Note 128 — THE CASTLE OF ROCHESTER.

But all the beer, it is said, ever brewed within the new precincts partook so largely of the virtues of oak, that the drinkers underwent the internal process of tanning, till the beverage became known as the “Baron’s Oak-wort.” The case was then laid before a learned chemist, who declared that “whereas the oak was without bark, so ought the beer to have been without bitter.” But another, much more acute in questions of taste, gave it as his opinion, that the old oak having been thrice steeped in the bitter tyranny of King John, as he proved from history, had imbibed so much of the spirit of these times, that the flavour now complained of was nothing more than the natural consequence of using old baronial oak for modern brewhouses; a measure, he averred, that could not be too severely reprobated. The solution thus given to an intricate question was lucid and satisfactory; but the brewer “never once blessed the day that he bought the venerable roof-tree and beams of Rochester Castle at the hammer.”—MS. Old Castles.