Drowning Sorrows or Brewing Up the Beast...

'And a man once drunk with wine or strong drink rather resembles a brute beast than a Christian man. For do not his eyes begin to stare and to be red, fiery and foam at the mouth like a boar? Doth not his tongue falter and stammer in his mouth? Doth not his head seem as heavy as a millstone, he not being able to bear it up? Are not his wits and spirits, as it were, drowned? Is not his understanding altogether decayed? Do not his hands, and all his body vibrate, quaver and shake, as it were, with a quotidian fever?'

Such was the opinion of Philip Stubbes, writing in the later 1500's ('The Anatomy of Abuses', 1583). Certainly Dean Suckling of Norwich Cathedral would concur with this view...

2nd November 1616
'Dr Suckling, dean, did admonish Ellis Goodwyn, now dwelling within the precinct, having the office of blowing the organs [ie his job was to manually pump the organ bellows - thirsty work it seems!]. The said Ellis being upon the 25 October last so disguised with extraordinary drinking that he was for that and other abuse of himself then and there set in the stocks; that hereafter he should carry himself more soberly, under pain of loss of his said office of Organ Blower.'

Around the same time, the renowned writer, Thomas Nashe, warned of eight different states of drunkeness - the worst being the 'goat drunk', who, 'has no mind but lechery'...

1615
'Martha Cambridge accuse[s] Ben Wright: [that] you did come drunk into my house with your prick hanging out of your breeches like a horse and offered to break down the door when I was forced to shut it on you.'
[Transcription: David Tonge, M.A]

However, not every contemporary voice was united in condemnation of alcohol:

'Ale doth comfort the heavy and troubled mind; it will make a weeping widow laugh and forget sorrow for her deceased husband; [...] it is the warmest lining of a poor man's coat; it satiates and assuages hunger and cold; with a toast it is the poor man's comfort; the shepherd, mower, ploughman, and blacksmith's most esteemed purchase; it is the tinker's treasure, the pedlar's jewel, the beggar's joy; and the prisoner's loving nurse.' (Richard Younge, 'The Drunkard's Character', 1639.)

Perhaps, as one historian has commented, 'alcohol was the essential narcotic which anaesthetized men [sic.] against the strains of contemporary life' (Keith Thomas, 'Religion and the Decline of Magic', 1973).

Although we always have to handle the evidence carefully - misdemenours are 'captured' and rendered, perhaps disproportionately, visible by the surviving records -, it would seem that drinking and drunkeness were a central feature of life in Norwich during the Early Modern period. I've got some fantastic 'street level' stories from Tudor and Stuart Norwich, which illustrate some of the - all too recognisable! - scrapes that people found themselves in due to such excesses as described above.

Several years ago I told some of these stories - to great acclaim - during a one-off 'Norwich Tippling House Tour' I gave to a private party (it even included a one-man play - or skit - performed by my good self to the bewilderment/entertainment of the assembled crowd!). It's a shame that I have so much material like this gathering dust. After all, my former colleague, Dave Tong, and I worked very hard to bring this to the light of day.

However, I am glad to say that some of this material will be aired during a session I'm giving in the New Year, entitled, 'Disorderly Lives in Tudor & Stuart Norwich'. It's quite a story!