and the following descriptive verses of Leigh Hunt, entitled _The Village Alehouse, a Picture in Detail_, with but slight alterations, would serve equally as well:—
Dear ramblers all—an Alehouse sign You’ll own as good a sight as greets ye; When summer’s long, long mornings shine, Where leisure reigns, and ‘All hail’ meets ye.
There rests the waggon in its track,— A corn bag round each horse’s nose is; There comes the miller and his sack: And there at ease the beggar dozes.
There limps the ostler with his pails, And there the landlord stalks inspector; Two farmers there discuss their sales, And drain by turns one goblet’s nectar.
Hay ricks are near and orchard fruit; The cock’s shrill crow and flapping wing; The low contented neigh of brute; The pipe’s perfume, and tankard’s ding.
The fiddle’s scrape,—the milking cows,— The snapping cork,—the roaring joke:— The birds by thousands in the boughs:— The creaking wheel and whip’s loud stroke. { 187}
Sunshine strews all the kitchen floor, Reposes on the home-field crop— Blisters the Doctor’s fine new door, And kisses copse and chimney top.
Clouds fleecy dot the blue immense— Farm-houses—cities—vales—and streams— And seats and parks and forests dense, Sleep stretch’d afar, in floods of beams.
An inn or an alehouse, however, was at the time of the Conquest and for long after, far to seek. In the reign of Edward I. there were only three taverns in London, one in Chepe, one in Wallbrooke, and one in Lombard Street, and in country districts the proportion to the population would doubtless be as small, the want being supplied in the manner before alluded to. Even in the year 1552 the following list of the numbers of taverns allowed for the chief towns in England, no doubt shows a much smaller proportion to population than is seen at the present day. There were to be allowed forty in London, eight in York, four in Norwich, three in Westminster, six in Bristol, four in Hull, three in Shrewsbury, four in Exeter, three in Salisbury, four in Gloucester, four in Chester, three in Hereford, three in Worcester, three in Oxford, four in Cambridge, three in Southampton, four in Canterbury, three in Ipswich, three in Winchester, three in Colchester, and four in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.