About the year 1524 a large number of Flemish immigrants settled in Kent, cultivated hops and brewed beer, and soon caused that county to become famous for its hop gardens and the excellence of their produce. To these strangers is perhaps due the chief credit of having enlightened the British mind on the subject of bitter beer, and their advent is probably the event pointed to in the old couplet already quoted.
Among the numerous officials appointed to enforce the regulations of the City, were persons called hop-searchers, whose duty it was to search for defective hops, which, when found were burnt. Wriothesley’s Chronicle mentions that “on the 10th daie of September, 1551, was burned in Finsburie Field XXXI sacke and pokettes of hopps in the afternoune, being nought, and not holsome for man’s bodie, and condemned by an Act made by my Lord Maior and his bretheren the aldermen the 10th daie of September, at which court six comeners of the Cittie of London were apoynted to be serchers for a hole yeare for the said hopps; and they were sworne the fifth daie of this moneth and made search ymediatlie for the same.”
The popular taste is not a thing to be changed in a day, and at that happy period of history when railways, penny posts, newspapers, stump orators and other nineteenth-century methods of enlightenment were unknown and undreamt of, it may well be understood that the knowledge of this great improvement spread but slowly. Not only were the English slow to appreciate what the Flemings had done for them, but they believed that they were like to be poisoned by the new-fangled drink which was not in their eyes to be compared to the sweet and { 71} thick, but honest and unsophisticated English ale. The writers of the day are loud in their abuse of beer. In the passages from Andrew Boorde’s _Dyetary_ (1542), quoted in Chapter I. (p. 6), ale is described as being the natural drink of Englishmen, and made of malt and water, while beer, which is composed of malt, hops, and water, is the natural drink of a Dutchman, and of late is much used in England, to the great detriment of many Englishmen. There is a truly insular ring about this. We should like to enlighten old Andrew’s darkness by a draught of sparkling Burton. Boorde undoubtedly expresses the popular opinion of the period, for from Rastall’s _Book of Entries_ we learn that an ale-man brought his action against his Brewer for spoiling his ale, by putting in it a certain _weed_ called a _hopp_, and recovered damages. Even Harry the Eighth, who of all our kings was the greatest lover of good things—and a few bad ones—was blind to the merits of the hop, and enjoined the Royal brewer of Eltham that he put neither hops nor brimstone into the ale. Possibly sulphuring, of which a word or two anon, was then in use; we cannot otherwise account for the mention of brimstone. This was in 1530, only six years after the Flemings had settled in Kent.