Origin Of Bottled Ale

Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul's, and Master of Westminster School,

in the reign of Queen Mary, was an excellent angler. But Fuller says,

while Newell was catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner was catching of

Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles, had not a

good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newell was fishing

upon the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of

h s danger, which was so pressing, that he dared not go back to his own

house to make any preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he

had taken with him provisions for the day; and when, in the first year

of England's deliverance, he returned to his country, and to his own

haunts, he remembered that on the day of his flight he had left a bottle

of beer in a safe place on the bank: there he looked for it, and "found

it no bottle, but a gun--such the sound at the opening thereof; and this

(says Fuller) is believed (casualty is mother of more invention than

industry) to be the original of bottled ale in England."



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