Laws at Taverns

Source:

Salinger, Sharon V. Taverns and Drinking in Early America. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, n.d. Print.

Pages:

15

Quote:

“By 1552, Parliament introduced statutory licensing. Lamenting the proliferation of popular drinking places, justices of the peace required alehouse keepers to obtain a license and pay a bond for good behavior. Those who failed to take these steps were escorted to jail. The purpose of this law was to control the number of alehouses…”

Paraphrase:

• To own a tavern, you need a license
• To have a license, you need to pay a bond for good behavior
• If you didn’t have a license, you would be put in jail
• The reason you needed a license was because they didn’t want to many alehouses/taverns

My Ideas:

If you owned a tavern, you would need to get a license. That law was put into place because people didn’t want to many taverns in their towns because that could lead to people getting drunk, which could lead to people doing stupid things like going around killing people. I think that it was a good idea because it protects the villages of getting hurt. But how easy was it to get the licence? Was there a limit to how many people could get one? Was there a test that you had to pass? I can infer that the tavern owners could get a license easily because in WIlliamsburg, there were so many taverns in that little town. I think that it wasn’t a full on test that they had to take, but I bet that they had to answer some questions. Did the bond have to be paid in money? What was the definition of a bond back then? I think what they mean by bond is that they had to agree to follow rules and get the license. If you did something wrong, I think the bond that you would pay would be jail time because it talks a little bit about it in the quote that I found. Overall, I think that the license was a great idea for the better of the people.