This, however, was only a mild repetition of some of the prodigious feasts of former days. On the enthronement of George Nevile as archbishop of York, in the reign of Edward IV., the following was the list of eatables which furnished the tables:—104 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 1,000 sheep, 304 calves, 304 swine, 400 swans, 2,000 geese, 1,000 capons, 2,000 pigs, many thousand of various small birds such as quail, plovers, &c., 4,000 cold venison pasties, 500 stags, 608 pike and bream, 12 porpoises and seals, and many other delicacies. These solids were washed down with 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine and “one pynt of hypocrass.”
Nor were the clergy behind the laity in their devotion to good living. In Saxon times the frequent directions to the monks and friars to abstain from excess in eating and drinking, from haunting ale-houses and from acting the ale-scop or gleeman at such places, all tell their own tale. The frequency with which from that period the intemperance of the clergy called forth the rebukes of their superiors and the satire of the writers of the day, show that matters did not mend much as mediæval times advanced. Friar Tuck, as depicted in _Ivanhoe_, is probably a type of many a jolly monk of his day. For his drink is assigned “a but of sack, a rumlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike. And if,” continues the King, “that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and be acquainted with my butler.” Chaucer describes his monk as a free liver and a jolly good fellow, whose sentiments with regard to the duties of his order are shown in the lines:—
The reule of seynt Maure or of seint Beneyt, Bycause that it was old and somdel streyt, This ilke monk let olde things pace, And held after the newe world the space.
The Friar, too, who “knew the taverns well in every town,” may be taken as a true portrait of a prominent figure of the times. It is recorded that the Abbey of Aberbrothwick expended annually 9,000 { 286} bushels of malt in ale-brewing, and a popular satire, perpetuated by Sir Walter Scott on the monks of Melrose, declares that—
The monks of Melrose made fat kail On Fridays when they fasted; And neither wanted beef nor ale, So long as their neighbours’ lasted.