But while good and solid food could thus be purchased on every hand, we must not forget drink, for our forefathers were great tipplers. I have already mentioned our ‘William le Viners’ or ‘Roger le Vinours,’ in most cases, I doubt not, strictly cultivators of that plant on English soil. None the less certain, however, is it that our many early ‘John le Vineturs’ or ‘Alexander le Vineters’ were also, as merchants, employed in the importation of the varied wines of the Continent into our land. How abundant and how diverse they were an old poem shall tell us— Ye shall have Spayneshe wyne and Gascoyne, Rose colure, whyt, claret, rampyon, Tyre, capryck, and malvesyne, Sak, raspyce, alycaunt, rumney, Greke, ipocrase, new made clary, Such as ye never had. The entry ‘Adam le Wyneter’ reminds us that in all probability it is to our early wine-merchants also we owe our ‘Winters.’ ‘Walter le Brewers,’ or ‘Emma le Brewsteres,’ or ‘Lawrence Beerbrewers,’[383] abound on every hand. We are reminded of the last by ‘Cocke Lorelle’— Chymney-swepers, and costerde-mongers, Lodemen and berebrewers. The Norman equivalent for our ‘brewer’ was ‘bracer,’ and thus it is we meet with such a name as ‘Stephen le Bracer’ or ‘Clarissa la Braceresse.’ Latinized forms are found in ‘Reginald Braciator’ or ‘Letitia Braciatrix.’ Brewing was at first entirely in the hands of women. We have here ‘brewster,’ ‘braceress,’ and ‘braciatrix,’ and such phrases as ‘alewife’ and the obsolete ‘brewife’ (though it lingered on till Shakespeare’s day) show the ale-making and ale-selling business to have been mainly hers. ‘Malter’[384] and ‘Maltster’ or ‘Malster’ both exist, but the latter has ever denoted the avocation.[385] ‘Tapper’ and ‘Tapster,’ too, are both occupants of our directories, but as a term of industry the latter has ever held its own.[386] It is the same with several other occupations which we have already noticed. It is so with ‘bread-baking,’ manifesting a woman’s work. As we have already seen, the familiar expression in olden times was ‘bakester,’ now represented by our ‘Baxters.’ It is so with weaving. Our nomenclature, as I have previously shown, still preserves the ‘Webster’ and the ‘Kempster’ from being forgotten. In the winter evening, as the logfire crackled on the hearth, and while the good man was chopping wood, or tending his cattle, or mending his outdoor gear, who but his wife should be drawing woof and warp in the chimney nook? Whose work but hers should this be to clothe with her own thrifty fingers the backs of them who belonged to her? But, as with the others, her work in time became less a home occupation than a public craft, and thus it got into the hands of the male creation. While ‘Spinner’ still flourishes as a surname, the feminine ‘spinster’ never obtained a place in our nomenclature.[387] This is no doubt to be