There seems to have been a smoke question in London even as early as this period, for in the twenty-first year of Elizabeth we find that John Platt was committed to prison, “for that he contrarye to my Lorde Maior’s comaundement to refraine from burninge of seacoles during her Majestie’s abode at Westminster, he did continually burn seacole notwithstanding.” A petition from the Brewers to Her Majesty’s Council about the same period recites that the Brewers understand that Her Majesty “findeth hersealfe greately greved and anoyed with the taste and smoke of the seacooles used in their furnaces.” They therefore promise to substitute wood in the brewhouses nearest to Westminster Palace. What would have been Her Majesty’s “grief” if she could have experienced a modern November in London?
In Peter Pindar’s poem on the visit of King George III. to Whitbread’s Brewery, allusion is made to the once popular belief that brewers’ horses are usually fed on grains. The origin of this idea may possibly be found in the regulations enforced in London as to the price of and the dealings in brewers’ grains. In a proclamation of Elizabeth’s { 146} time it is recited that “forasmuche as brewers’ graines be victuall for horses and cattell as hey and horsebread and other provinder be,” therefore a price is to be set upon grains by the Lord Mayor, and the buying of grains to sell again is forbidden. The difficulties of enforcing the rules as to price and quality of ale and beer are shown in the frequent complaints of the brewers, and in the numerous trials that were made from time to time by the City authorities to ascertain how much drink ought to be brewed from a fixed quantity of malt. In the thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a large Committee was appointed to make trial, at the charges of the City, of twenty quarters of malt, to be brewed into two sorts of beer, viz., strong beer at 6s. 8d. the barrel, and “doble” beer at 3s. 4d. the barrel. As a result of the trial, the brewers promised to draw only five barrels and a half of double beer from a quarter of malt until the price of malt had fallen to 18s. the quarter; a strong proof this of the growing taste for strong ale and beer. Shortly before this time the strongest ale allowed by law had been this same “doble.” Now the “doble” had taken the place of the single, and the strong ale of twice the strength of the “doble” had stepped into its place.