Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/394

382 good-natured tip from the English king and queen, who wished their future daughter-in-law to know that "water in England is not drinkable, and, even if it were, the climate would not allow the drinking of it." Heavy drinking was not by any means confined to the laity, for there are constant complaints of the habits of the clergy, and especially of the religious orders. The drunkenness of both monks and nuns was one of the main excuses for closing the monasteries by King Henry VIII. Good Queen Bess did not frown on the practice either, for, in the records of her visit to Kenilworth, 1575, we read that the Earl of Leicester broached three hundred and sixty-five hogsheads of beer, besides any amount of wine.

Toward the end of her reign drinking increased, thanks to the habits acquired by the volunteers in the Low Countries; and under her successor, the stupid and pedantic Scotchman, James I, the court itself set an ugly example to the people of England. We read that, at a great feast given by the minister Cecil to the king and to a visiting monarch. Christian IV of Denmark, James was carried to the bed intoxicated, and King Christian, less fortunate, rolled around very much under the influence of liquor and grossly insulted some of the ladies present. The latter, in their turn, before the evening was through, became quite as tipsy as the men, and, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, behaved most disgracefully. The nation sobered somewhat during the next reign and under the Commonwealth, only to return again to loose habits after the Restoration. And with the accession of the Dutch King, William, in 1688, the drinking assumed a more dangerous stage than ever.

For by this time people had at last learned that alcohol was intoxicating, and had also learned how to make it cheaply out of grain. Up to the seventeenth century all the aqua vitœ, was made from wine, and was therefore expensive. But now they were able to make it from beer; and not only in France, at Nantes and elsewhere, but in Switzerland, and especially in Holland, at Schiedam and other places, great distilleries were pouring out vast quantities of cheap and fiery spirits. Early in William and Mary's reign encouragement was given to similar distilleries in England, on the ground of assisting agriculture, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century all England was flooded with native as well as imported gin at absurdly low prices.

The results were most disastrous. London streets abounded with ginshops, and one could actually find placards on them reading, "Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing." The effects on the common people were so marked that all thoughtful persons were alarmed by it. In the