Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of the Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such lengths that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council brings back the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.
In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel, the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a fourth kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix the prices of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards finally discontinued.
The limitation and classification of ale and beer according to their strength, was maintained down to quite recent times because of the duties laid upon them, but on the repeal of those duties ales of every strength, kind and description were, and have since been, extensively manufactured. Every want, whim, and fancy of the ale-drinker may now be gratified. There is old Scotch or old Burton for the lover of strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and last, but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which, when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.
A tale is told of a man who asserted that tea was stronger than beer. “A pot of beer,” said he, “will seldom attract more than a couple of men about it, but a pot of tea will draw half-a-dozen or more old women.”
A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set their caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used to denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s _Note on Dryden_ (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself Maximine?” _Fulwel’s Art of Flattery_ thus mentions this variety of the juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched throtes, with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly called _huff-cap_, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name). Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English in 1587, also { 157} mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in which our ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it, “that would make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are so nice in the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their is such headie ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse thereof among suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap, the mad dog, angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be noted, that when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled conscience, after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and dangerous estate; another thinking belike to change his colour and not his mind, carried him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s teats, till they lie still againe and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus sucke their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with such eger and sharpe devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be red as cockes, and little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called “Huff,” is still brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the fellows (not the boys) of that ancient institution.