their constituents, and the revelry
was apt sometimes to extend to an unseasonable hour. In an early naval
song we meet with the lines:

"He that will in East Cheap eat a goose so fat,
With harp, pipe, and song,
Must lie in Newgate on a mat,
Be the night never so long."

And these establishments infallibly contributed their quota or more to
the prisons in the vicinity.

Houses of refreshment seem, however, to have extended themselves
westward, and to have become tolerably numerous, in the earlier
society of the sixteenth century, for Sir Thomas More, in a letter to
his friend Dean Colet, speaking of a late walk in Westminster and
of the various temptations to expenditure and dissipation which the
neighbourhood then afforded, remarks: "Whithersoever we cast our eyes,
what do we see but victualling-houses, fishmongers, butchers, cooks,
pudding-makers, fishers, and fowlers, who minister matter to our
bellies?" This was prior to 1519, the date of Colet's decease.

There were of course periods of scarcity and high prices then as now.
It was only a few years later (1524), that Robert Whittinton, in
one of his grammatical tracts (the "Vulgaria"), includes among his
examples:--

"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant
suffyse a boy at a meale."

The term "cook's-shop" occurs in the Orders and Ordinances devised
by the Steward, Dean, and Burgesses of Westminster in 1585, for the
better municipal government of that borough.

The tenth article runs thus:--"Item, that no person or persons that
keepeth or that hereafter shall keep any cook's-shop, shall also
keep a common ale-house (except every such person shall be lawfully
licensed thereunto), upon pain to have and receive such punishment,
and pay such fine, as by the statute in that case is made and
provided."

But while the keepers of restaurants were, as a rule, precluded by
law from selling ale, the publicans on their side were not supposed to
purvey refreshment other than their own special commodities. For the
fifteenth proviso of these orders is:--

"Item, that no tavern-keeper or inn-keeper shall keep any cook shop
upon pain to forfeit and pay for every time offending therein 4d."

The London cooks became famous, and were not only in demand in the
City and its immediate outskirts, but were put into requisition when
any grand entertainment was given in the country. In the list of
expenses incurred at the reception of Queen Eli