The first thing which strikes one in the accounts is the enormous consumption of beer. The household drank two kilderkins, or thirty-six gallons, of beer every week! One hundred and forty-four quarts a week! Twenty-one quarts a day! It means nearly three quarts a head. This seems impossible. There must have been some external assistance. Perhaps the master had some kind of farm, or employed other servants. But it is not really impossible. We must remember that there was no tea, that people would not drink water if they could get anything else, and that small beer was the national beverage, taken with every meal, and between meals, and that the allowance was practically _à discretion_. It was certainly quite possible, and even common, for a man to drink three quarts a day. A hundred years later Benjamin Franklin describes the daily beer-drinking in a London printing-house. The men took a pint before breakfast, a pint with breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint at six, and a pint when work was knocked off. This makes three quarts, without counting any beer that might be taken in the evening. In the well-known and often-quoted account of Mr. Hastings (Hutchin's _History of Dorsetshire_), who lived over a hundred years, it is recorded of him that he would take his glass or two of wine or strong ale at dinner, but that he always had beside him his great "tun-glass" filled with small beer, which he stirred with rosemary. But, even if the men drank three quarts a day, the women could not. In addition to the small beer, which cost threepence a gallon, there are continual entries of ale at twopence a quart. This was bought at the tavern. There were many kinds of ale, as cock ale, college ale, wormwood ale, sage ale, and scurvy-grass ale, some of them medicated, to be taken at certain seasons of the year. There was also wine, but not much. Occasionally they bought a cask--a tierce of forty-two gallons--and bottled it at home. The kind of wine is not stated. Sometimes they send out to the nearest tavern for a bottle, and it cost a shilling. The accounts seem to set down everything wanted for the conduct of a house; every week, however, there is an unexplained item, called "cook's bill." This, I think, is the separate account of the servants' table. The "cook's bill" amounts every week to a good sum, a little above or a little below a pound. Perhaps it contained the wages as well as the board. The amount of food entered certainly does not seem enough for the servants as well as the family.