The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention called chocolate houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all the quality; where gaming is added to all the rest, ... as if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of discipline.[151]
Chocolate was advertised as a new drink in 1657:—
In Bishopsgate Street in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink called chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates.
The reputation of chocolate upon its introduction was fluctuating. This appears in the letters of Madame de Sévigné, who at one time recommends it to her daughter with all fervour, whilst at other times she decries it as the root of all evil.
But however much the introduction into our country of such drinks was destined to discover a rival to intoxicants, the fact remains that the public taste had by the habit of long ages become vitiated, and England had earned for herself the distinction of the ‘land of drunkards.’
True it is that the Protector strove to repress intemperance by fines and punishments. The rigid restrictions of the republican rule were manifested in the strict surveillance maintained over the people, with the view of securing temperance. Convictions for drunkenness were of daily occurrence; and it was often the practice to remove all doubts of the sufficiency of testimony by producing the delinquent in court under the influence of drink. Many are the instances in which it is recorded by the convicting justice that some offender was ‘drunk in my view.’ They were in the habit, moreover, of making nice distinctions as to the grades of intoxication.
The ‘drunkard’s cloak’ was an instrument of punishment then in use, which might with advantage be revived. It was a cask with a hole at the top, through which the drunkard’s head protruded, and one on each side for either hand. The legs were free for the offender to perambulate with the instrument of disgrace about him.[152]
Some strong language was uttered from the pulpit against drunkenness. Dr. Robert Harris, President of Trinity College, Oxford, in the dedication to the Drunkard’s Cup, a sermon, speaks of the ars bibendi as having become a great profession:—
There are lawes and ceremonies to be observed both by the firsts and seconds. There is a drinking by the foot, by the yard, &c., a drinking by the douzens, by the scores, &c., for the wager, for the victory, man against man, house against house, town against town. There are also terms of art, fetched from hell, for the better distinguishing of the practitioners; one is coloured, another is foxt, a third is gone to the dogs, &c.
In the sermon he speaks of ‘the strange saucinesse of base vermine, in tossing the name of his most excellent Majesty in their foaming mouthes, and in daring to make that a shooing-horne to draw on drink by drinking healths to him.’[153]