer brewed for sale. The latter sort had to be appraised by the officially appointed ale-taster, known in the City of London as an ale-conner. Typical of the instructions given to ale-tasters are these from Elizabethan Worcester: ‘You shall resort to every brewer’s house in this city on their tunning day, and there to taste their ale whether it be good and wholesome for man’s body, and whether they make it from time to time according to the price fixed.’
The fixing of prices had been introduced by Henry III in 1266 under the Assize of Bread and Ale, which related the price that could be charged to the current price of corn. Stratford-upon-Avon, the Town of Shakespeare’s birth, had its own ale-tasters to see that the local Assize was being properly observed. Stratford records show that as early as 1452 two ale-tasters were appointed and the poet had reason to know something about their duties since his father, John Shakespeare, was appointed a borough ale-taster in September 1556.
The word ‘ale’ has already been referred to several times and needs explanation because, before the fifteenth century, it did not mean the same thing as beer. Our national beverage since earliest times, certainly long before the Roman occupation, was called ale and it differed from beer in that it did not contain hops. When hops were incorporated into the brewing process, the new drink was known as beer and the two were quite distinct products.
Beer was introduced to England by Flemish merchants and immigrants in about 1400 and in this year there is a record of beer being imported at Winchelsea. At first beer was looked upon as an adulterated drink and many orders were made over the country against the use of ‘the pernicious weed, hop’. Despite opposition, the popularity of beer continued to grow in London and the south, but more gradually in the north. By 1500 hops were used all over the country and opposition to their use had vanished.
Although ale had been replaced by beer, both names continued in use as they do today. In Shakespeare’s lifetime the difference between the two was probably represented by the quantity of hops used. Thus, a mild brew would be called ale, and a bitter brew beer. Shakespeare, in his works, refers to both. In fact, he mentions ale on fourteen occasions in his plays and beer on five. Although we know that the unhopped drink had disappeared by the sixteenth century, it is interesting to see that the name still survived.
Shakespeare’s frequent references to ale and beer are not surprising, because it was the one drink taken daily by most men, women and children. Water enjoyed little favour, even for personal hygiene, and, of course, had virtually no dietetic value. It is almost certainly true to say that beer was an essential part of the national menu, containing what was for many people the most readily available source of Vitamin B. Tea and coffee were not introduced into England until about fifty years after Shakespeare’s death, so that he would have had no experience and probably no knowledge of those two beverages that were destined to play an important part in later British diet.
While beer continued to be imported into England during the sixteenth century, it was also exported, particularly to the Netherlands and Germany. In fact, so much beer was being exported in the early part of the sixteenth century that an Act of Parliament was passed in 1543, which remained in force during Shakespeare’s lifetime, limiting the quantity of timber allowed to leave the country in the form of casks.
The Act provided that no cask larger than a barrel could be exported and that all exporters of casks were obliged to import timber of a corresponding quantity. It will, of course, be understood that brewers were by no means the only exporters who used casks for the carriage of their products; casks were a very common form of packaging.
We can only speculate upon the quantity of beer brewed for sale and brewed for private consumption, since there are no production figures.
But we can attempt to build up a picture from the pointers available to us. From a survey made in 1577 we know that there were some 19,000 alehouses, taverns and inns in England and Wales to serve a population of about 4 millions, compared with 70,000 today and a population of about 45 millions. Obviously, there was no great shortage of establishments from which to buy the national beverage.
Assuming that the average consumption was 21 pints per head, per week, which approximates closely to the necessary liquid intake of a hard-working person today, we may say that the consumption in England and Wales would be in the neighbourhood of 14½ million barrels a year. A hundred years later the first national production figures for beer became available, and they show that ‘beer brewed for sale’ amounted to about 6 million barrels a year.
The best authorities reckon that this figure represented only one-third of the total ale consumption, thus putting the real figure, including private brewing, at about 18 million barrels annually. This seems to confirm the mid-sixteenth century figure of 14½ million barrels. Of this, perhaps the quantity brewed for sale would have been one quarter, the rest being brewed privately. If this quantity brewed for sale is apportioned among the 19,000 drinking establishments, each is given an average trade approximating to half that of an English public house today.
Most of the beer brewed for sale in the sixteenth century was produced by brewing victuallers—common brewers being still few and far between. A brewing, or publican, victualler was almost certainly a woman, and described in the language of the day as a brewster or ale-wife. She brewed her beer on the premises where it was offered for sale. Common brewers, on the other hand, probably male rather than female, brewed for delivery to several inns or alehouses.
In London, during the 1570’s and 1580’s, there were only some twenty-six. Such common breweries in London, principally in the Southwark area, were small concerns. We know of one, Henry Leake, who in 1542 had over ten aliens on his payroll and, incidentally, was renting a public house from which to sell the ale he brewed at his brew-house, in addition to supplying it to other drinking establishments.
Peter Mathias,1 writing of the sixteenth century, mentions that when Henry Leake died, his funeral oration was spoken by a Bishop and that St. Olaves School was born mainly from his charity. He goes on to mention that in 1561, his son was employing eighteen aliens and that already annual production of this and other brewhouses was spoken of in terms of many hundreds of barrels.
It seems that distribution, even at this early date, of some of the annual production was in the brewers’ hands, and one London brewer in 1571 had three draymen and a boatman among his nine servants. Although it was to be nearly two hundred years before there emerged some of the great brewing names with which we are today familiar, we may take it that the century that saw Shakespeare’s birth was probably the one in which the common brewer took root and began to blossom.
In his day, the production of beer for sale was predominantly vested in the hands of brewing victuallers, and a quotation from the Chronicles of Woodstock2 described the general situation. It comes from a document completed on May 6th, 1587, when a ‘return was made of the Innholders and Victuallers in the town with the quantity of malt they brewed weekly.
There were four innholders and eleven victuallers; altogether sixty-one bushels of malt were brewed weekly in the town in varying quantities ranging from twelve bushels brewed weekly by Katheren Williams, Innholder, down to the single bushel brewed by John Bruce’.
The brewing process required the use of large quantities of timber to heat the brewing water and to boil together the wort—which was extracted from the malt—and the hops. The shortage of timber in the sixteenth century has already been mentioned in connexion with the export of casks. But the problem raises its head again when it comes to fuel. In London, the brewers were considered to be the largest non-domestic users of coal in the land, having, presumably, been asked to refrain from the use of timber.
This presumption is supported by an instruction issued to the brewers of Yarmouth in 1572 to the effect that they must in future brew with coals instead of wood. Passing reference should be made to the position of the other two indigenous fermented drinks—mead and cider. Although it is likely that they are both older than beer in native origin, they do not seem to have been so widely consumed as is popularly supposed. Contemporary references to these two drinks are noticeably thin until much later in history.
In the Elizabethan period at least two qualities of beer were available, and one of them was twice as strong as the other. They usually went under the name of single beer and double beer. In London it was laid down that double beer was to be 4½ barrels drawn from one quarter of malt, and single beer to be 8½ barrels from a quarter.
Brewers were, of course, still subject to the Assize and compelled to charge prices according to the current cost of malt. When malt was over 15s. a quarter, the price of double beer was 4s. 8d. a barrel (three pints for a penny), and the price of single beer 2s. 4d. a barrel (six pints for a penny) —prices varied very little during Elizabeth’s reign. About the time of Shakespeare’s birth, the Queen’s Government frequently complained that the brewers failed to brew sufficient beer for the needs of the people and brewed, instead, an unauthorized and very strong beer called ‘doble-doble’, sold at a very high price.
The Government laid down that in future every brewer should brew ‘as much syngyl as doble beer and more’. This prescription was evidently difficult to enforce and from time to time brewers had to be reminded of their obligations. It was not only in London that infringements of this nature took place, as is evidenced by a letter from Burghley to Leicester about the entertainment of the Queen. The quotation is given in full as it is usually only the last fifteen words that are quoted which lend themselves to a wrong interpretation:
‘There is not one drop of good drink for her. We were fain to send to London and Kenilworth and divers other places where ale was; her own beer was so strong as there was no man able to drink it.’ In his plays Shakespeare seldom mentioned the word beer without a qualifying prefix; he refers to ‘small beer’ on four occasions and to ‘double beer’ once.
Some figures about the costs of material are available for the early part of the seventeenth century. In 1606 at Southampton, malt cost 2S. 6d. a bushel and brewers were only permitted to brew two types of beer; double at 3s. 4d. a barrel and ordinary at 2s. a barrel. At this time the price of hops was about £8 a hundredweight.
On the subject of hops, which were first grown in England in about 1520, Reynolde Scot wrote a booklet in 1574 entitled A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden, in which he encouraged people to grow hops because it was profitable. During the opening years of the seventeenth century hop gardens—‘gardens’ in Kent and ‘yards’ in Worcestershire and Herefordshire—were fairly abundant, but still insufficient to cater for all the needs of the country.
In 1603, partly to encourage home growers and partly to raise the standard of beer, James I’s Government passed an Act preventing the importation of ‘corrupt’ hops as there had been many complaints of ‘stalkes, powder, sand and straw put into the imported hops to increase their weight, by means whereof the subjects of this realm have been at late years abused to the value of £20,000 yearly, besides the danger to their health’.
In 1552, twelve years before Shakespeare’s birth, the regulation of the number and conduct of alehouses had been placed in the hands of Justices of the Peace. They were given the power to license and suppress either at their discretion or within the terms laid down by Parliament. The motives for regulation were varied, ranging from the control of drunkenness to curtailment of malt usage in years of dearth when barley was scarce and the alehouse could be accused of taking the bread out of men’s mouths.
The incidence of suppression can be related to high grain prices and to periods of political stress and sedition. Probably the alehouse-keeper of the time represented one of the least attractive classes of society, but there is reason to suppose that drunkenness was not so prevalent as it was sometimes made out to be. Speaking of intemperance Fynes Moryson in his Itinerary of 1617 says: ‘...but in general the greater and better part of the English hold all excess and drunkenness a reproachful vice.’
There were two other classes of drinking establishment where ale and beer were sold—inns and taverns. For every nine alehouses there was one inn, a superior establishment which also sold food and provided beds. These did not come within the licensing power of Justices of the Peace, since the Act of 1552 referred only to alehouses.
Many inns of the period had obviously reached a high standard, and a contemporary account written in the year after Shakespeare’s death said ‘...but there is no place in the world where passengers may so freely command as in the English Inns, and are attended for themselves and their horses as well as if they were at home, and perhaps better... ’
The last class of drinking house was the tavern, which drew its customers from a higher social class than alehouses; the tavern was permitted to sell wine that retailed at a price between 6d. and 7d. a quart, compared with about id. a quart for ale. Since 1552, the number of taverns in the chief towns in England was in principle fixed; but as there were no official amendments to these numbers, it is likely that they tended to increase.
To take London as an example, the Lords in Council communicated with the parishioners of St. Mildred (London) reminding them that the number of taverns had been officially limited to 40, but that they had risen to no less than 400 in the City alone. The Lord Mayor was instructed to place a restraint upon this ‘enormous liberty of setting up taverns’.
It was not only London where things got out of hand. In 1591 a report of the Queen’s Council on the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire pointed out that the alehouses were so crowded during service time that there was often no one in church other than the curate and his clerk. The report also added that alehouses were very numerous and badly conducted.
How did the law deal with drunkenness? Offences committed as a result of drunkenness appear to have had no standard punishment ur.til 1606. In this year James I approved an Act that imposed a fine of 5s. for becoming intoxicated, or an alternative of confinement in the stocks for six hours. The duration of six hours was no accident; it had been selected as the length of time required for the miscreant to come to his senses and no longer be a nuisance to his neighbours.
During this period, 1577 is the only year for which reliable figures are available for the number of types of drinking establishment. In this year a census was taken, which was the result of a scheme to pay for heavy repairs to Dover Harbour by a levy on every drinking establishment. The survey showed that in England and Wales there were 14,202 alehouses, 1,631 inns and 329 taverns.
Among the pastimes of Elizabethan days were the feasts and celebrations known as ‘ales’. These functions were well-named, since ale played an important part of them. As in other early ages of history, when organized entertainment was not readily available, the people seized upon any excuse to hold a party of some kind. ‘Ales’ took place at many times of the year and the names of a few of them suggest the occasions: cuckoo-ales, lamb-ales, bride-ales, scythe-ales, Midsummer-ales, and so forth. None, however, appears to have attracted more attention, and later more controversy, than the functions known as ‘church-ales’.
These festivities, held in the church house or in the precincts of the church, were held to raise funds for the relief of the poor, repairs to churches or chapels, and the renewal of surplices and church books. Church-ales at this time were degenerating to such an extent that Queen Elizabeth was persuaded to take a hand in suppressing them; in 1586 her Lord Chief Justice signed an order so ordaining.
In fact, the Order was not entirely successful and ‘ales’ continued for at least another hundred years. ‘Ales’ seem to have remained the best and most popular way of raising money. Details of the Cobb Ale, held at Lyme Regis in 1601, are to be found in Robert’s book Social History of the Southern Counties.3
One use of ‘ale’ as a prefix recalls an old custom that almost certainly survived until the sixteenth century, the payment of ale-silver. It was a tribute paid annually by the ale-sellers in the City of London to the Lord Mayor. And ale-silver raises the subject of taxation on beer. There was no direct taxation on the product or its materials, although local dues from licence-holders were often demanded.
Nevertheless, the Queen’s Government was under considerable pressure towards the end of her reign to introduce taxation on beer as had already been done in Flanders and Italy. After much discussion, the Queen was advised against this taxation and thus a chance of raising revenue was lost that might well have averted some of the national troubles of the next century. As it was, the direct taxation on beer was introduced by Charles I in 1637. His measure foundered after two years, only to be re-introduced by the Commonwealth in 1643.
1 The Brewing Industry, 1700-1830. An Economic Survey.
2 Edited by A. Ballard; published 1896.
3 Published 1856.
1 comment:
Highly interesting and informative! All this informs my work as a practical Shakespearean. Thank you.
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