The amount of small beer consumed in every household was enormous. It must be remembered that it was not only the national beverage, but, for a great many people, the only beverage. Children drank it as well as adults; tea was as yet only a luxury or a fashion. The household of which I am speaking drank three quarts of beer a day for every member. It seems impossible. We must remember, however, that people drank a great deal more then than now—a thing of which I have no direct proof, yet of which I am perfectly satisfied; that breakfast, dinner, and supper would easily account for two quarts, and the remaining quart was spread over the rest of the day. Benjamin Franklin’s fellows in the printing office drank each his three quarts a day. Ale, of which there were various kinds, and wine were served in the best parlour at dinner. On the variety of drinks Chamberlayne speaks:— “Since the late Rebellion, England hath abounded in variety of Drinks (as it did lately in variety of Religions) above any nation in Europe. Besides all sorts of the best wines from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, there are sold in London above twenty sorts of other Drinks, as Brandy, Coffee, Chocolate, Tee, Aromatick, Mum, Sider, Perry, Mede, Metheglin, Beer, Ale, many sorts of Ales, very different, as Cock, Stepony, Stich-back, Hull, North-Devon, Sambidge, Betony, Scurvy-grass, Sage-Ale, Colledge-Ale, etc., a piece of wantonness whereof none of our Ancestors were ever guilty.” Howell sends a bottle of Metheglin to a friend with a recommendation to use it for a morning draught. What were the heads of our seventeenth-century ancestors made of that they could drink this heavy, powerful stuff before breakfast? “To inaugurate a good and jovial New Year to you, I send you a morning’s draught, viz. a bottle of Metheglin. Neither Sir John Barleycorn or Bacchus had anything to do with it; but it is the pure juice of the Bee, the laborious Bee, and King of Insects. The Druids and old British Bards were wont to take a Carouse hereof before they entered into their Speculations; and if you do so when your Fancy labours with any thing, it will do you no Hurt, and I know your Fancy to be very good. But this Drink always carries a kind of State with it, for it must be attended with a brown Toast; nor will it admit but of one good Draught, and that in the morning; if more, it will keep a-humming in the head, and so speak too much of the House it comes from, I mean the Hive, as I gave a caution elsewhere.”