William Carew Hazlitt

“ A bushel of wheat, in a romance of the thirteenth century, is estimated to produce twenty loaves; but the statement is obviously to be taken with allowance. The manchet was sometimes thought to be sufficient without butter, as we now eat a scone. In the "Conceits of Old Hobson," 1607, the worthy haberdasher of the Poultry gives some friends what is facetiously described as a "light" banquet—a cup of wine and a manchet of bread on a trencher for each guest, in an apartment illuminated with five hundred candles. ”

“ It is open to doubt if, even in those primitive times, the supply of a national want lagged far behind the demand.
The list of wines which the King of Hungary proposed to have at the wedding of his daughter, in "The Squire of Low Degree," is worth consulting. Harrison, in his "Description of England," 1586, speaks of thirty different kinds of superior vintages and fifty-six of commoner or weaker kinds. But the same wine was perhaps known under more than one name. ”

“ Worlidge, in his "Vinetum Britannicum," 1676, gives us receipts for metheglin and birch wine. Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, under January, recommends a draught of ale and wormwood wine mixed in a morning to comfort the heart, scour the maw, and fulfil other beneficial offices.
The English beer of by-gone times underwent many vicissitudes, and it was long before our ancestors conquered their dislike to the bitter hop, after having been accustomed to a thick, sweet liquor of which the modern Kentish ale is in some measure a survival. Beer was made from a variety of grain ”