Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/392

380 did not have plenty of ways of getting tipsy. They had long been known as ranking next to the Germans and the Dutch for their drinking powers. The Saxons and the Danes had both introduced into England the intemperate habits of the Northmen, and beer and cider, and mead or metheglin made from honey, were quite as efficacious in their way as stronger beverages. The Normans were a more refined and far more temperate race, and it is for this reason, in large part, that they conquered England so readily. The night before the battle of Hastings, so the old chroniclers tell us, was spent by the Saxons in drinking heavily and uproariously around their camp fires. "Next morning, still drunk, they recklessly advance against the enemy," so we read in the old monkish Latin, while the Normans, passing a quiet, peaceful night, were cool and well prepared for the decisive struggle.

Their habits, however, soon deteriorated, and they drank almost as heavily as their predecessors. In the reign of Henry I the nation suffered a grievous loss, from overindulgence in liquor, in the sad drowning of his eldest son, just married to a princess of France. The wedding party were returning to England on a galley, amid the rejoicing of both nations, and wine flowed freely on board, until even the seamen became intoxicated. As they were nearing the shore, the galley ran upon a sunken rock, and out of the whole company but one person escaped. The young prince, it was