¹ Individual references to M.P.s in the text may be related to the table on p. II4. Details about dates and constituencies in this table have been taken mainly from Judd, G. P., Members of Parliament (New Haven, Conn., 1955)Google Scholar, who does not give any details about industrialists (apart from M.P.s concerned as merchants or bankers) in his check list. All individuals qua brewers mentioned in the table have been checked against other evidence independently. To Judd's book must be added the analysis for the opening of the century made by Walcott, R., English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (1955)Google Scholar, especially Appendix I. As the numbers of Common Brewers (i.e. wholesale brewers rather than publicans) rose from nearly 750 in 1700 to nearly 1400 in 1800, and continued to rise until the second half of the nineteenth century, there will be some M.P.s who were brewers, or partners in breweries, who have escaped the count. These parliamentary details have been continued only to 1830. I am indebted to Dr J. H. Plumb for correcting certain errors in this table.

² Thrale, H. L.[Piozzi], Thraliana (ed. Balderston, K. C., 1951), 1, 498.Google Scholar

³ Southill Park, MSS. Property Book, 1750–95. Although these estates were scattered over several counties (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Kent) and in London, they were concentrated mainly around the nucleus of the estates at Southill Park, Beds., where Henry Holland put up the magnificent house in the years following 1795.Google Scholar

⁴ For Gurney, H. see Gent [leman's] Mag [azine], 1865 (i), 108–10.Google Scholar

⁵ Cf. Walcott, op. cit. 13: ‘wealthy beer barons with hireling armies of draymen battled for the representation of Southwark’. There were supposedly about 4000 voters in the borough at the beginning of the eighteenth century (ibid.), but usually only c. 1500 by 1760 (Namier, L. B., Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929), I, 83).Google Scholar

⁶ Henry Parsons, was M.P. for Maldon, Essex, 1722, 1727–8, 1734.Google Scholar

⁷ This article does not seek to explore in detail the parliamentary careers of brewer M.P.s save in the broad matters of policy affecting their industry. There is sufficient evidence of a general nature to suggest that their opinions and allegiances did not fall into any clear pattern with regard to party. Hence I have been content in this section to rely upon the traditional labels which hide so much reality behind the mask of an unchanging terminology. This is, of course, particularly important when considering developments over a century and more. After 1770, ‘Tory’ in obituary notices is usually equated with such expressions as ‘unalterably attached to the King, Constitution and the established authorities of his country’ or even ‘his politics were neutral without party bias’ (Gent. Mag. 1818 (i), 190; 1865 (i), 108—10); Whig affiliations similarly become ‘his conduct in the House of Commons was marked throughout by a steady opposition to Ministers’ or ‘Whig principles and Parliamentary Reform’ (Gent. Mag. 1818 (ii), 83; 1841 (i), 660). Successive phases in which some central political issue divided the brewers’ allegiance may be seen in Walpole/anti-Walpole, Ministerial support/anti-Administration in the 1770's and pro-and anti-Parliamentary Reform.

⁸ James Beattie's London Diary (Aberdeen, 1946), 31 (entry of 9 July 1773); Johnson, S., Letters (ed. Chapman, R. W., 1948), 11, no. 706, 1 Sept. 1780.Google Scholar In 1760–1 Thrale was considered much more in the Grenville interest (see Namier, loc. cit.), but he had asked Newcastle for support in Dec. 1760 and got it (B[ritish] M [fuseum] Add. MS. 32916, fos. 240, 242). Thrale and Barclay Perkins, after 1780, sought the custom of the tap-house at the King's Bench prison against Calvert (‘a decided friend of the blue-and-buff interest’) as a reward for loyal service to the administration (Hist [orical] MSS. Comm[ission] 14th Report, Appendix, pt. iv, 532–3). See also Christie, I. R., The End of North's Ministry (1958), 132.Google Scholar

⁹ D[ictionary of] N[ational] B[iography]; Treasury Warrants, xxv, 5–6 (1671). He was Lord Mayor of London in 1703. His son Humphrey (Lord Mayor in 1730 and 1741) and the elder Cotton had both married daughters of Sir Ambrose Crowley, the great ironmaster.

¹⁰ For Whitbread Sr.'s usual support of the Ministry see Christie, op. cit., 193, 316.

¹¹ For Greenalls see Pink, D. and Beaven, A. B., Parliamentary Representation of Lancashire (1889), 241–2;Google ScholarBarker, T. C. and Harris, J. R., St Helens (1954), 472;Google Scholar for Kearsley: Pink, and Beaven, , op. cit. 237–41; Gent. Mag. 1842 (ii), 548.Google Scholar Kearsley was such a staunch conservative that the mob destroyed his house in Wigan during one contested election. For Patteson see Cozens-Hardy, B. and Kent, E. A., Mayors of Norwich (1938). In Norwich the brewers seem to have been predominantly Tory during the eighteenth century, for of the thirteen brewers who became Mayors between 1700 and 1830 eight were Tory. John Patteson's son turned Whig.Google Scholar

¹² Wilson, G. B., Alcohol and the Nation (1940), Appendix C; Customs and Excise MSS. 11 858, fo. 1.Google Scholar

¹³ B.M. Add. MS. 32914, fos. 433–4; Excise MSS. Treasury Letter Book, 1352, fos. 334–8; H[ouse] of C[ommons] Journals, xxix, 85; 2 Geo. III, c. 14.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See, e.g., Ford, W., Malt Trade and the Malt Laws (1849).Google Scholar

¹⁵ B.M. Add. MS. 32933, fo. 273; 32914. fo. 433–4.

¹⁶ Barclay, Perkins MSS. Letter dated 29 Oct. 1782.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Parl[iamentary] Papers, 1801, 7th Report on High Prices, Appendix 8, p. 45; Hist. MSS. Comm., Fortescue MSS. 11, 22, 27, 30, 33–4.

¹⁸ Southill Park MSS. Brewery 4686–96, 5691; H. of C. Journals, LXVII, 415; LXVIII, 858; 52 Geo. Ill, c. 45.

¹⁹ Southill Park MSS. Brewery 4702. There was informal organization amongst the Norfolk maltsters, largely induced by a new law, and Brown had become one of their spokesmen. At the time there had been an understanding with a Committee of inquiry that the time-limit for this process of manufacture should be 60 hours, which had been altered to 55 hours without consultation. With his own letter to Whitbread, Brown enclosed a note about the bill from John Patteson, the Norwich brewer. See, to support this, Excise MSS. Treasury Letter Books 1376, fo. 255; I375. fos. 2–3, 30.

²⁰ These differential allowances amounted to three barrels in twenty-three for strong beer and two barrels in twenty-two for ale. They were abolished by 42 Geo. III, c.38.

²¹ Part. Papers, 1830, x, Committee … on retail sale of beer; 1819, v, Committee … on Public Breweries, See also G. Wilson, op. cit. ch. 9.

²² Guildhall Library Muniment Room, MSS. Series 5445, Brewers' Company Minute Books, e.g. 10, 24 Jan., 1 May 1772, 8 April 1774.

²³ Brewer, s' Company Minute Books, 14 Dec. 1781.Google Scholar

²⁴ Excise MSS. Trials, 556, 582, 584; Guildhall Library, Pam[phlet] 3802.

²⁵ Southill Park MSS. Brewery 4715.

²⁶ Parl. Papers, 1830, x, ibid. The double-banked argument for free trade in beer being in the interests both of efficient competition in the economic sense and for the protection of public morality in the social sense is most clearly expressed outside the House of Commons by the Ed[inburgh] Rev[iew] and by R. A. Slaney inside it. See Ed. Revz. Sept. 1826 and 1829 passim where Sydney Smith is arguing in support of Slaney. The leading brewer in the Commons, Charles Calvert, argued against Slaney, saying that it was a bill ‘for the increase of drunkenness and immorality’. See G. B.Wilson, op. cit. ch. Io; Dowell, S., History of Taxation (1884), Iv, 131–2.Google Scholar

²⁷ I Will. IV, c. 64.

²⁸ Taxation from malt, hops, and beer provided Walpole with £ 1 1/2m. of the £6m. revenue from taxation in 1735–6 and Pitt with £8m. out of a total of £55m. in 1805. As a taxed article beer had the important advantage that it bore increments in the rate of taxation much more successfully than most other commodities without curtailing consumption. It was therefore highly useful for increasing revenue in time of war. For figures, see Sinclair, J., History of the Public Revenue of British Empire (2nd edn. 1790);Google ScholarDowell, S., History of Taxation (1884)Google Scholar

²⁹ Tyerman, L., Life and Times of Rev. John Wesley M.A. (1870), I, 521–3Google Scholar; Hanway, J., A Journal of Eight Days' Tour (1756)Google Scholar (on which see Johnson's comments in Literary Magazine (1757). nos. 13–14); Cobbett, W., Cottage Economy (1821; 1926 edn. ed. Chesterton, G. K.), 14—22. Cobbett's opinions are typical of the uncritical hostile attitudes: ‘I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and a maker of misery for old age.’Google Scholar

³⁰ Cit. Barnard, A., Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland (1889), 1, 362–7Google Scholar. How effective these opinions were in practice is another story. Wine, even if more port than claret, was imported on an increasing scale throughout the century. French brandy maintained its traditional popularity and the order passed by the Court of the Brewers' Company itself in October 1742 that ‘no ffrench wine be brought to the Hall on Lord Mayor's Day or any other Publick day at the Company's charge’ did not survive beyond August 1743 (Minute Books, 5445/28, fos. 74, 89). ‘French wine, Old Hock and Arrack Punch’ were prohibited again after strong opposition in 1748–9, but again, only temporarily, and the orders were a gesture more against France than against wine.

³¹ A succession of Acts of Parliament against the unfettered sale of drink make traditional obeisance to the defence of public morality in their preambles. See the review of the literature in S. and B. Webb, History of Liquor Licensing (1903) and G. B. Wilson, op. cit. ch. 10. As one example of a mass of contemporary literature see Disney, J., View of Ancient Laws against Immorality and Profaneness (Cambridge, 1729). Disney was a magistrate and a divine.Google Scholar

³² As one commentator had it: ‘About 1832 the spirit of fanaticism began to appear in that home of fanatics the north of England’ (Shadwell, A., Drink, Temperance and Legislation (1902), ch.5).Google Scholar

³³ Wilson, C., ‘The Entrepreneur in the Industrial Revolution’, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, VII (1955).Google Scholar

³⁴ Bray, J. F., Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy (1839)Google Scholar; Voyage from Utopia (written 1840–1, pub. 1957). See also Schoyen, A. R., The Chartist Challenge (1958), 106, 124.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Dawson Burns, , Christendom and the Drink Curse (1875) and Temperance HistoryGoogle Scholar; Whittaker, T., Life's Battles in Temperance Armour (1884), as typical examples. The Monthly Review (1830 (ii), 187) classed the ‘grand institution of Temperance Societies’ with cooperative associations and self-supporting dispensaries.Google Scholar

³⁶ For two examples of the tradition of diagnosis which reversed the sequence of causation, blaming social conditions rather than the individual, see: Robert Owen, Letters on Poor Relief in A New View of Society and Other Writings (1817, Everyman edn. 1949), 172–3: ‘in the case of habitual drunkenness, it appeared to me useless to apply to the individuals who had been taught to acquire the practices of intoxication to desist from it, while they remained surrounded by the circumstances that perpetually tempted them to continue the habit’ and Snowden, P., Socialism and the Drink Question (1908), ch. 9Google Scholar. See also Catlin, G., Liquor Control (1931), 32–4, 82–4; and C. Dickens, Sketches by Boz. The general diagnosis is summed up in the description of drunkenness as ‘the shortest road out of Manchester’.Google Scholar

³⁷ In a different, but partly similar, situation S. H. Frankel speaks of ‘this tendency of the cultivator to devote most of his effort to the satisfaction of needs determined by custom’ {The Economic Impact on Under-Developed Societies (1953), 35).

³⁸ One of the earliest commentaries on this imported American social movement is in Monthly Review, 1830 (ii), 187 ff. See also R. Rae, Handbook of Temperance History; Rowntree, J. and Sherwell, A., The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (1901); A. Shadwell, op. cit. ch. 5; T. Whittaker, op. cit.Google Scholar

³⁹ E.g. ‘A year of great prosperity was also a year of great drunkenness’ (Criminal Statistics Year Book, 1899).

⁴⁰ Statistics from G. B. Wilson, op. cit. See, for a typical sequence of development in a small town, Lees, J. M., Rise and Fall of a Market Town [Castle Donnington] (1956). In this town a maltster who was also an ale and porter merchant and a beer bottler for the local brewery remained until his death in 1869 a prominent Wesleyan—a circuit steward and Sunday school superintendent.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Grubb, I., Quakerism and Industry (1930), 101–2, 158–9, 176Google Scholar; Friends' House, Gurney MSS., Section 1, no. 7. James Backhouse to John Cropper, 25 July 1831. This letter condemns the retailing of ‘ardent spirits’ as ‘clearly immoral’ and incompatible with membership of the Society of Friends, but no mention is made of beer. Being a wine merchant was no practical barrier to membership of the Society in the I790's (Gent. Mag. 1794 (ii), 956), but was evidently becoming so (Clarkson, T., Portraiture of Quakerism, 3rd edn. 1807).Google Scholar

⁴² The Queen was Patron and the entire bench of bishops were Vice-Presidents of the Church of England Temperance Society (which was not, however, for total abstention).

⁴³ Shadwell, op. cit. 99.

⁴⁴ Ensor, R. C. K., England, 1870–1914 (1936), 20–2, 34; J. Bright, Speeches (ed. J. E. T. Rogers), 252–3.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The subject was far from innocent of legislation, however, see 3 & 4 Viet. c. 61.; 2 & 3 Viet. c. 47; 11 & 12 Viet. c. 49; 17 & 19 Viet. c. 118; 27 & 28 Viet. c. 64; 28 & 29 Viet. c. 77. A select committee of 1863 had recommended that more freedom be allowed in the trade in intoxicating liquors. Established publicans opposed this (as they did the 1830 Act) and the only legislative result of the inquiry was to limit Sunday sales, a sign of the changing temper of Parliament (Burns, D., Local Option (1885), 31–2).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Anderson, M., Noel Buxton (1952), 27–35. Hejoined the Labour party in 1919. Gladstone and most members of his Cabinet voted in support of local option in 1883 but no legislation followed (D. Burns, op. cit. 24–8).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For names, seats, and voting records, see the lists published in the Brewers' Almanack. I owe this reference to Mr B. Spiller.

⁴⁸ See authorities cited in G. B. Wilson, op. cit. ch. 17; Burns, D., op. cit. (1885), chs. I, II.Google Scholar