Allusions abound in this Norman period to convivial meetings of the middle and lower classes in inns or private houses. The miracles of St. Cuthbert, as related by Reginald of Durham, give an insight to their private life in the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus, a parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, is described as passing the evening drinking with the parish priest. Returning home late he was pursued by dogs, and reaching his own house in terror, shut the door upon them. He then mounted to a garret window to look at his persecutors, when he was seized with madness, and his family being roused carried him into the court and bound him to the seats (_sedilia_). On another occasion, a youth and his monastic teacher are represented as going to a tavern, and passing the whole of the night in drinking, till one of them becomes intoxicated, and cannot be prevailed on to return home. Hospitality in these troublous times was freely exercised. The monasteries had their open guest-houses; the burgesses in the towns were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers, in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular taverns (_hospitia_). Sir Walter Scott would be ready to defend the clergy, as we found him shielding the Norman nobles from any such imputation. The dialogue in _Ivanhoe_ will be remembered. ‘An’ please, your reverence,’ said Dennet, ‘a drunken priest came to visit the sacristan at St. Edmund’s.’ ‘It does not please my reverence,’ answered the Churchman, ‘that there should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that a layman should so speak of him. Be mannerly, my friend, and conclude the holy man only wrapped in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine. I have felt it myself.’ For reasons to be mentioned immediately, home vineyards were beginning to be less cultivated, though they were not by any means discontinued. William of Malmesbury tells of a vineyard attached to his monastery, which was first planted in the eleventh century by a Greek monk who settled there. The Exchequer Rolls contain a discharge of the sheriffs of Northampton and Leicester, in the fifth year of Stephen, for certain expenses incurred on account of the royal vineyard at Rockingham. The acquisition of the Duchy of Guienne (1152) naturally led to an interchange of commodities between England and France. Wine traffic with Bordeaux was at once established; and from this time our statutes are laden with ordinances concerning the importation of French wine, most of which, in conformity to the mistaken notions of political economy in those times, fix the _maximum_ of price for which they were to be sold. FOOTNOTES: [49] Mr. Samuelson (_History of Drink_) observes that on the chessmen of the twelfth century the queen usually carries a drinking-horn. [50] _Hist. Reg._, § 245.