Hot-beds of fake news and misogyny? The rise of the Coffee Shop in 17th century London

By Kate Braithwaite

Coffee was not new to England when Pasqua Rosee opened the first London coffee shop in 1652. Coffee houses had gradually spread from the Muslim world in medieval times, finding their first European home in Venice in 1645 and from there to Oxford. But Rosee’s business in St Michael’s Alley in Cornhill, at the heart of the City of London, although probably little more than a stall initially, advertised by a sign portraying a Turk’s head, marked the beginning of an explosion of popular coffee shops across the capital.

Initially coffee shops were hailed as a positive new force in London life. Rosee claimed his brew would cure hangovers, dropsy, gout and even scurvy. Coffee shops predominantly did not sell alcohol and had at least those grounds on which to claim to be healthier than the already well-established taverns and ale houses. A penny entry fee was charged – to keep the poorer Londoners at bay – and a list of rules was displayed in many coffee houses, calling on patrons not to shout, quarrel or gamble. Smoking, on the other hand, was almost compulsory and almost all early descriptions of London coffee shops, describe a fog of pipe smoke hanging in the air. Coffee shops were the province of men only, the sole female presence, likely a woman employed as the “dame de comptoir” with the work of grinding, brewing and serving the coffee being the responsibility of coffee boys wearing long aprons. Patrons sat at long tables to talk and debate with strangers and friends, sharing news, gossip, business deals and more.

Interior of a London Coffee-house, 17th century - Attribution

The diarist Samuel Pepys makes frequent mention of Will’s Coffee House in Covent Garden, where the celebrated poet and playwright John Dryden held court. Often named after their proprietors, coffee shops quickly gathered clique-ish clientele. While literary types chose Will’s, stockbrokers were drawn to establishments near the Royal Exchange such as Jonathon’s and Garraway’s on Exchange Alley in Cornhill. Sir Isaac Newton preferred the Grecian Coffee House in Devereaux Court by the Strand, with its reputation of drawing an intellectual crowd. During the Restoration years after 1660, a time of fomenting political thought and debate, coffee shops were the perfect place for thinking men to collect their letters, read newspapers and pamphlets and share opinions and news. But they were far from popular with everyone.

In 1675, worried that coffee shops were hotbeds of plot and sedition against his rule, Charles II issued A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee Houses which, although it had little legal impact or effect, clearly demonstrates the concerns felt in government about the impact of Coffee Shops on London society. They were centres, the authorities believed, for the deliberate spreading of false news and anti-government sentiment. But they were also places where government spies could be placed and whispers of conspiracies and plots could be heard and acted upon. Despite Charles’ frustration, coffee shops continued to thrive but they had already attracted criticism from another part of the population – women.

The Women’s Petition against Coffee, featured here in more detail, claimed coffee made men not only anti-social and unsupportive of their families, but also impotent: “as unfruitful as the sandy deserts, from where that unhappy berry is said to be brought.” The response was swift and The Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition was direct to a fault. After claiming that coffee rather aided men’s ability to perform under the bedcovers, its author went so far as to claim that coffee increased the chance of fertility, adding “a spiritual escency to the Sperme, and renders it more firm and suitable to the Gusto of the Womb.”

Such criticisms had no effect on the growth of the coffee shop however. In 1681 when the Thames froze from December to February and a Frost Fair was established on the ice, a central feature was Duke’s Coffee Shop a temporary building erected mid-stream. By the turn of the century it is estimated that there were at least 1000 coffee shops in London, vital to the economic and cultural life of the city.

Image: http://helencann.co.uk/

In The London Spy, published in 1703, Ned Ward gives the following colourful picture of typical establishment:

“Come, says my Friend, let us step into this Coffee-House here, as you are a Stranger in the Town, it will afford you some Diversion. Accordingly in we went, where a parcel of Muddling Muck-Worms were as busie as so many Rats in an old Cheese-Loft; some Going, some Coming, some Scribbling, some Talking, some Drinking, some Smoaking, others Jangling; and the whole Room stinking of Tobacco, like a Dutch-Scoot, or a Boatswains-Cabbin.”

Suggestions for further reading:

Life in a 17th Century Coffee Shop by David Brandon

1700, Scenes from London Life by Maureen Waller

Ned Ward, The London Spy, published 1703 text available online at  http://grubstreetproject.net/

[This is an archive Editor's Choice post originally published on EHFA 13 June 2018]

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Kate Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is the author of two historical novels set in the 17th century.  The Road to Newgate, a story of lies, love and bigotry in the time of the Popish Plot, will be published by Crooked Cat Books on July 16th. Kate and her family live in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

www.kate-braithwaite.com

mybook.to/theroadtonewgate

Stuart London - A Time and Place for Discovery

By Michael Ward

Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but I’m often attracted to historical research that produces surprises.

Discovering that Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, had a deep interest in alchemy certainly raised an eyebrow. As did finding out that people used to believe swallows hibernated in mud, rather than migrated, over winter.

But why wouldn’t they? The idea that such a small bird could fly as far as southern Africa would have seemed far-fetched indeed to someone in the 1600s, assuming they had any notion where southern Africa was.

Over time I’ve come to realise that my research ‘revelations’ have said more about me and my 21st century assumptions, than the people of the period I was studying.

Nowhere has this been truer than my examination of England in the mid 17th century. Of course I knew about the civil war, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Great Fire but I still expected to learn much on my voyage of discovery. However, I had no inkling of just how many ‘oh really?’ moments I would encounter along the way, such as burrowing birds and Newton’s alchemy.

My first surprise was that so much change was compressed into such a short period. In just over 25 years, the country experienced civil war, regicide, a republic, and a restoration of the monarchy.

Any one of these would have produced sufficient shock waves to reverberate for a decade. But to have experienced each in rapid succession, followed by 1666, a hellish year of fire and plague, meant that, for Londoners in particular, it must have been both a formative and terrifying time to be alive.

Consider experiencing the politically divisive furore of five or six consecutive Brexits between now and 2040 plus a conflict that accounted for proportionally more of the country’s population than World War One, followed by a pandemic that wiped out a quarter of the people in London and a blaze that consumed much of city. Then take away the ability to know what was happening and why, and you begin to get an inkling.

As my research continued, I realised this period also witnessed fundamental changes in science, medicine and commerce, as well as politics and religion. Beliefs firmly held for centuries were now being challenged, almost on a daily basis, by a constant stream of newly discovered, empirically driven knowledge, forced to the surface by an unquenchable spirit of enquiry.

Public Domain image of the type of printing presses
which would help transform 17th-century England

There was a swathe of new thinking. I’ve already mentioned Newton, the ‘father of modern physics’. Historians have enjoyed using such titles, with many paternity suits still argued on behalf of the sciences in particular. Nevertheless, the 17th century had more than its fair share of claimants: Galileo –the father of modern science (according to Einstein, no less), Francis Bacon - scientific method, Francesco Redi – experimental biology, Robert Boyle – modern chemistry, Marcello Malpigi – microscopic anatomy, and so on, leaving supporters of Rene Descartes and Pierre de Fermat to fight over analytical geometry.

My third realisation was that the key players of this period did not always behave to type. Several of the grandest lords in the kingdom, such as Essex and Warwick, were early and powerful advocates of the Parliamentary cause, as were a number of leading merchants, including some within the more conservative Merchant Adventurers. Equally, kings were seen as guardians of the status quo yet radical thinkers in science and medicine benefitted from their patronage.

William Harvey is a case in point. At the start of the 17th century, the views of Galen, a Greek physician born in 210 AD, still dominated medical practice throughout Europe, and his anatomical theories, including the body’s circulatory system, were largely uncontested. In 1628, William Harvey published ‘De Motu Cordis’ demonstrating that people had a single blood system which circulated continuously throughout their bodies. This flatly contradicted the accepted Galean doctrine that organs consumed blood which had to be replenished by either the liver of the heart, and each had their own circulatory networks.

William Harvey, demonstrating his theory of circulation
of Wellcome. Click HERE for image attribution

Harvey expected a storm of opposition and he wasn’t disappointed. Yet it only took 30 years for his ideas to become more widely accepted, and Galen’s 1,400 year grip on medicine to be broken, such was the iconoclastic spirit of the age.

Yet it was King James I who supported Harvey’s research by allowing him to join his court when hunting game, so that Harvey could dissect fallen animals immediately, in situ, and observe their blood flow. (However, James’ son Charles 1 later extracted a favour in return, requiring the eminent physician to dodge the musket fire at the Battle of Edgehill where, as the King’s ‘Physician in Ordinary’, he is said to have looked after the two royal princes while tending the wounded.)

As I delved deeper into the plethora of 17th century discoveries and developments, I began to notice a form of symbiotic relationship between some, despite being in different fields. I would often pull at, then follow, a thread of research in, say, scientific advances, only to discover its impact on something completely different, such as religious belief. In the 17th century, it seems one new way of interpreting the universe often led to another.

So, from Galileo onwards, many of the advances in astrology were driven by the fervent search for improved navigational tools by the expanding merchant sector. Improvements in printing technology led to a proliferation of unlicensed printing presses in London which came to have a major impact on political discourse and the spread of radical ideas, before and during the civil war. Again it is notable how quickly this development was understood and seized upon, this time by political activists including the King’s supporters, in this age of experimentation.

Another example can be found in the dramatic population shifts of this period. In just 15 years, from the late 1620s to the early 1640s, some 80,000 people sailed from England’s shores, with up to 60,000 of them crossing the Atlantic, an enormous figure for that time. A significant number of these were Puritans, wishing to found a New World where they could practise their religion freely.

Puritans left England in large numbers to set up colonies in the New World to practise their religion.
This Public Domain image shows Puritans burning a book they deemed to be heretical in Massachusetts Bay. 

One would expect such a rapid depopulation to have a concentrated impact in London, by far England’s largest city, especially when combined with its high mortality rate. Yet simultaneous advances in commerce meant that London’s growth did not stall. It actually increased, the rising economy driven in no small part by the expansion of merchant trade to all points of the globe including the Caribbean and the Americas. Each week hundreds would arrive from the surrounding counties, eager to share in the city’s new found wealth.

This more than compensated for the mass emigration partly fuelled by religious change. However, many of the new arrivals soon discovered the streets of London to be paved with something far less pleasant than gold. The city’s existing housing stock and barely rudimentary sanitation were overwhelmed by the needs of newcomers and much of London descended into a disease-ridden squalor.

This, of course, added more fuel to the political unrest, and so interlocking cycles of change and challenge continued to drive the English 17th century into the uncharted depths of civil strife, setting brother against brother and father against son.

Further reading

Adamson, J. (2009). The Nobel Revolt. London. Phoenix.

Brenner, R. (2003). Merchants and Revolution. London. Verso.

Evans, J. (2018). Emigrants. London. Orion.

Rees, J. (2016). The Leveller Revolution. London. Verso.


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Michael Ward is a former BBC journalist and academic. His debut novel “Rags of Time” is set in 1639, with England sliding into civil war. Spice trader Thomas Tallant returns from India to find the overcrowded streets of London seething with sedition. Soon he is sucked into the city’s turbulence, accused of murder.

The book follows his desperate attempts to find the real killer and clear his name, helped by the enigmatic Elizabeth Seymour, astrologer and mathematician whose thirst for knowledge is only matched by her addiction to tobacco and the gaming tables. Can Elizabeth untangle the web of deceit threatening to pull Tom under?

Early reviews of ‘Rags of Time’ have described it as “a wonderful debut” with an “outstanding story”, noting that “…the author has clearly done all the hard work by researching the period and manages to impart that knowledge without any big information dumps.”

The sequel is now under development.

Connect with Michael: Amazon page Rags of Time

Amazon US 

GoodReads book page

Author’s email: mike@mikewardmedia.com

Alchemy ~ Isaac Newton and the Death of Charles II

by Grace Elliot

Who wouldn’t want to turn base metal into gold?

Alchemy, or the pursuit of ‘making’ gold, fired the imagination of many men including such notables as Sir Isaac Newton and King Charles II.

The principle of alchemy was established by the great Arab alchemist, known as Geber. He theorised that all matter was made from four elements: fire, earth, water and air.  These elements combined to form mercury and sulphur, and depending on the proportions in which these two were mixed all other metals could be made.  Geber’s experiments produced a red compound, cinnabar (mercuric sulphide) and he confidently predicted the perfect proportion of mercury and sulphur would produce gold. From this, we begin to understand the alchemist’s motivation -- for he had only to hit on the correct mix and he was rich!

Several men appeared to discover the secret. One such, Nicholas Flamel (1330 – 1418), supposedly converted mercury to silver and three months later, mercury to gold. The rumour gathered credence because the reclusive Flamel became a wealthy man. However, it seems likely he used the alchemy as a cover for a money-lending and debt-collecting business!

Another fraudster was the English alchemist, George Ripley (born in the 1400’s). His credentials were impeccable – he studied for 20 years in Italy and became chaplain to Pope Innocent III. Ripley then returned to England and published a book ‘The Compound of Alchemy – or – the Twelve Gates Leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone’-- which he dedicated to King Edward IV. Again, he became a rich man which added credence to his claim. But on his death bed Ripley confessed he was a charlatan and the best use for his book was to burn it.

Fraudsters were not above taking advantage of gullible people with tricks such as dissolving gold in mercury (leaving the gold behind when the mercury was distilled) or double bottomed crucibles with gold hidden in the lower vessel. So widespread was such fraud that in 1404 King Henry IV passed a law forbidding the making of gold by alchemical means. This law stayed in place until the 17^th century when the scientist Robert Boyle argued that it interfered with genuine research that might make the nation wealthy.

In the 1600’s, a more respectable branch of science, chemistry, arose from alchemy and the latter became less respectable. None the less, some eminent scientists such as Isaac Newton dabbled with trying to make gold.

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton sincerely believed that if he could discover the forgotten secret of transmutation, he could make gold. He experimented with dissolving mercury in nitric acid and then adding other chemicals. In 1675 he wrote up his (unsuccessful) findings, but undeterred, he persisted for many more years. 

Indeed, it seems likely that Newton’s experiments slowly poisoned him. Newton’s symptoms are documented in his letters written to friends – and include severe insomnia, lack of appetite, paranoia, memory loss and delusions – classic symptoms of mercury poisoning. Indeed, hair samples analysed recently showed mercury content over 17 times the safe level.

King Charles II

King Charles II also had an interest in alchemy– perhaps he hoped to change base metal into gold and cut Parliament’s hold on the purse strings. He appointed a physician in 1669 to ‘compound and invent medicines’, became intrigued by the latter’s work and then created his own private laboratory in which to experiment.

‘The King’s little laboratory under his closet, a pretty place, and there saw a great many Chymicall gasses and things, but understood none of them.’

Charles became obsessed with ‘fixing mercury’ and often spent whole mornings in his laboratory. Unfortunately, heating mercury in an open crucible releases toxic mercury vapour which can pass across the blood-brain barrier that protects the central nervous system and it is entirely possible that Charles’ alchemy experiments may have contributed to his death.
  

Charles final illness included slurred speech, convulsions and then fits. At the time his symptoms were put down to a stroke but this is a condition not usually associated with seizures whereas mercury poisoning is. An autopsy of Charles’ brain revealed that the ventricles contained more water than normal – another finding consistent with mercury poisoning. 

The cause of Charles' death was much debated at the time, and some, including one of his own doctor's suspected poisoning of some sort. Modern science cannot prove what happened one way or the other, but suggests that uraemia (a build up of toxins because of kidney failure) may have been the cause. 

And finally, in the early 1700’s several companies did indeed make gold – but not by alchemy. They sold shares on the stock market on the promise of revealing the alchemist’s secret. People invested, but of course the claims were false and investors lost their money. It was the unscrupulous activities of such companies that in part led to the South Sea Bubble bursting and stock market collapse of 1720. 

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http://graceelliot-author.blogspot.com