Brewers' Tales: Making, Retailing and Regulating Beer in Southampton, 1550-1700 James R

Brewers' Tales: making, retailing and regulating beer in Southampton, 1550-1700 James R. Brown Introduction sive studies of beer-making in specific locales do exist, they have so far focused For some years now early modernists on the metropolis, on regional cultures have been in their cups. With a wave of outside of Britain, or on the pre-1500 or recent studies about public drinking post-1700 period.5 spaces and cultures, we now have a fuller sense of the very large extent to This article seeks to repair this surprising which alcohol was embedded within oversight by offering a case study of communities in both town and countryside beer-brewing, retailing and regulation throughout sixteenth- and seventeenth- within a single provincial community: century Europe.1 Brewers themselves, Southampton, a port town and incorpo- however, have not benefited from these rated borough on the English south developments as fully as might be coast. Home to 4,200 souls in 1596,6 expected. Reflecting the priorities of a Southampton's economy revolved 'consumption turn',2 most work on prein- around textiles and the maritime sector, dustrial intoxicants has yielded accounts while it was governed by an oligarchic of retail venues, drinking behaviours and common council of around twelve who sociability in which issues of production exerted their will via four judicial venues and supply are marginal or absent. A (the court leet, quarter sessions, the town separate literature has developed around court and the admiralty court) and meet- renaissance beer and its manufacture, ings held on a weekly basis within the but these studies either use brewhouses Audit House, known as the Assembly.7 as 'laboratories' for specific questions Beer flourished within this dynamic port within the sub-fields of gender, immigra- setting, and its manufacture and circula- tion, local government and the history of tion has left traces in a wide range of technology,3 or offer surveys of beer- sources including the administrative and brewing that range widely over space judicial records of the Assembly and local and time but permit little sustained tribunals;8 civic accounts and tax data; engagement with particular terrains.4 property terriers and leases; and twenty- Where detailed, thematically comprehen- two extant wills and inventories prepared 110 Journal of the Brewery History Society for Southampton beer-makers between since the twelfth century,10 while bibulous 1550 and 1700 (supplemented in the fol- horizons were further broadened by the lowing analysis by over seventy located introduction at some point in the early fif- for publicans). The article combines this teenth century of beer. Originally brewed evidence to offer a fully contextualized in Germany and the Low Countries, beer account of practices of beer-brewing of had a lighter colour, cleaner taste and the kind that is still lacking for early mod- higher alcohol content than its unhopped ern Britain. The discussion unfolds in four predecessor ale and, because of the parts. Section one sketches the linea- preserving properties of the resin found ments of Southampton's early and in hops, could be transported more confi- entrenched beer culture, while section dently and stored for up to a year.11 two introduces the products, settings and Although London is still regarded as protagonists of beer-brewing in the bor- the national trendsetter for beer drinking, ough. A third section outlines the relation- like other southern and eastern ports ship between the preparation and the Southampton took readily and independ- consumption of beer as institutionally ently to the new, exotic cordial via expressed in Southampton's extensive processes ill-served by 'emulation' para- interdependence between brewers and digms.12 Both a retail 'berehouse' and a publicans, while a final section recon- resident producer referred to as 'Adrian structs the unique regulatory frameworks the Beerbrewer' were encompassed by that resulted. the property terrier of 1454 (the use of an occupational surname intimates that he was probably Dutch),13 while by 1531 Beer culture in Southampton other 'certain brewers of both ale and beer' were active in the town.14 Casting Southampton's residents experienced doubt on Lien Luu's recent claim that what anthropologists would term an beyond the metropolis 'it was not until 'alcohol culture' in which intoxicating Elizabeth's reign that Englishmen began beverages were a core constituent of to drink beer in large quantities', by 1543 daily diets, an alternative to urban water the latter already outnumbered the for- supplies which were unreliable or pollut- mer by eight to five.15 Ten years later, in ed and, not least, a ubiquitous social a manoeuvre even more suggestive of lubricant.9 Its continental trading connec- transformed consumer preferences, one tions made for an eclectic market in of the five ale-brewers, Henry Russell, alcoholic drinks that had always paid 40s for permission to retool and endowed its inhabitants with a greater relaunch 'as a common brewer of beer'.16 range of inebriating consumption options than their peers in inland boroughs or the Several related attributes arising from its countryside. Wines from France and the port status stimulated the formation of an Iberian Peninsula had been imported indigenous beer culture in Southampton, Brewery History Number 135 11 a culture that had all but displaced ale by ers could anticipate markets beyond the middle decades of the sixteenth cen- internal networks of exchange. From tury. As a southern entrepôt it occupied a 1553 select Southampton brewers key position on the trade routes along exported beer to the Channel Islands which beer had originally flowed as an while,22 as in New England, Minehead import commodity, while when residents and Southwark, they exploited con- themselves turned to production they nections with the maritime sector by enjoyed ready access to hops imported brokering lucrative contracts for kegged from the Low Countries, a main trading 'ship beer' with the captains of merchant partner.18 Markets were guaranteed. and naval vessels.23 Southampton had long been enmeshed in global networks of commodities and agents (it hosted a colony of Venetian Products, settings and makers merchants and their African servants, sailors and troops of various nationalities, These factors coalesced to establish and, from 1567, a Huguenot stranger early modern Southampton as a major community) that would have eroded any beer-brewing centre in which production local resistance to 'alien' goods that is was controlled by a coterie of commercial believed to have impeded the accept- (or common) brewers with the expertise ance of beer in northern and rural con- and resources to manufacture on a large texts.19 Unusually high concentrations of scale. Unlike in London, where aliens mariners and soldiers augmented local dominated the trade until the seventeenth demand; its value and superior transport century, by the sixteenth century the skills potential established beer as the primary of a first generation of Dutch producers drink of sailors and troops who, accus- seem already to have been transferred to tomed to its flavour and strength, sought the natives who now dominated the trade it out when harboured in Southampton or (as early as 1543 immigrants were billeted upon its citizens.20 Most was banned from participation).24 The com- acquired from an extensive infrastructure parative expense and technological of official retail outlets in the form of inns, complexity of beer-making is well- taverns and alehouses which developed known and does not require extensive around this nomadic populace but also rehearsal. Put simply, successful com- catered to townspeople. By 1531 magis- mercial production required built-for- trates were already complaining that purpose or substantially adapted premises; 'every other house is a ... tapper [retailer access to a water supply, adequate ven- of alcohol]', while by 1603 the ratio of ale- tilation, multiple heating sources and houses to adult male householders had additional lofts and outhouses; a reper- risen to an impressive 1:13.21 Although toire of specialized brewing vessels and the bulk of demand was local, the town's other equipment; exhaustive supplies of beer culture radiated widely and produc- fuel and storage receptacles; a small 12 Journal of the Brewery History Society army of servants, stokers and clerks; from 'small' or 'threepenny' beer up to the and service animals and vehicles to dis- startling 'double double' type complained seminate the finished product to local of in 1553, 1558 and 1568,29 all of which consumers and the wharves. Although possessed different strengths, flavour professional ale-brewers, such as Henry profiles and ideological associations. Russell, could exploit their existing However, in a reproduction of the two knowledge, credit and facilities to reorient main types of ale, 'ordinary' and 'double' their operations,25 it would have been beers were the varieties which dominated impossible for most household producers brewer portfolios in this context. Civic to effect a similar transition without sub- authorities disliked the latter for three stantial additional training and capital interrelated reasons: it consumed more investment. Probate inventories provide malt than ordinary beer, unnecessarily particularly revealing glimpses into the diverting barley during dearth periods; economic and material realities of a large it was perceived to have diminished urban beer-brewing

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