In the households of the reigning princes, there was a strong tendency to supplement the native brew by imported products, and at such festivities as marriages, christenings, target-shooting and hunting, immense quantities of drink were swallowed. The cellar ordinance of Duke Ernst the Pious, in 1648, allowed for ladies of noble rank four _maas_ of beer a day, and three _maas_ for a “nightcap.” How much ought in such circumstances to be the allowance for a man of similar rank, and of his hangers on is left to the imagination of the reader. Noble families that had no brew-houses were obliged to supply themselves from the brewery of the prince. A beer tax also was levied on vassals who brewed their own beer. An excellent illustration of the condition of things is afforded by the celebrated Hofbrauhaus at Munich, in whose whitewashed rooms every stranger still takes at least one _maas_. As early as the time of Louis the Severe, there existed a little court brewery at Munich near the _Burggasse_, but towards the end of the sixteenth century, the demand increasing and the facilities for production having long been inadequate, William V. proceeded to the building of the present brew-house, which was at first intended only for the making of white beer, the brown being still made in the old quarters. In 1708, however, brown beer also began to be made in the new establishment. This topic is treated in a stereotyped article which appears every year in the May number of the Munich Beer Gazette, under the title “Bock article,” and gives the worshipful bock-drinking community a solemn and moving account of the court brewery and its products down to the minutest particulars. As regards bock itself, which is no longer an exclusive specialty of Munich, as a drink under the same name is sold every year in various cities, Graesse places its origin in the seventeenth century, and suggests that it was an imitation of the Eimbecker beer,—the last rather in virtue of a general theory and of a supposed play on words, Eimbeck, Aimbock Bock—than as an actual fact.[13] He says that “the Munich Aimbock or Bock was made before 1616, the same that is now sold at the beginning of May on Corpus Christi day.” Now, however, it has been shown that all through the second half of the sixteenth century (1553-1574) Aimpecker and Eimbecker beer was spoken of, and that there was an import of beer to Vienna from Eimbeck as late as 1771, while no trace of any play of words on the name is discovered. Moreover, that the “bock cellar”[14] (on the place of the present Restaurant Bonner) was in full operation at the beginning of the present century, is shown by Chr. Mueller who wrote under Max Joseph, and described the manners of the place very nearly as they were to be observed recently, just before the disappearance of this historical locality, and it is doubtless the fact that the larger half of the reputation of Munich beer is due to this specialty.