128 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



to Lord Exeter a doubt whether the grapes 

 which he tasted there could be made into 

 good wine ; but there is no doubt that wine 

 of domestic vintage was commonly used, 

 though not many degrees removed, perhaps, 

 from the true vin ordinaire which you find 

 in the cottages of the French peasantry. 

 Lord Exeter told his Italian caller that his 

 people were more hopeful as to the kind of 

 compound which the Burleigh grapes would 

 make. But until the artificial process of 

 growth under glass at a high temperature was 

 understood, our home-reared grapes were as 

 sour as the October peach in a cold autumn 

 is to-day. It is only in exceptional seasons 

 that our out-of-door sweet-water grape arrives 

 at present to anything approaching perfection. 

 Wine of all sorts was, of course, to be had 

 here from a very early date at a compara- 

 tively moderate price. Whittinton, in his 

 Vulgaria (1524), says: "A gallon of swete 

 wyne is at viii. pens in London." It appears 

 from an original license, granted by Sir 

 Walter Raleigh in 1584 to Jeffery Bradshawe 

 of Bradford, Yorkshire, to keep a wine 



