326 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
realized was only £25 6s. 3d,, the number of persons “licensed to 
sell” was 134. The population of Plymonth then could not have 
exceeded 7,000, so that there must have been one ale or beer-house 
to every fifty inhabitants. And as if this was not startling enough, 
I found that in 1658-9, the first year in which there is any detailed 
entry of those who paid rollage and package, there were twenty-six 
brewers ; or, assuming the population to have been 8,000, seeing 
that the effects of the siege could hardly have been recovered, one 
brewer to every 300. The numbers, it is true, gradually diminished 
afterwards ; but what an enormous quantity of liquor must have 
been drunk by the good folks of Plymouth two centuries ago, to 
keep twenty-six brewers going, and to maintain 134 beer-houses 
(in 1661 there were only 102), besides four vintners; and all 
this in a town very little bigger than Tavistock now. However 
there is no reason here why we should look down as.well as 
back on our ancestors. The explanation is simple. Coffee and 
tea were then unknown ‘down West; and if people did not 
drink beer—beer for breakfast, beer for dinner, beer for supper— 
they had no alternative except water, or some of those horrible 
decoctions of “yarbs,” on the merits of which old women still 
wax eloquent, and which, if their virtues bear any proportion 
to their nastiness, must indeed be unapproachably excellent. It 
was stern necessity then, and not choice, that made the Plymouth 
folk of these days such liberal makers and drinkers of intoxicating 
liquors. Probably although the quantity was large the beer itself 
was small. 
The brewers were, however, well under control. Guagers and 
ale-tasters were appointed, who had to see that the ale and beer 
made were good and wholesome, and without whose approval none 
could be sold. Moreover the price was fixed. In 1608 the best 
was ordered to be sold at 13s. 4d. per hogshead, and the second 
quality at 6s. 8d.; while in 1627, in obedience to the strong 
Puritan feeling of the town, it was ordered that no work was to be 
done by the brewers or their servants on the Lord’s-day, “that 
they may wholly apply themselves to the attendance of religious 
duties as fully and freely as any others.” Further, they were to 
sell no beer at-a higher rate than 15s. a hogshead, which shows, 
however, a considerable increase in the prices of twenty years 
previous. 
The only other local manufactures that can lay claim to antiquity 
