X PREFACE. 



extant refer ^ to a liide of land at Hymel-tim in Wor- 

 cestershire, tlie land of the garden hop, and as tun 

 means an enclosure, there can he not much doubt that 

 this was a hop farm. The bounds of it ran down to 

 the hymel brook, or hop plant brook, a name which 

 occurs about the Severn and the Worcestershire Avon 

 in other deeds. One of the unpublished glossaries 

 affords the Saxon word Hopu, Hojos,^ and Hopwood in 

 Worcestershire doubtless is thence named. Perhaps, 

 to explain some testimonies to a more recent impor- 

 tation of hops, it may be suggested that, as land or 

 sea carriage of pockets of hops from Worcestershire to 

 London or the southern ports was difficult, the use of 

 the hop was long confined to that their natural soil, 

 while the Kentish hops may be a gift from Germany. 



A table is well enough furnished where the flagons 

 are filled with good malt liquor ; it is flat heresy, they 

 say, to discover mischief in University " particular :" 

 but, notwithstanding, the Saxons drank also mead, an 

 exhilarating beverage, which from its sweetness must 

 have been better suited to the palates of the ladies, 

 and which was of an antiquity far anterior to written 

 or legendary history. They had also great store of 

 wines, which they distinguished by their qualities, as 

 clear, austere, sweet, rather than by their provinces or 

 birth. They made up also artificial diinks, oxymel, 

 hydromel, mulled wines, and a Clear drink, or Claret/"^ 

 of the nature of those beverages which are now called 

 cup. 



Salt, which is an indispensable condiment to civilized 

 man, they obtained from Cheshire and Worcestershire, 

 where they had furnaces for the evaporation of the 



' CD. 209, 080, lOGG. 1 lleve them to be the hloKSoms of 



- " Lygistra hopu," Gl. Cleop. privet. 

 f. 57 a. Ligustra, though known to ^ See the Glossary in jMuttoji 

 every ear, by the line Alba ligustra bpenc. 

 caduut, were long doubtful ; we be- I 



