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But you, O well-match'd Woman, have no need to fear this sort of president in your husband, because he is a perfect hater of excessive drinking, and an enemy to such company that alwaies frequent Taverns and Ale-houses; and if he doth go once among good acquaintance, and take a glass more then ordinary, which is but seldom, there's nothing that he doth less then maunder and mumble; but he's all for kissing, hugging and dallying; hating pot-company to the highest, or those that make it their business, or spend their times in the Summer with going a Fishing, and in the Winter go a Birding; upon which sort of Gentlemen this old rime was made: Who in the Winter Bird, and Summers go a Fishing, Have no bad meat in Tub, that is not worth the dishing.
In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlours, on board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-rooms, farmyards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in the tennis-court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts.
For this pernicious purpose, there was a band of profligate miscreants, the refuse of the clergy, dead to every sentiment of virtue, abandoned to all sense of decency and decorum, for the most part prisoners for debt or delinquency, and indeed the very outcasts of human society, who hovered about the verge of the Fleet-prison to intercept customers, plying like porters for employment, and performed the ceremony of marriage without license or question, in cellars, garrets, or ale-houses, to the scandal of religion, and the disgrace of that order which they professed.
I presently agreed, though in defiance of an act of parliament, by which persons wandering abroad and lodging in ale-houses are decreed to be rogues and vagabonds; and this too after having been very singularly officious in putting that law in execution. My wife, having reconnoitered the house, reported that there was one room in which were two beds.
Newspapers became less political, and their circulation extended from the coffee-houses, inns, and ale-houses to a new class of readers. "They have of late," a writer in Applebee's Journal says in 1725, "been taken in much by the women, especially the political ladies, to assist at the tea-table."
By this time a considerable crowd had collected from the neighbouring ale-houses and cabarets, who deemed it a most fitting occasion to honour us with the most infernal yells and shouts, as indicating their love of justice, and delight in detecting knavery; and that we were both involved in such suspicion, we had not long to learn.
Perhaps, however, like myself, he has an exceedingly clever wife who, whilst he is making verses, or running about the country swigging ale with people in bulged shoes, or buying pigs or glandered horses, looks after matters at home, drives a swinging trade, and keeps not only herself, but him respectable but even in that event he must have a good deal of common-sense in him, even like myself, who always allows my wife to buy and sell, carry money to the bank, draw cheques, inspect and pay tradesmen's bills, and transact all my real business, whilst I myself pore over old books, walk about shires, discoursing with gypsies, under hedgerows, or with sober bards in hedge ale-houses."
Lord Colambre returned to the inn, where, after waiting a considerable time, he gave up the point he could not get any dinner and in the evening he walked out again into the town. He found several ale-houses, however, open, which were full of people; all of them as busy and as noisy as possible.
The justices in sessions or singly also performed much administrative work, such as the oversight and repair of bridges, the granting of licenses to ale-houses, the establishment of wages, the binding out of apprentices, and the relief of wounded soldiers.
They did not note, or if they noted did not heed, that the favorite sign of ale-houses throughout the country was the head of Wilkes. They were indifferent to the fact that Wilkes had come to be regarded in all directions as the champion of popular liberty. All they knew, all that they cared to know, was that Wilkes was in exile, and was like enough to die in exile.
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