A HISTORY OF SURREY 



broken the assize were made for each of the 

 tithings and small amercements assessed. 

 Thus in the tithing of Chiddingfold there 

 were in April three common brewers, each 

 fined \d. In the tithing of Haslemere there 

 were another three, one of them a woman, 

 fined from 2d. to 4^. In the view of the 

 parsonage of Godalming John George is pre- 

 sented as a common brewer of ' byere ' — the 

 use of the word here is interesting as will 

 appear later — and common brewers also were 

 Robert at Rude, Thomas at Legh and Wil- 

 liam Champion. Nicholas Gilberds and John 

 Glovere were tapsters of ale and sold by cups 

 and dishes {per sciphos et discos) instead of by 

 standard measure. They were each fined 

 one penny. 



These entries have been given rather as 

 illustrations from Surrey records of the 

 general conditions under which the brewing of 

 the national drink was carried on in this 

 country in medieval times than as aflFording 

 any just indication of the extent of the indus- 

 try in our own county, or of any districts 

 therein in which it may be said to have been 

 especially seated. Brewed without the use of 

 any such preservative as hops the ale must 

 have had small enduring qualities and have 

 been intended to satisfy only the needs of the 

 immediate neighbourhood in which the 

 brewer lived. The number of brewers who 

 brewed for sale both in the urban and rural 

 districts of the county was probably consider- 

 able, but, on the other hand, the production 

 of each individual brewer must have been 

 small indeed in comparison with that of even 

 the least extensive of our modern breweries. 

 The art of brewing would appear to have 

 reached little development at this time, at 

 least so far as the native brewers were con- 

 cerned, and probably there were few, if any, 

 special qualities possessed by the ale of those 

 who brewed on a comparatively large scale 

 for the purposes of trade that could not be 

 attained by those who brewed only for the 

 private needs of their own households. 



Even in early times, as it has been in later, 

 the principal seat of the brewing industry of 

 Surrey must have been in Southwark and 

 the district more immediately adjacent to 

 the capital. The position of the Borough 

 at the south end of London Bridge, until 

 well within the last two hundred years the 

 only bridge across the Thames below 

 Kingston, made it necessary for all who 

 journeyed between London and the south- 

 eastern counties and France to pass through 

 it. In consequence the inns of South- 

 wark for long constituted one of the chief 

 sources of profit to its inhabitants, and they 



have been famous ever since Chaucer and his 

 fellow-pilgrims ' weren csed atte beste * at the 

 Tabard. The position of keeper at one of 

 these inns must have been one of no little 

 social importance and local influence, for 

 Chaucer's own host, Henry Bailly, represented 

 the borough as one of its burgesses in the Par- 

 liaments of 1376 and 1378. 



Side by side with the numerous inns there 

 must have existed in Southwark and its neigh- 

 bourhood a very considerable brewing indus- 

 try. In the fifteenth century we find brew- 

 houses in Southwark the occasional objects of 

 litigation in Chancery suits. Thus we learn 

 that William Kyng and his wife Cassandra 

 together with Thomas Wente, being jointly 

 seized of a brewhouse in the Borough, sold it 

 together with another messuage and certain 

 goods in the same to one Thomas Warham 

 for the sum of ;^68 131. /^d} Another 

 brewhouse in Southwark was called the 

 ' Peacock,' and its possession became a 

 fruitful source of dispute in the court of 

 Chancery.^ 



» Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 16, No. 417. 



' It is described as a brewhouse in the earliest 

 suit in which it appears. The plaintiffs, prob- 

 ably the feoffees of it to certain uses, summoned 

 one Thomas Chipsted to deliver up the deeds 

 and muniments which of right belonged to 

 them (Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 11, No. 371). 

 Thirty or more years later, probably about the 

 year 1472, the same tenement, although whether 

 or not it was still used as a brewhouse is not stated, 

 was again in dispute. It was then the subject of 

 two distinct actions brought against each of the 

 feoffees then seised of it (ibid. bdle. 39, No. 

 177 and bdle. 40, No. 44). The stories as to its 

 successive owners which are set out with the usual 

 amount of circumstance in the various pleadings, 

 are bewildering in the extreme and not easily 

 reconcileable. It seems certain, however, that at 

 some time subsequent to the date of the earlier 

 action, Alice Browne, the widow of Thomas 

 Browne, a Southwark cordwainer, had come into 

 sole possession of the tenement and had enfeoffed 

 the defendants of the later actions. But to what 

 uses they had been enfeoffed is a matter of dispute. 

 In one case it is urged that Alice had demised the 

 ' Peacock ' by will to the use during their lives of 

 her son John and his wife Anne. The latter had 

 on the subsequent death of her husband become 

 the wife of one of the plaintiffs. This is denied by 

 one of the defendants, who stated that this son 

 John had made a bargain during his mother's life- 

 time and sold the reversion after his mother's 

 death to a London joiner for twenty marks, 

 ' whereat his mother was right wroth and said 

 that her son that was so unkind to her should 

 never have the messuage.' Accordingly she had 

 appointed her trustees to lay out certain moneys 

 for pious uses on behalf of her late husband and 

 herself in St. Margaret's Church, Southwark, and 



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