Maintaining standards

Henry VI appointed surveyors and correctors of beer-brewers (King 1947):

Both the malt and hops whereof beer is made must be perfect, sound and sweet, the malt of good sound corn - to wit, of pure barley and wheat - not too dry, nor rotten, nor full of worms, called wi es, and the hops neither rotten nor old. The beer may not leave the brewery for eight days after brewing, when of cials should test it to see that it is suf ciently boiled, contained enough hops and is not sweet.

Brewers of the time, though, were less than honest. In a popular play of the period, in which souls are able to escape from Hell, the Devil is allowed to keep the soul of one person as a souvenir. He chooses the brewer. In Oxford, where the University used to have its own brewery, brewers were ordered to assemble in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and made individually to swear only to brew ale 'as was good and whole­some, so far as his ability and human frailty permitted him'.
The whole family drank. For instance, in 1512 the Earl of Northumberland's house­hold - including the 8- and 10-year-old heirs - consumed 1 quart of ale or beer each mealtime (King 1947). In the poorest of homes, ale was still the drink of the whole family.
During the reign of Henry VIII [whose breakfast for three comprised a joint of roast beef, a loaf of bread and a gallon of ale (Katz 1979)] one owner of an ale brewery successfully fetched an action against his brewer for putting in 'a certain weed called a hop'. It was decreed that neither hops nor brimstone were to be put into ale (Savage 1866). We can be thankful that hops gained ascendancy, for they seem in nitely prefer- able to materials such as wormwood, gentian, chicory or strychnia that were sometimes employed.
Savage (1866) has the date as 1524 when hops rst came into the British Isles, from Flanders where they had been used for centuries. Prior to the arrival of hops, ale had sometimes been preserved with ground ivy.
Incidentally, Henry VIII was far from being the only monarch with a passion for ale. Seemingly, Queen Elizabeth I had the local ale sampled for suitability in advance of her travels around the nation. If it failed to pass muster, then her favourite London product was shipped ahead of her in time for her arrival (Katz 1979).
Concerning hops, by 1576 Henri Denham wrote:

Whereas you cannot make above 8 or 9 gallons of indifferent ale out of one bushell of mault, you may draw 18 or 20 gallons of very good Beere, neither is the Hoppe more pro table to enlarge the quantity of your drinke than necessary to prolong the continuance thereof. For if your ale may endure a fortnight, your Beere through the bene t of the Hoppe shall continue a moneth, and what grace it yieldeth to the teaste, all men may judge that have sense in their mouths - here in our country ale giveth place unto Beere, and most part of our countrymen do abhore and abandon ale as a lothsome drink.

Gerard wrote in 1596 that:

The manifold virtues in hops do manifestly argue the wholesomeness of beere above ale, for the hops rather make it a physical drink, to keep the body in health, than an ordinary drink for the quenching of our thirste.

This was one of the earliest attempts to position beer on a health-positive platform. In the sixteenth century, too, John Taylor penned:

It is an Emblem of Justice, for it allowes and yeelds measure; It will put Courage into a Coward and make him swagger and ight; It is a seale to many a good Bargaine. The Physittian will commend it; the lawyer will defend it. It neither hurts, nor kils, any but those that abuse it immeasurably and beyond bearing. It doth good to as many as take it rightly; It is as good as a paire of Spectacles to cleare the Eyesight of an old parish Clarke; And in Conclusion, it is much a nourisher of Mankinde, that if my mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole, and my Inke a owing spring, or a standing shpond, yet I could not with Mouth, Pen, or Inke, spak or write the true worth and worthiness of Ale.
Houses for the sale of beer had rst become licensed in the reign of the boy king, Edward VI, in the mid-sixteenth century (Savage 1866).
By an Act of 1604, it was decreed that parish constables should inspect alehouses to ensure that they were operated properly (King 1947). It was emphasised that:

the ancient, true and principal use of such places was for the relief of wayfaring men and women and also to ful l the requirements of those people unable to store victuals in large quantities and not for the entertainment of lewd and idle people.

No workman was allowed to spend longer than one hour in an inn unless his occupation or residence obliged him so to do. Fines of 10 shillings were collected by churchward­ens and given to the poor of the parish. At the time the cost of best ale was xed at a penny a quart (one quart = two pints) and small beer at a halfpenny. Notwithstanding, the government in the middle of the seventeenth century was raising some 40% of its budget by taxing beer (Wilson 1991).