among the some 30 trades mentioned are brewers. They appear in the first ar ticle. It appears that membership was not entirely compulsory and it was more of a merchants' brotherhood in part to do with foreign trade so very dif ferent from later craft guilds of brewers which truly regulated the industry. Later at Middelburg even the retail sellers of beer had to belong to a guild, that after 1516. The regulations were sparse and those beer-sellers who were in the trade for less than 17 weeks a year did not even have to join. Guilds of retailers and wholesalers of beer were rare, though, even more rare than guilds of brewers59. Beer workers at Arnemuiden were forced into a guild in 1456 and at Flushing the brewers got a full set of regulations in 1598. The Flushing brewers' guild was like many other craft guilds in the Low Coun tries. In admission to the trade it discriminated heavily in favour first of chil dren of members, who paid only a nominal amount, and then citizens, who paid half the standard levy. The guild at Flushing fined guild members who did not come to the funeral of their deceased brother or sister, a common practice among guilds. What was different was that the Flushing guild got the job of making sure that the right size of barrel got used and also took an in terest in the proper use of barrels60. In Middelburg in 1739 the town legislated on the use of beer barrels requiring that they be returned to their owners, empty, and setting penalties for failing to do so and for using barrels for other purposes61. Brewers typically pressed for such legislation and its effective en forcement because lost barrels were lost money to them and the large casks found many alternate uses. The seventeenth and even more the eighteenth century saw a decline in beer production and consumption in Zeeland similar to that in Holland and to other parts of the Low Countries and northern Germany. At Brouwershaven the decline in the importance of income from beer taxes was similar to the pattern elsewhere in Zeeland and throughout the Low Countries. Brouwer shaven never became a large beer consumer. Gross tax income declined but more telling was the fall in the importance of beer tax income to the fiscal health of the government. In the late seventeenth century beer contributed 10-20% of annual revenue. That share dwindled to under 5% for most of the eighteenth century and under 2% by end of the century. The tax on beer con sumption dropped at Middelburg 18% from 1632 to 164962. The pattern of decline which started in the late fifteenth century became more dramatic. It was no longer increases in other sources of income that reduced the contribu tion of beer to urban fiscal health but the absolute fall in beer consumption. Data from the countryside is rare. It is very difficult to establish what hap pened to production in villages and very small towns, but it is fair to assume brewing shrank there as much as it did in the bigger production centres. In Zeeland no one was allowed to brew strong beer outside the towns from 59. Unger, Bronnen, vol.3, nrs. 216 [1456] and 461 [1516]; linger, 'Economische ontwikkeling van Middelburg', 46-9. 60. GAV1, Archieven der gilden: inv.nr. 134 1598], 16, 9. 61Ordonnantie op den Bier Excys, 1 -6. 62. KestelooStadsrekeningen VI (1902. third part) 7-8. 25

Tijdschriftenbank Zeeland

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