INTRODUCTION OF THE VINE INTO BRITAIN. g$ 



position, however, has nothing to confirm it, it is only inte- 

 resting on account of its affording additional circumstances to 

 prove that the vine was originally brought from Asia. 



Vineyards appear to be first mentioned in Domesday book, 

 which states that one at Rageneia in Essex, which was com- 

 prised of a park and six arpennies of land, yielded in a suc- 

 cessful season "twenty modii of wine ;" and also names 

 another at Ware, covering a similar space, which had but re- 

 cently been planted. Bede, who finished his history in 731, 

 mentions the existence of vineyards in several parts of Bri- 

 tain ; and the first vines were no doubt planted in the southern 

 parts of the island nearest to Gaul, whence they were doubt- 

 less received, as vineyards had there already acquired cele- 

 brity ; and the neighbourhood of Winchester was formerly so 

 noted for vines, that Twyne supposes the city to have taken 

 its name from that circumstance. 



Ample proof can be deduced of the existence in former 

 periods of vineyards at Canterbury, Rochester, Hailing, and 

 in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Mid- 

 dlesex, and various other parts of Britain ; the isle of 

 Ely was denominated by the Normans the " isle of vines," 

 and the bishop of Ely, shortly after the conquest, received 

 three or four tuns of wine annually as tithes from his diocese. 

 Some vineyards are also mentioned as having existed in the 

 eighteenth century, one of which was in Sussex, belonging 

 to the Duke of Norfolk, from the produce of which there 

 were in his cellar in 1763, above sixty pipes of excellent Bur- 

 gundy. 



In regard to the decline of British vineyards, her historians 

 have left us much in the dark ; but the authors of that country 

 endeavour to account for it by stating, that as their intercourse 

 increased with the continent, it was found more advantageous 

 to import wine than to depend upon the product of their own 

 soil, which must have been uncertain from the variableness of 

 their climate ; in addition to which, the very low price at 

 which it was obtainable from abroad, must have caused its final 

 neglect in England. Part of France being also in the time 



