Edinburgh Review, 1816, p. 117.
Modern collectors have gone beyond this, and exhibited "Elizabethan tea-pots," which are just as likely to be true. There is no clear proof of the use of tea in England before the middle of the seventeenth century. This ante-dating of curiosities is the weakness of collectors.
Aubrey, speaking of this house, then in other hands, says that Bowman's Coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, established 1652, was the first opened in London. About four years afterwards, James Farr, a barber, opened another in Fleet-street, by the Inner Temple gate. Hatton, in his "New View of London," 1708, says it is "now the Rainbow," and he narrates how Farr "was presented by the Inquest of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, for making and selling a sort of liquor called coffee, as a great nuisance and prejudice to the neighbourhood." The words of the presentment are, that "in making the same he annoyeth his neighbours by evill smells." Hatton adds, with naïveté, "Who would then have thought London would ever have had near 3000 such nuisances, and that coffee would have been (as now) so much drank by the best of quality and physicians." It is, however, proper to note that coffee-houses had been opened in Oxford at an earlier date. Anthony Wood informs us that one Jacob, a Jew, opened a coffee-house in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, at Oxford, as early as 1650.
This witty poet was not without a degree of prescience; the luxury of eating spiders has never indeed become "modish," but Mons. Lalande, the French astronomer, and one or two humble imitators of the modern philosopher, have shown this triumph over vulgar prejudices, and were epicures of this stamp.
"Not only tea, which we have from the East, but also chocolate, which is imported from the West Indies, begins to be famous."—Dr. James's "Treatise on Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate." 1746.
Gerbier was in Antwerp at Rubens' death, and sent over an inventory of his pictures and effects for the king's selection.
Sloane MSS. 5176, letter 367.
See Gregorio Panzani's Memoirs of his agency in England. This work long lay in manuscript, and was only known to us in the Catholic Dodd's "Church History," by partial extracts. It was at length translated from the Italian MS. and published by the Rev. Joseph Berington; a curious piece of our own secret history.
Hume's "History of England," vii. 842. His authority is the "Parl. Hist." xix. 88.
Whitelocke's "Memorials."