There limps the ostler with his pails, And there the landlord stalks inspector; Two farmers there discuss their sales, And drain by turns one goblet’s nectar. Hay ricks are near and orchard fruit; The cock’s shrill crow and flapping wing; The low contented neigh of brute; The pipe’s perfume, and tankard’s ding. The fiddle’s scrape,—the milking cows,— The snapping cork,—the roaring joke:— The birds by thousands in the boughs:— The creaking wheel and whip’s loud stroke. {187} Sunshine strews all the kitchen floor, Reposes on the home-field crop— Blisters the Doctor’s fine new door, And kisses copse and chimney top. Clouds fleecy dot the blue immense— Farm-houses—cities—vales—and streams— And seats and parks and forests dense, Sleep stretch’d afar, in floods of beams. An inn or an alehouse, however, was at the time of the Conquest and for long after, far to seek. In the reign of Edward I. there were only three taverns in London, one in Chepe, one in Wallbrooke, and one in Lombard Street, and in country districts the proportion to the population would doubtless be as small, the want being supplied in the manner before alluded to. Even in the year 1552 the following list of the numbers of taverns allowed for the chief towns in England, no doubt shows a much smaller proportion to population than is seen at the present day. There were to be allowed forty in London, eight in York, four in Norwich, three in Westminster, six in Bristol, four in Hull, three in Shrewsbury, four in Exeter, three in Salisbury, four in Gloucester, four in Chester, three in Hereford, three in Worcester, three in Oxford, four in Cambridge, three in Southampton, four in Canterbury, three in Ipswich, three in Winchester, three in Colchester, and four in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. [Illustration: A Mediæval Innkeeper.] Even parsonages seem to have been licensed as alehouses in very out-of-the-way districts. A survival of this custom, almost to our own times, is mentioned by Southey, who states that the parsonage house of Langdale was licensed as an alehouse, because it was so poor a living that the curate could not have otherwise supported himself. The regulation previously mentioned as to the number of taverns, seems never to have been formally repealed; it could, however, only have been very slackly enforced, and doubtless soon became a dead letter. It was not, however, altogether forgotten, for in a letter from {188} the Lords in Council, in reply to a petition presented in the year 1618 by the parishioners of St. Mildred, in London, it is stated that “whereas the number of taverns had been limited to forty, and their places assigned,” there were then no less than four hundred in the City alone. The Lord Mayor and Common Council are therefore directed to put some restraint on this “enormous liberty of setting up taverns.”