As for the drink, it was almost exclusively water, beer, and cider.
[Footnote: On a court roll of the manor of Whissonsete, of the date
July 22, 1355, I find William Wate fined "iiij botell cideri quia
fecit dampnum in bladis domini."] Any one who pleased might brew beer
without tax or license, and everybody who was at all before the world
did brew his own beer according to his own taste. But in those days
the beer was very different stuff from that which you are familiar
with. To begin with, people did not use hops. Hops were not put into
beer till long after the time we are concerned with. I dare say they
flavoured their beer with horehound and other herbs, but they did not
understand those tricks which brewers are said to practise now-a-days
for making the beer "heady" and sticky and poisonous. I am not
prepared to say the beer was better, or that you would have liked it;
but I am pretty sure that in those days it was easier to get pure
beer in a country village than it is now, and if a man chose to drink
bad beer he had only himself to thank for it. There was no such
monopoly as there is now. I am inclined to think that there were a
very great many more people who sold beer in the country parishes
than sell it now, and I am sorry to say that the beer-sellers in
those days had the reputation of being rather a bad lot.
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