‘You know Lord Barrymore?’ Dr. Beaufort was asked by the lords of the Privy Council. ‘Intimately, most intimately,’ replied the Doctor. ‘You are continually with him?’ urged the questioner. ‘We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town.’ ‘What do you talk about?’ ‘Eating and drinking.’ ‘_And_ what else?’ ‘Oh, my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and drinking, drinking and eating.’ The habit of _toasting_ had much to do with the excesses then so common. At the birth of the male heir to the throne, claret was drunk at the expense of the Crown, and endless glasses broken in drinking the health of their Majesties and the Prince Stuart at the Edinburgh town cross. Even the malcontent city of York drank deep potations. Rhyming toasts were then in fashion. A Court gossip writes to Lady Rachel Russell:--‘I know not whether you have heard a health that goes about, which is new to me just now, so I send it you:-- The King God bless, And each princess, The Church no less, Which we profess, As did Queen Bess.’ No doubt great abuses attended this habit of health-drinking, or we should not find Dekker, Thomas Hall, and, indeed, the moralists almost to a man, inveighing against the custom. It was only a few years before this reign that the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Matthew Hale, left the injunction to his grandchildren:-- I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for it is become one of the greatest artifices of drinking and occasions of quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onward, and if you pledge as many as will be drank, you must be debauched and drunk. If they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair answer--that your grandfather who brought you up, from whom under God you have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command with you that you should never begin or pledge a health. What a contrast does Justice Hale present to the merciless Judge Jeffries, whose habitual intemperance may account for his actions. Nor should it be forgotten that Sir Henry Bellasyse, whose widow the king was so anxious to marry, was killed in a duel whilst in a state of intoxication. A very important reminder is to be found in an Act of 1685, to the effect that-- The ancient true and principal use of ale-houses was for the lodging of wayfaring people, and for the supply of the wants of such as were not able by greater quantities to make their provisions of victuals, and not for entertainment and harbouring of lewd and idle people, to spend their time and money in a lewd and drunken manner.