TABLE 1: Excise Taxes Levied on Beer in Zeeland 1467-1563
In tuns of about 150 litres unless otherwise indicated41:
Location Type
and year
Rate of Tax
gross
retail price
Middelburg
1528
2 gr./stoop and above
Less than 2 gr./stoop
12 gr.
6 °r.
20 gr.
12 sts.
20 sts.
1548
1563
28-38 sts.
38-48 sts.
avg. 36
avg. 47
Veere
1467
Locally brewed
Imported est English
All
7 sts./vat
20 stsVvat
6 gr./vat
1474
1540
Locally brewed
2 sls./tun+ 17
gls.= guilders; sts.=st:uivers; penn.=pennies; 1 guilder 20 stuivers 320 pennies
g.= grooten; Flemish currency convened at Flemish £1 6 guilders; £1 =20 shillings
240 grooten
avg.=average
stoop about 1/62 of a ton or about 2.35 litres
+An additional excise was charged per brew as well at the brewery
The 1590 regulations for the beer trade, laid down by the town officials of
Middelburg repeated many older rules and codified what was common in
Zeeland and throughout the towns of the Low Countries. Those rules, which
covered not only brewers but publicans, beer porters, the people who tested
beer and sealed the casks as well as the tax collectors, would be renewed vir
tually word-for-word in 1617 and 1689 with affirmations of some of the cen
tral features of the taxing system coming off printing presses in the town now
and again as in 16694'.
Governments in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century at the least al
lowed and in some cases promoted the growth in the size of breweries. The
authorities typically did not mind concentration in brewing with fewer brew
ers each making more beer since it made tax collection easier. Middelburg as
early as 1453 required a minimum level of production of brewers, that pre
sumably to drive out amateurs and improve quality. Despite opposition from
Flushing, Zeeland allowed brewing in only five designated rural breweries
from 1576, in effect limiting country sales in towns, effectively promoting
43. Ordonnantie op den Bier Excys.
17
