176 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



BREWER, DISTILLER, TAVERNER. 



Again, the brewer and distiller are properly manufacturers, but 

 the combinations of certain middlemen's functions with their business 

 warrant some study of their marketing methods. 



Before the French War, beginning 1689, the excise duties on the 

 brown ale and small beer then made were low, and prices accordingly 

 low. These liquors "were mostly fetched from the brewhouse by 

 the customers themselves, and paid for with ready money; so that 

 the brewer entertained but few servants, fewer horses, and had no 

 stock of ales or beers by him, but a trifling quantity of casks, and 

 his money returned before he paid either his duty or his malt."^ 

 The local regulations of the preceding centuries had varied consider- 

 ably in this respect. In fifteenth century London the brewers sold 

 ale by retail to the public directly as well as by wholesale to such 

 dealers as were not brewers themselves but privileged to sell it. 

 Brewers and hostelers were sometimes made the exclusive salesmen 

 of ale.^ At Abingdon the brewers must have done their own retailing 

 for an opinion was expressed that they "ought not to put out their 

 signe or Alestake untill their Ale be assayed by the Aletaster and then 

 to sell and not before."^ At High Wycombe, in the next century 

 severe orders were levied against brewers retailing, or "tippling" as 

 it was called, at their own houses. They were required to send it to 

 town to be sold by the "tipplers" at prices fixed by the Mayor.'* On 

 the other hand, inn-keepers, vinters, victuallers, and alehouse- 

 keepers were forbidden to brew and infringe upon the brewer's trade. 

 For instance, at Abingdon in 1579 a heavy fine was imposed on any 

 such if he should presume to "brue in his House any Beere or Ale to 

 be sold offerid or drunke in his Howse, either by the pinte potte, quarte 

 pottell, or gallon potte."" Similar ordinances prevailed in Berks in 

 the seventeenth centur)-.^ This sort of regulation was designed to 

 stop evasions of the assize prices of liquors as laid by the corporation 

 council.^ But this regulation was not existent everywhere. The 

 poet laureate, John Shelton, has rendered classical the "tunnying" 



iGent. Mag., 1760: 527. 



2 Lib. Alb. I, LXI. 



3 V. C. H., Berks, I, 406. 



* V. C. H., Bucks, II, 105. 

 5 V. C. H., Berks, I, 407. 

 '' Ibid., 405. 

 •Ibid., 406; Sussex, 11, 261. 



