agreements were closed.[1] So intemperate was the indulgence at funerals, more especially in cider and rum, that some testators left instructions in their wills that no liquors were to be distributed on the occasion of their burials.[2]
A supply of spirits was provided for the members of public bodies when they convened. The character of the liquors used depended somewhat on the nature of the assemblage. When Charles Hansford and David Condon, as the executors of the widow of the unfortunate Thomas Hansford, who lost his life on account of his participation in the insurrection of 1676, leased her residence in York to the justices of the peace of that county to serve as a court-house, they bound themselves to furnish not only accommodations for horses, but also a gallon of brandy during each session of the bench. It is not stated whether this brandy was consumed by the honorable justices in the form of the drink which has become so famous in later times in Virginia, the mint julep, but if mint was cultivated in the Colony in that age, it is quite probable that a large part of this gallon was converted into that mixture, the kindly effects of which were certainly not promotive of a harsh disposition in the enforcement of the law by the magistrates of York.[3]
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, April 8, 1687. In the account of Richard Longman, as attorney of his father, an English merchant, preserved in the Records of York County (vol. 1664-1672, p. 115, Va. State Library), six pounds sterling is entered as the amount expended in drink in making sale of the goods represented in the account.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1671-1694, p. 165, Va. State Library. The language of the testator in this case was as follows: “Having observed in the daies of my pilgrimage the debauches used at burialls tending much to the dishonour of God and his true Religion, my will is that noe strong drinke bee p’vided or spirits at my burialls.”
- ↑ Ibid., 1675-1684, p. 35. I have not been able to find any reference to the mint julep in the seventeenth century. It was doubtless the inven-
