INDUSTRIES 



places in Surrey besides Southwark. Beer 

 brewing as distinct from ale brewing we find 

 carried on in the latter part of the century in 

 various places. A ' bere-howse ' at Kingston- 

 upon-Thames was mentioned amongst the 

 possessions of the London Charterhouse in 

 that town as early as 1541.* In the Michael- 

 mas term of 1558 two Kingston ' berebruers,' 

 Andrew Norman " and Peter Morer or More ' 

 were summoned to answer before the Barons 

 of the Exchequer each for having sold 400 

 barrels of double beer since 4 October 1557 

 to the common victuallers of the town at 

 4.S. 8d. the barrel instead of at 4s. 4^. the 

 price fixed by the justices and the bailiffs. 

 Norman and another Kingston beer-brewer, 

 George Snellyng, were charged with the 

 committal of similar offences in both the 

 Trinity and Michaelmas terms of 1564.* 

 Quite a number of Surrey brewers both of 

 ale and beer, appear in these two terms. At 

 Wandsworth, another riverside place in Surrey, 

 Richard Ingene was brewing and selling at 

 excessive rates both double and small or three- 

 halfpenny beer.* Other beer brewers, offend- 

 ing in like manner, were Peter Harman of 

 Croydon * and Thomas Thornton of Reigate.'' 

 On the other hand John Bagshott of Lam- 

 beth,® John Burton of Putney," and others 

 are described as ale brewers. The majority 

 however of the offending brewers, whether 

 of beer or ale, were Southwark men. By 

 the recurrence term after term in the rolls of 

 the Exchequer Court of the same brewers for 

 fresh infringements of the Act 23 Hen. VIII. 

 cap. 4, one may judge how little effective was 

 that Act in keeping down the price of beer. 



Before closing this account of brewing in 

 Surrey in the sixteenth century two interest- 

 ing notices which concern the industry may 

 here be briefly mentioned. The first of 

 these is Stow's statement that at the date of 

 his survey in the concluding years of the 

 century a fair brewhouse had been new built 

 near the Bridge House in Southwark for the 



1 P. R. O. Min. Accts. 31-2 Hen. VIII. 112 

 (Lond. and Middx.). 



2 Exch. K. R. Mem. R. Mich. 5 & 6 Ph. and 

 M. 4.3. 



3 Ibid. 44. 



• Ibid. Trin. 6 Eliz. 125 ; Mich. 6-7 Eliz. 

 172, I76d. 



= Ibid. Trin. 6 Eliz. 124; Mich. 6-7 Eliz. 

 .76. 



' Ibid. Trin. 6 Eliz. iz6; Mich. 6-7 Eliz. 

 i72d. 



'' Ibid. Trin. 6 Eliz. I26d ; Mich. 6-7 Eliz. 

 i7id. 



^ Ibid. Mich. 6-7 Eliz. 173. 



" Ibid. 181. 



service of the city of London with beer. 

 This new brewhouse took the place of an 

 older one, called ' Geldings,' which was given 

 to the city by George Monex, sometime 

 mayor, and had been taken in for the en- 

 largement of the city granaries and bake- 

 houses. The date of the rebuilding of these 

 granaries was 1587.*° 



The second notice is to be found in Fuller's 

 anecdote of Dean Howell and his accidental 

 discovery of the virtues of bottled beer. Ac- 

 cording to Fuller this curious discovery is to 

 be associated with Battersea, in which parish 

 the dean was fishing when the news of 

 Bishop Bonner's proceedings in the Council 

 against him caused him to take sudden flight 

 and leave behind him the provisions with 

 which he had equipped himself for the day. 

 These included some beer in a bottle for 

 which the thrifty dean on his return to Lon- 

 don was minded to look again and was amazed 

 to find ' no bottle, but rather a gun, such was 

 the sound of the opening thereof.' ' This 

 trifling circumstance,' adds Fuller, ' is believed 

 to have been the origin of bottled beer in 

 England, for casualty is mother of more in- 

 ventions than is industry.' 



In the seventeenth century the evidences of 

 the extent of the Surrey brewing industry, 

 which are so amplified in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, become meagre in the extreme. There 

 is no reason to suppose that the industry 

 declined. On the contrary with an increasing 

 population the fact must have been otherwise 

 in the case of the manufacture of so universal 

 an article of consumption. Probably the 

 proved inefficacy of the penal statutes regu- 

 lating the industry made them much of a 

 dead letter, and caused the less frequent 

 appearance of brewers as defendants in courts 

 of law. On the whole we may conclude 

 that the century, though it probably witnessed 

 a considerable increase in the extent of the 

 industry, saw little or no advance in the 

 scientific methods of production which had 

 been introduced by the foreign brewers of the 

 preceding century. Two sorts of ale and 

 beer alone were made, strong and small, the 

 landlords combining these in drinks which 

 acquired the names of 'half and half and 

 ' three threads,' the latter being a mixture of 

 ale, beer and small or * twopenny.' It was 

 not until the earlier years of the eighteenth 

 century that a London brewer conceived the 

 idea of making a liquor which should com- 

 bine the flavour of these three. The result 



1° See the note in the Times of I February 

 .1802, about which time the City of London was 

 pulling down these granaries. 



387 



