In the twenty-fourth year of Henry VIII. the Brewers, after much agitation, got the prices of beer raised to 2s. the kilderkin for the “doble,” {155} and 1s. for the “syngyll”; but even with that they were not satisfied, and expressed their dissatisfaction in protests to the Common Council, who listened to their complaint, “but after long consideration it was agreed, that whereas the Serjeaunt Gybson hath exhibited and rote a boke of the gaynes of the said bere-brewers,” their case should be remitted to the care of a committee appointed to look into it. In the result no alteration was then sanctioned, but five years afterwards the price was raised to 3s. 4d. the kil. for the best, and 2s. 8d. for the threehalfpenny. The strength of ale usually brewed about this time may be judged from answers given by London brewers when interrogated on the subject. John Sheffield, on being asked (36 Henry VIII.) how many kilderkins of _good ale_ he draws from a quarter of malt, answers, “Little above five.” Other brewers say much the same thing, though Richard Pyckering evades the question by saying that “he commytteth the whole to his wife, and what she draweth from a quarter he knoweth not.” This would point to an ale of very considerable strength. In the thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII., another committee was appointed to consider this all-important question, “on account of the grete derthe and scarcitye at this present of all kinds of grayne;” but nothing resulted from their deliberations. The Brewers, however, seem to have stuck to their text with great pertinacity, and in the fifth year of Edward VI. obtained a decision of a committee of the Common Council, that they could no longer supply the City at the then existing prices. Two kinds of beer only are to be allowed, our old friends, “doble” and “syngyll,” and the strength and quality are defined as follows: “Of every quarter of grayne that any beare-bruer shall brewe of doble beare, he shall drawe fowre barrells and one fyrkyn of goode holsome drynke for mannes bodye,” and double that quantity of single beer. The price of the double beer is to be 4s. 8d. the barrel, and of single beer 2s. 4d., until the price of malt is reduced to 15s. the quarter, and of wheat to 12s., when the old prices are to be revived. Little variations of price occurred until the reign of Elizabeth, who seems, from contemporary accounts, to have been frequently exercised by the behaviour of the London Brewers. In a Royal proclamation of the second year of her reign, she complains that the Brewers have left off brewing any single beer, but brew “a kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble-doble-bere which they do commenly utter and sell at a very greate and excessyve pryce,” and orders the old rules and rates to be observed; and in particular that every Brewer shall once a week brew “as much syngyl as doble beare and more.” Twenty years later the “doble-doble” seems to have been {156}