[Illustration: Figs. 312 and 313.--Bellarmines.] [Illustration: Fig. 314.--Bellarmine.] The _Bellarmine_, or _Grey Beard_, or _Long Beard_, as it was commonly called, was a stoneware pot of bottle form, mostly with a handle at the back and ornament on the front. The neck is narrow, and the lower part, or “belly,” as it is technically called, very wide and protuberant. They were in very general use at the “ale-houses” to serve ale in to customers, and were of different sizes--the _gallonier_ containing a gallon; the _pottle pot_, two quarts; the _pot_, a quart; and the _little pot_, a pint. These jugs were derisively named after Cardinal Bellarmine, who died in 1621. The cardinal having, by his determined and bigoted opposition to the reformed religion, made himself obnoxious in the Low Countries, became naturally an object of derision and contempt with the Protestants, who, among other modes of showing their detestation of the man, seized on the potter’s art to exhibit his short stature, his hard features, and his rotund figure, to become the jest of the ale-house and the byword of the people. Allusions to the bellarmines are very common in the productions of the English writers of the period. Ben Jonson, in his _Gipsies Metamorphosed_, gives the following amusing version of the origin of these vessels:-- “Gaze upon this brave spark struck out of Flintshire upon Justice Jug’s daughter, then sheriff of the county, who, running away with a kinsman of our captain’s, and her father pursuing her to the Marches, he great with justice, she great with jugling, they were both for the time turned into stone upon sight of each other here in Chester; till at last (see the wonder!) a jug of the town ale reconciling them, the memorial of both their gravities--his in beard, and hers in belly--hath remained ever since preserved in picture upon the most stone jugs of the kingdom.” In another place he says:-- “Whose, at the best, some round grown thing, a _jug Faced with a beard_, that fills out to the guests.” In another play, the _Ordinary_, is the following:-- “Thou thing, Thy belly looks like to some strutting hill, O’ershadowed by thy rough beard like a wood; Or like a larger jug that some men call A _Bellarmine_, but we a _Conscience_; Whereon the lewder hand of pagan workman Over the proud ambitious head hath carved An idol large, with beard episcopal, Making the vessel look like tyrant Eglon.” In the curious play of _Epsom Wells_, one of the characters, while busy with ale, says, “Uds bud, my head begins to turn round; but let’s into the house. ’Tis dark. We’ll have one _Bellarmine_ there, and then _Bonus nocius_.”