A Frothy Mug in the Houses of Liberty: Coffee Houses of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

Free speech in the coffee houses of Europe and America birthed the rise of gentility, republican government, and liberty during a time of, as Beatrix Potter said, “swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta…” Whether philosophical men between sips passionately debated the latest movements of the British Army in America, or some highwaymen sat brooding plots over steaming mugs, coffee was sure to find its way at the heart of most adventures. With the introduction of coffee into Europe in the 17th century and the subsequent rise of the coffee house as a public forum in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the greatest political, social, and literary achievements of Great Britain and America started with a cup of coffee.

Origins
In his irreplaceably comprehensive volume All About Coffee, William Harrison Ukers records that Venetian traders first brought coffee to Europe in 1615, and eventually coffee made its way to Rome.¹ Legend has it that certain priests convinced Pope Clement VIII to ban coffee because they claimed it originated from Satan. When the Pope tasted it, he supposedly exclaimed “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious… We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage.”² Despite the superstition, coffee houses in Italy became a place where all sorts congregated, with the workers, physicians, lawyers, and merchants stopping in during the mornings and the nobility and gentry coming in the evenings. The first English coffee house was opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Jew from Lebanon, and coffee houses soon rose in popularity among the students. Within these early haunts, clubs sprang up, the first of which was a Jacobite Royalist society of students led by the apothecary Arthur Tilyard. Believing the deposed Stuart monarch Charles II to be the rightful king of Great Britain, this club was a prelude to the Royal Society. Soon, all over England, coffee houses similar to those in London became fashionable in the Provinces. Tobacco in England was first smoked in just such an establishment in Exeter, Devonshire, where also Sir Walter Raleigh often visited, known more commonly for the founding of his lost American colony. In America, Captain John Smith became the first American to bring the knowledge of coffee to the New World.³

Get News and Coffee Black or Brown in Merry London Town
During the Commonwealth in London, free speech was permitted, but soon after the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, coffee became a persecuted drink. Ironically, the discussions and Royalists clubs under the Commonwealth spread dissatisfaction with the status quo, and helped bring about a more responsive administration. The House of Commons in 1660 associated coffee with “other outlandish drinks,” and put a duty of four pence per gallon on it. By 1663, English coffee house proprietors were required to obtain licenses for their practices.⁴ Fearing that free intercourse would undermine his authority, King Charles II issued a proclamation that prohibited, “all manner of persons, that they or any of them do not presume… to keep any Public Coffee House, or to utter or sell by retail, in his, her or their house or houses… any Coffee, Chocolet, Sherbett or Tea, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils…”⁵ Public opinion was aroused so strongly against the act, that Charles revoked it not two weeks afterwards.⁶

Charles had good cause to fear coffee. A pamphleteer in 1665 reflected that coffee house society of the Commonwealth was diverse and sober. Club members created ballot boxes to vote on differing opinions, and the Coffee Club of the Rota led the way in debating and disseminating truly republican sentiments of representative government in England.⁷
The drink brought with it an etiquette of civility. For instance, several 17th century coffee houses displayed the following rules on their walls:

Enter, Sirs, freely, but first, if you pleas,
Peruse our civil orders, which are these…
Pre-eminence of place none here should mind,
But take the next fit seat that he can find:
Nor need any if finer persons come,
Rise up to assign to them his room;
To limit men’s expense, we think not fair,
But let him forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear…
Let mirth be innocent, and each man see
That all his jests without reflection be…⁸

Over time, these rules were not enforced, and through the 18th century coffee houses and taverns became less distinguishable. However, coffee houses of this period took on a more commercial use, with each trade choosing its own house and individual patrons defining the character of each house. Eventually, the nobility and gentry turned the coffee house into a plaything, and the social rules of civil equality deteriorated by the beginning of the 19th century.⁹

Before their demise, the coffee houses of London were the homes of Britain’s famous “wits,” or authors, poets, and literary critics. Among the most notable houses were St. James’s, Will’s, Garraway’s, Slaughter’s, White’s, Button’s, Tom’s, the Grecian, Don Saltero’s, and Lloyd’s. Members of Parliament and other Whig sympathizers met at St. James, and many political debates between Whigs and Tories took place there.¹⁰ John Dryden, the court poet, visited both Convent Garden and Will’s, and at the Grecian, Fleetwood Shephard related a very singular criticism that Dryden made of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, “This man… cuts us all out, and the ancients, too.”¹¹ Daniel Defoe visited many of the London coffee houses whenever money permitted him. Joseph Addison, Davenant, Carey, Steele, and Philips all met at Button’s, as did Pope for a time before leaving it. Another literary club met at Turk’s Head coffee house which included Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Boswell, Burke, Garrick, historian Gibbon, economist Adam Smith, and the famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some of Britain’s most influential thinkers of the 17th and18th centuries developed their ideas in the coffee houses of London.¹²

Oh, Plenty of Coffee there be for American Liberty
In America, coffee houses were taverns where coffee was also sold.¹³ To drink coffee was to resist tyranny. With the monopolizing of the American tea trade by the East India Company and the tea tax, the people of Boston drank coffee in place of tea, while Americans in New York, Pennsylvania, and the colonies of Charleston deemed coffee “king of the American breakfast table.”¹⁴ New England coffee houses were places of meeting for dissenters and republicans; those most interested in religious and political liberty during the 17th and 18th centuries. Then there was the King’s Head in Boston, where crown officers and richer citizens socialized. The Indian Queen in Boston became a favorite among just such persons.¹⁵ The Green Dragon, being situated contrary to popular opinion in Boston and not in the Shire of Middle Earth, was as Daniel Webster claimed “headquarters of the Revolution.”¹⁶ Paul Revere, James Otis, John Adams, and Warren all met in the Green Dragon to advance freedom in America. Otis’s brilliance as a champion for independence was abruptly hindered when his political enemies lured him into the British Coffee House and beat him so badly that he never fully recovered his mental abilities. Just outside the Bunch of Grapes in Boston, a Philadelphia delegate read the Declaration of Independence to an enthusiastic crowd below. When in Philadelphia, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all frequented the City Tavern, later renamed the Merchants Coffee House. Much of the planning behind the American War for Independence took place in coffee houses.¹⁷

Please Pass the Coffee Tray for Liberty Today
Coffee has been quite the drink among us interns this summer at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. As an American, a native of Michigan and its cold winters, and someone actively advancing liberty with the Mackinac Center, I’m proud to lift a mug of coffee to our heritage of freedom. Not only did the coffee house foster a code of gentility in old London, but it also provided a civil resort for the hatching of the greatest human endeavor of modern history, the founding the United States of America on the principles of liberty and equality under the law.

Notes

1. William Harrison Ukers, All About Coffee, (The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922), 25-26.

2. Ibid, 26.

3. Ibid, 28, 41-42, 105.

4. Ibid, 54, 59, 72.

5. Ibid, 72-73.

6. Ibid, 73.

7. Ibid, 59.

8. Ibid, 60-61.

9. Ibid, 61-62, 75.

10. Ibid, 81.

11. Ibid, 574-575, 584.

12. Ibid, 79-81.

13. Ibid, 126.

14. Ibid, 106-107.

15. Ibid, 107, 109-110.

16. Ibid, 110.

17. Ibid, 110-111, 129-130.

Bibliography

Ukers, William Harrison. All About Coffee. The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company: New York, 1922.

Image Source

Image of Green Dragon Tavern1 from Wikipedia