From the late sixteenth century conditions of life for most country people began a slow deterioration under the impact of sharply rising prices, periods of dearth, and the beginning of enclosures in southern England.
Labourer’s probate inventories of the late seventeenth century now showed a steep fall in the numbers keeping cows except in the pastoral North, where 80 percent still did so, but in the Midlands the proportions fell to 31.6 percent, in the East to 21.9 percent and in the West to only 4.2 per cent.For the southern labourer the traditional ‘white meat’ were now dearer and scarcer, and although the total number of cows increased in the seventeenth century more were now kept on large farms, where the milk was turned into butter and cheese for sale in the markets.
A growing urban market led to the expansion of commercial dairying in the vicinity of towns, especially London, as well as the practice of cow-keeping within the towns themselves.
Dairymen were normally both producers and retailers. In London, cows in Tothill Fields, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Islington and elsewhere were milk by milkmaids around 4 or 5 am, the milk carried in pails suspend from a yoke and either sold from fixed shops or hawked through the streets.
It was regarded as suitable for young children after weaning, old people and invalids, hardly for healthy adults, though whey was considered very wholesome and London had several ‘whey houses’, which were sufficiently fashionable to be patronized by Pepys: junkets and syllabubs – warm milk frothed over fruit, wine or spice- were also popular.
By end of seventeenth century milk was being added to the new, costly hot beverages tea, coffee and chocolate: tea was at first drink, Chinese fashion, without milk, but by 1700 milk or cream (poured in first to prevent cracking the delicate china) was usual, and the bitterness of coffee and chocolate was found to be softened by cream and sugar.
History of Milk in England from late 16th to end of 17th century
