INDUSTRIES 



whose ' tunnyng ' gave so much food for 

 mirth to the scurrilous and, it must be con- 

 fessed, not a little coarse pen of the laureate, 

 John Skelton, we are told 



She dwelt in Sothray 

 In a certayne stede 

 By syde Lederhede. 



She was indeed a real person and descendants 

 of her family may be traced in Letherhead 

 more than a century later.^ Skelton is more 

 concerned with the characters of the ale- 

 wife and of the various gossips who thronged 

 to partake of her ale than of the process 

 of the ' tunnyng ' itself. What he does 

 tell us we may hope for the credit of the 

 Surrey ale of his day existed rather in his 

 imagination than in sober reality, for the 

 method which Elynour had ' learnt of a Jew ' 

 does not possess one with any favourable idea 

 of the palatableness of her brew. 



In addition to what we are enabled to 

 learn from this and like instances of ale-wives 

 and their ways, we have evidence in the rolls 

 of manorial and local courts that ale-brewing 

 had early become something more than a 

 mere domestic industry. It became one of 

 the functions of the frank-pledge to appoint 

 officers, ale-tasters or ale-conners, to inspect 

 the ale-brewers in their several tithings, and 

 to report all cases where the- assize had been 

 broken. Offenders were presented at the 

 view of frank-pledge and fined or otherwise 

 punished according to the number of times 

 they had offended or the nature of their 

 offence. Offences against the assize could be 

 committed either by the actual brewers, the 

 common brewers as they were called, or by 

 those who merely bought the ale in order to 

 sell retail, the regraters or hucksters. 



From the regularity with which the names 

 of the same brewers and dealers occur in any 

 consecutive series of rolls of views of frank- 

 pledge, we may judge that it was probably 

 more profitable to break the assize and incur 

 the small penalty that was attached to the 

 offence than scrupulously to keep one's name 

 out of the record of the court. Consequently 

 we shall perhaps not be incorrect in assuming 

 that could the rolls of all the views of frank- 

 pledge held within a particular county for any 

 given period be consulted, they would enable 



» Thus from the parish register we learn that 

 Goody Rumming was buried on 4 July 1663, 

 Robert Rumming on 4 April 1669 (Manning and 

 Bray, Hist, of Surr. ii. 665), whilst at no great 

 distance off, Bartholomew Rummyng in 1658 had 

 lands in the parishes of Ewhurst and Abinger 

 {Surr. Arch. Coll. xvii. 88-90). 



us to form a fairly exact estimate of the total 

 number of those who were at that period en- 

 gaged in the brewing trade in that county. 

 Unfortunately the number of these rolls now 

 preserved is comparatively few, and the 

 majority of them are not readily accessible for 

 the purpose. We must therefore content our- 

 selves with two concrete examples from Sur- 

 rey rolls to show the nature of the information 

 which is to be gathered from these entries on 

 the subject of brewing as an industry. 



The first illustration is from the rolls of 

 the court of the Prior of Christ Church, 

 Canterbury, held in his manor of Walworth 

 between the years 1336 and 1338.'' In May 

 of the former year the ale-taster for the 

 tithing of Newington presented that Martin 

 le Meleward was a common brewer and sold 

 against the assize. He was therefore amerced 

 6fl?., and Henry Genge for the same offence 

 also dd. Juliana de Markyngfeld because she 

 had brewed three times and sold against the 

 assize was fined 3^. In the tithing of Wal- 

 worth Agnes de Ihurst, who had been twice 

 guilty of this offence, was also fined 3^., 

 whilst Alice Davy, who had only once 

 offended, was let off with 2d. Three ' hukke- 

 stars ' of ale and bread were presented in 

 this tithing and amerced in sums ranging 

 from 7.d. to ifd. Two of them again ap- 

 peared at the court held in May 1338, 

 when we find also that Agnes de Ihurst (or 

 Uherst) had again been breaking the assize on 

 two occasions. In Newington Henry Genge 

 was amerced another dd. as a common 

 brewer and a breaker of the assize. With 

 him was Salerna, also a common brewer, who 

 had to pay bd., and Robert Seman, who had 

 only brewed once, and was fined but id. 

 Later on in the same year, however, this 

 Robert had developed into a common brewer 

 and became liable to no less a fine than \7.d. 

 Ale-brewing would seem to have become 

 quite an extensive industry in Newington at 

 this latter date, for, in addition to Robert 

 Seman, there were as common brewers 

 Christine Mordones and Walter the Brewer 

 and four others, two men and two women, 

 who had each of them brewed on a single 

 occasion and broken the assize. 



We take our second illustration at a time 

 just a century and a half after the first and in 

 exactly the opposite quarter of the county. 

 In the court roll of the hundred of Godalming 

 for the year 1483 we find precisely similar 

 entries to those in the Walworth rolls.^ Pre- 

 sentments of common brewers who had 



2 P.R.O. Court Rolls, bdle. 205, No. 23. 

 3 B.M. Add. Ch. 26892. 



379 



