A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set their caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used to denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s _Note on Dryden_ (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself Maximine?” _Fulwel’s Art of Flattery_ thus mentions this variety of the juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched throtes, with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly called _huff-cap_, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name). Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English in 1587, also {157} mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in which our ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it, “that would make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are so nice in the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their is such headie ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse thereof among suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap, the mad dog, angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be noted, that when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled conscience, after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and dangerous estate; another thinking belike to change his colour and not his mind, carried him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s teats, till they lie still againe and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus sucke their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with such eger and sharpe devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be red as cockes, and little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called “Huff,” is still brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the fellows (not the boys) of that ancient institution. Some idea of the strength of the ale usually drunk in the country districts in Elizabeth’s reign, may be gathered from a passage in a letter from Leicester to Burleigh, written while the Queen was on one of her famous progresses through the country: “There is not one drop of good drink here for her. We were fain to send to London, and Kenilworth, and divers other places where ale was; her own bere was so strong as there was no man able to drink it.”