Tosti departed from the king and his brother in great anger, and went to Hereford, where Harold had purveyed large supplies for the royal use. There he butchered all his brother’s servants, and inclosed a head and an arm in each of the vessels containing wine, mead, ale, pigment,[15] morat,[16] and cider, sending a message to the king that when he came to his farm he would find plenty of salt meat, and that he would bring more with him. For this horrible crime the king commanded him to be banished and outlawed. There is no doubt but that the Anglo-Saxons drank to excess, and thought no shame of it. Many times in Beowulf are we told of their being dragged from the mead-benches by their enemies and slaughtered, and in a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon poem on Judith we read:— “Then was Holofernes Enchanted with the wine of men: In the hall of the guests He laughed and shouted, He roared and dinn’d, That the children of men might hear afar, How the sturdy one Stormed and clamoured, Animated and elate with wine He admonished amply Those sitting on the bench That they should bear it well. So was the wicked one all day, The lord and his men, Drunk with wine; The stern dispenser of wealth; Till that they swimming lay Over drunk. All his nobility As they were death slain, Their property poured about. So commanded the lord of men, To fill to those sitting at the feast, Till the dark night Approached the children of men.” [Illustration] Even the clergy and monks drank probably more than was good for them, for a priest was forbidden by law to eat or drink at places where ale was sold. But that did not prevent their drinking at home; their benefactors provided well for that, as one instance will show. Ethelwold allowed the Monastery of Abingdon a great bowl, from which the drinking vessels of the brothers were filled twice a day. At Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin, on the festivals of Saints Peter and Paul, and all the other saints, they were to have wine, as well as mead, twice a day; and taking the number of Saints in the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, it must have gone hard with them, if this was not almost an every-day occurrence. [Illustration] The Northern nations did not lose their love of drink as time rolled on, as we may find in the pages of Olaus Magnus. They drank wine, but owing to the extreme cold it was not of native production, but imported. In this illustration we see the vessel that has brought it, and the bush outside, denoting that it was to be sold. They got it from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, but he says that the wine most in repute was a Spanish wine called Bastard, which Shakspeare mentions more than once, as (1 _Henry IV._ act ii. sc. 4) Prince Henry relating his adventures with a drawer, says, “Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint of Bastard in the Half Moon.” [Illustration]