Great Britain’s four towering mega-personages during the Elizabethan era led illustrious lives. All enjoyed cosy familiarities with the proto-whisky industry.
The three upper-class luminaries — Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Drake — were credited with inventing alcoholic drinks. More importantly, as England’s leading geopolitical protagonists, they are remembered for their parts in raids on the Spanish Main. The trio were also famed for championing the establishment of Britain’s first settlement in North America — but only Drake stepped onto North Carolina’s ill-fated Roanoke settlement, in 1586. The last of these four Tudor superstars was William Shakespeare, who wrote about embryonic whiskies in his plays as English and Irish aqua vitae. Fellow playwright Ben Jonson wrote about usquebagh, from the Irish uisce beatha, meaning ‘water of life’.
Queen Elizabeth was acquainted with London and Irish whisky. In 1594, she briefly granted a distilling patent to Sir Francis Drake’s cousin, Richard Drake, to make and control aqua vitae sales in the City of London. Towards the end of her long reign, the first importations of Irish-Gaelic usquebagh arrived in England when wealthy families and courtiers began obtaining the occasional small rundell (15 gallons) for private consumption. The year before her death, London proto-whisky white aqua vitae was first exported to Ireland by London merchant Gunter & Bowling. On unloading at Carrickfergus, hundreds of gallons of this malt spirit needed compounding with liquorice, aniseed, and spices to imitate the taste and “yellowish stained” to resemble Irish uisge for local sale.
Besides their familiarity with malt spirits, they consumed wines and ales. Elizabeth generously drank ale at breakfast and wine at meals, and fortified her health with Rosa Solis, the expensive spirit cordial made with carnivorous sundew plants. The regent was fond of metheglin; she annually produced Queenes Methaeglin, using her recipe compounding five herbs in fermented Welsh honey.
Sir Francis Drake is falsely credited for inventing Le Draque, the forerunner of the Mojito — raw cane spirit mixed with sugar, lime, and mint. Many years after Drake’s death, the first cane distillation started in the West Indies, making his cane-based spirit cocktail impossible. On long voyages, sailors reported Drake drank diluted vinegar when wine was wanting.
Sir Walter Raleigh was the most prolific concocter of ardent alcoholic drinks. In June 1603, the new king, James IV, returned him to the Tower of London for 13 years of confinement. During his first year of imprisonment, he was allowed to plant a physic garden and convert the Tower’s henhouse shed into a stillory, where he formulated medicinal tonics on his alembic still. Raleigh was allowed staff to attend to his needs in the White Tower. Fellow prisoner Sir Henry Percy, known as the Wizard Earl, was interred in the Martin Tower for his part in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Together, they recruited Roger Cooke, who had previously trained as a distiller for the polymath alchemist Dr John Dee, to work at Raleigh’s distillery for several years.
During his incarceration, Raleigh worked as a distiller and compounder, formulating many malt-based elixirs and liqueurs. His most famous elixir was the Great Cordial, a malt spirit dulcified with sugar, incorporating 39 spices and herbs. Modified by apothecaries as Confectio Raleighana or Aromatica, it was incorporated in the London Dispensary in 1712, and prescribed in the London Pharmacopeia until 1851.
Released from the Tower in 1617, on his second and futile voyage to find El Dorado in Guyana, accompanying Raleigh was 32 gallons of Ireland’s finest aqua vitae organised by Richard Boyle, a neighbour near his estate at Youghal, Cork. A year later, after disobeying King James, Raleigh was beheaded at the Tower.
Macabrely, if not ironically, Raleigh’s head was immediately embalmed and likely preserved with ardent spirit so his wife, Elizabeth, could carry his head in a leather bag with her for another three decades.
