 In the 1660s Lady Batten, wife of Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy, had a vineyard at their estate at Walthamstow; Samuel Pepys thought the wine (which was red) "very good".Just as English wine began to recover from the epidemics of phylloxera and powdery mildew in the mid-19th century, brought back by the explorers of New America, commercial English wine was dealt a heavy blow.In 1860 the government, under Lord Palmerston (Liberal), supported free trade and drastically cut the tax on imported wines from 1 shilling to twopence, a decrease of 83%.