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

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Editors Weekly Round-up, July 22, 2018

by the EHFA Editors

Never miss a post on English Historical Fiction Authors. Enjoy our weekly round-up. 

Sudeley Castle and the People Who Lived There

by Judith Arnopp

Infertility in the 17th Century – Reasons and Remedies

by Kate Braithwaite

Women of the Middle Ages: Wimples, Veils, and Head-rails - Part III

by Paula Lofting

Infertility in the 17th Century – Reasons and Remedies

By Kate Braithwaite

Take a handful of barley or any other fast growing corn. Soak half in a husband’s urine and half in his wife’s urine for twenty-four hours. Dry each pile on some earth and then water daily with more of the urine of each person. The corn that grows first belongs to the person who is more fertile. If one does not grow at all, that person is barren and will not bear children.

At a time when barrenness, or infertility, was commonly perceived to be a fault of the woman, rather than her male partner, the suggestion – from midwife Jane Sharp - that men as well as women might have fertility problems, is unusual. Her method of determining where the fault lies, however, seems less than reliable.

But then in the 17th century, people had rather different ideas about the human body. Belief in the need to maintain balance ‘humors’- blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm - a theory developed by Hippocrates in Ancient Greece – was still predominant in all medical thinking. Not surprisingly, people’s understanding about how conception was achieved was also rather different than it is today. Both men and women were believed to have ‘seeds’ which were released during orgasm and mingled in the womb before taking root and growing into a child.

The London preacher, Samuel Hieron, firmly believed that “barrenness in grace” and “fruitlessness in holy things” would result a “want of outward increase” or infertility. It was commonly held to be a woman’s duty to bear children and in doing so, make reparations for the sins of Eve. If she could not do so, she was a failure as a woman and lacked God’s grace. For a strongly religious woman like Catherine de Braganza, wife of Charles II, her failure to bear children while Charles fathered upwards of twelve children with his numerous mistresses, must have been a torment. Another famously childless 17th century woman, Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the diarist Samuel, was surely equally saddened, but it is notable that her husband, also a man who had several extra-marital relationships, had no children with any other woman either.

Portrait of Catherine de Braganza

Jane Sharp, writing in The Midwife Book, published in 1671, certainly believed that conception was determined by God’s will and permission, but she also had some other ideas about why some women conceived and others could not. She dismissed one common theory - that some couples are barren because they have “too much likeness and similitude in their complexions,” - and suggested instead that “some disproportion of Organs or some impediment not easily perceived,” may be the cause. Hatred between married people, she explained, was a legitimate problem however, particularly where children were forced into marriage by their parents. She also cautioned against blood-letting in the arms of girls before their first ‘courses’ or period, preferring such girls be bled from the foot to insure that blood was not ‘drawn down’ from their bodies before nature intended it. She talked of problems of the womb, ill health and disease as possible causes of infertility before setting out her last reason, ‘barrenness by inchantment.’ In cases where it is suspected that a charm may be making a husband unable to lie with his wife, Sharp recommended that he “piss through his wives Wedding ring and not to spill a drop and then he shall be perfectly cured.”

Given the importance of having children and growing a family, couples that struggled to conceive in the seventeenth century, could easily find advice on how to cure their difficulties.

Dining with friends on July 26th 1664, Samuel Pepys asked the ladies for their advice on he and his wife’s childless state. He recorded ten pieces of advice in his diary:

1. Do not hug my wife too hard nor too much
2. Eat no late suppers
3. Drink juyce of sage;
4. Tent and toast
5. Wear cool Holland drawers
6. Keep stomach warm and back cool
7. Upon query whether it was best to do at night or morn, they answered me neither one nor other, but when we had most mind to it
8. Wife not to go too straight laced;
9. Myself to drink mum (ale) and sugar
10. To change my place. 

Of these, he wrote, “the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 10th they all did seriously declare, and lay much stress upon them as rules fit to be observed indeed, and especially the last, to lie with our heads where our heels do, or at least to make the bed high at feet and low at head.”

Portrait of Elizabeth Pepys

Other recorded remedies – these from William Sermon, author of The Ladies Companion in 1671 – vary in degrees of outlandishness. He suggests the woman try taking white ginger in a powdered form or sitting over a bath of water used to boil yarn and mixed with ash, or even bathing in water “in which ale-hoof, oaten and pease straw have been boiled together” before drying off and letting her husband “do his best endeavour.”

Valentine Greatrakes, pictured above, an Irish healer who was famous in England in the 1660s, offered guidance more like the list given to Samuel Pepys than any of William Sermon's suggestions.

Further reading:

The Midwives Book, Jane Sharp 1671
The Weaker Vessel, Antonia Fraser, 1984
The Diary of Samuel Pepys

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Kate Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her first novel, Charlatan, was longlisted for the Mslexia New Novel Award and the Historical Novel Society Novel Award in 2015. The Road to Newgate, a story of love, lies and the Popish Plot, was published by Crooked Cat in 2018.  In the novel, Kate's character, Anne, seeks advice on conceiving from Valentine Greatrakes and is thankful to receive advice more in line with that given to Pepys than that suggested by Sermon.
Kate lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and three children.

Links:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/KateBraithwaiteAuthor/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/KMBraithwaite
Website/blog – http://www.kate-braithwaite.com

mybook.to/theroadtonewgate

Editors Weekly Round-up, June 17, 2018

by the EHFA Editors

English Historical Fiction Authors brings you posts every week on different aspects of British history, society, and culture. Enjoy the articles for the week ending June 17.

Life in the Regency Era Nursery

by Maria Grace

Hot-beds of fake news and misogyny? 

The rise of the Coffee Shop in 17th century London

by Kate Braithwaite

Gloucester Cathedral & the Æthelflæd Connection

by Annie Whitehead

Editors' Weekly Round-Up - October 2, 2016

by the EHFA Editors

If you missed the posts to the blog during the week, check out our weekly round-up:

The Seventeenth Century Library

by Deborah Swift

Henry VI: Part One

by Derek Birks

Setting the Pope on Fire – the Exclusion Crisis of 1678-1682

by Kate Braithwaite

A Notorious Divorcee and Her Abiding Legacy
by Anna Belfrage

Lady Elinor Fettiplace and Her Receipt Book
by Lauren Gilbert

Government in the Reigns of Edgar and Aethelred II
by Annie Whitehead

We are also running a giveaway until midnight Sunday, October 2, 2016

Alvar the Kingmaker by Annie Whitehead

Setting the Pope on Fire – the Exclusion Crisis of 1678-1682

by Kate Braithwaite

At three in the morning on November 17th 1680, Londoners woke to the sound of bells ringing out across the City. It was an important day – a day to commemorate the ascension to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I – and it would be celebrated with a splendid pope-burning procession.

The participants gathered in Moorgate. When all were ready, a man ringing a large bell led them out through Aldgate. In a “loud and dolesom voice” he cried, “Remember Justice Godfrey” and was followed by a man riding a white horse and pretending to be the corpse of well-known magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, who had been strangled in 1678.  Around him other men assumed the role of his murderers, prodding him with swords as he slumped on the horse.

Next came men carrying a huge banner depicting four bodies hanging from the gallows: Catholic priests who had been hanged for their part in the Popish Plot. After the banner holders came the first pageant, displayed on a cart, much like a modern day float. This pageant showed a meal tub and the figure of a woman, representing Mrs Cellier, a Catholic midwife accused of planting false evidence of Protestant treachery in her meal tub.

Next to Mrs Cellier came a man with a fiddle, sitting backwards on his horse with a sign decrying him as an enemy of Parliament. This was the writer, Roger L’Estrange, one of the few men in London publicly doubting the truth of the Popish Plot and opposing those seeking to exclude King Charles II’s brother - and heir to his throne - from his right to succeed, on the grounds that James, Duke of York, was a Catholic.

©Trustees of the British Museum

Other pageants followed.  The elaborate procession filed through Leadenhall and Fleet Street toward Temple Bar, watched by enormous crowds. Hundreds of young men were involved, some dressed as devils and some as priests. Some pageants reminded the watching crowds of the perceived greed of the Catholic Church. Others bore signs declaring that Catholic Jesuits were bent on burning the city and destroying the monarchy. The procession was opulently dressed. Sir William Waller, a Justice of the Peace, active in prosecuting the Popish Plot, provided Catholic relics, books and vestments from the stores of material he had seized during his investigations. The Green Ribbon Club, a group committed to excluding James from the succession, funded the event and provided free alcohol to those who took up the cry of “No Popery.”

The final pageant was the handiwork of a carpenter, Stephen College: an enormous effigy of the Pope who travelled in the company of the devil. All through the streets, and throughout the day the devil tweaked at the false Pope’s nose and when they arrived at last in Temple Bar, as late as eight o’clock that evening, a bonfire was lit. As the crowd roared, the effigy of the Pope was pushed head first into the flames.

In 1682, in his prologue to Southerne’s play The Loyal Brother, poet John Dryden gave this account of the pope-burning processions he had witnessed:

        Sir Edmondbury first, in woful wise,

        Leads up the show, and milks their maudlin eyes.

        There's not a butcher's wife but dribs her part,

        And pities the poor pageant from her heart;

        Who, to provoke revenge, rides round the fire,

        And, with a civil congé, does retire:

        But guiltless blood to ground must never fall;

        There's Antichrist behind, to pay for all.

        The punk of Babylon in pomp appears,

        A lewd old gentleman of seventy years:

        Whose age in vain our mercy would implore;

        For few take pity on an old cast whore.

        The Devil, who brought him to the shame, takes part;

        Sits cheek by jowl, in black, to cheer his heart;

        Like thief and parson in a Tyburn-cart.

        The word is given, and with a loud huzza

        The mitred puppet from his chair they draw:

        On the slain corpse contending nations fall:

        Alas! what's one poor Pope among them all!

        He burns; now all true hearts your triumphs ring:

        And, next, for fashion, cry, God save the king!

Demonstrations against Catholics in London and throughout the country were nothing new but at the end of the 1670’s, religious tension had reached a whole new level because of the Popish Plot and ensuing Exclusion Crisis.

In September 1678, Titus Oates came to prominence, shocking London with wild claims of a terrifying plot to assassinate King Charles II. His revelations were detailed and rang with authenticity. He named well-known Catholic priests and private citizens as traitors in what became known as the Popish Plot. Oates was asked to address Parliament. He claimed that Jesuit cells planned to stab King Charles as he walked in St James’ Park, that French troops were preparing to invade England and that secret uprisings had been planned in Ireland and Scotland.

The Murder of Edmund Berry Godfrey -
Public domain image via WikiCommons

Circumstantial evidence supported his story. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, with whom Oates had lodged evidence, was found dead in ditch, apparently stabbed and strangled. One of the men Oates accused, Edward Coleman, a Catholic and close associate of the King’s brother James, was arrested and treasonous papers were found in his possession. Oates’ claims touched a raw nerve with the public. London, he declared, would be burned to the ground. The effect of this on a populace only twelve years away from the catastrophic fire of 1666, an event many firmly believed was an act of Catholic terror, was incendiary. 

The apparently real prospect of the assassination of Charles II caused immense concern. If the King remained childless, his Catholic brother would become King. Unrest against the Duke of York had been in evidence throughout the 1670’s – ever since James refused to sign the Test Act of 1673 that excluded from public office anyone who would not publicly renounce the Catholic Church. But with the advent of the Popish Plot, a new political impetus emerged. The whig party began to take shape, under the stewardship of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and actively sought to exclude James from the line of succession to the throne.

James II By Ann Killigrew - Royal Collection, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6991362

The resulting Exclusion Crisis marks an important development in the history of politics and propaganda. In 1670’s London, male literacy is estimated at 70%. The printing and pamphlet business was thriving, the newspaper industry about to be born. Coffee shops were in their hey-day: warm, welcoming spaces where men would meet, discuss the news of the day, read pamphlets and share opinions over coffee or beer at all hours of the day and night. Supporters of the exclusion cause exploited all these avenues to gain public support. Public sermons became quasi-political stump speeches. Familiar songs were given new, political lyrics. Polemical plays brought the perceived Catholic threat to life. Wild claims of Catholic violence against women and children were circulated and the memory of Elizabeth I was evoked wherever possible to underline the country’s hard-won Protestant heritage.

Watched by an estimated 200,000 people, the pope-burning processions, held in 1679,1680 and 1681, were without doubt the most effective propaganda tool of all. But by 1682, belief in the Popish Plot had fallen away. The push to exclude James from the succession failed. The time for pope-burning had passed.

Sources:

London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II, Tim Harris, Cambridge UP 1987.

The Pope-Burning Processions of 1679, 1680 and 1681, Sheila Williams, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol 21 1958.

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Kate Braithwaite grew up in Edinburgh but has lived in various parts of the UK, in Canada and the US. Winner of the University of Toronto Marina Nemat Award and Random House Student Writing Prize, she writes atmospheric historical fiction exploring dark secrets and unusual episodes from the past: the stories no one told you about in history class at school. Her debut novel, CHARLATAN, was long-listed for the Mslexia New Novel Award and the Historical Novel Society Novel Award in 2015. Kate and her family live in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

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