382 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 

 Kenil worth, 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 fortu- 

 nate, 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, be- 

 haved 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 1G88, 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 viice, 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 



