London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

It can hardly be pretended that tea was a national drink in the seventeenth century. It was not even a fashionable beverage. It was offered as a curious foreign drink, being prepared with great care and according to rule, and taken with a certain amount of anxiety as to the possible consequences. Precautions were taken against these consequences. Thus in Congreve’s Way of the World, Mrs. Millicent’s lover allows her to be “Sole Empress of her tea-table,” a reservation which sufficiently indicates the want of confidence in the beverage, and she must promise to banish from the table “orange brandy, aniseed, cinnamon, citron and Barbadoes water, together with ratafia and the most noble spirit of clary.” The price of tea, which was then about fifty shillings a pound, though it rapidly went down, prevented any but the rich from taking it. Long after this it is noticed that the City ladies took brandy after their tea as a corrective. The earliest mention of tea in this country is an advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus of 1658, which is as follows:—

“That excellent, and by all physicians approved, China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay, alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head Coffee-House, in Sweeting’s Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London.”

And Thomas Garway or Garraway at the same time issued a broadside in which he offers tea to the public at sixteen shillings to fifty shillings the pound and proclaims its virtues:—

“The Quality is moderately hot, proper for winter or summer. The drink is declared to be most wholesome, preserving in perfect health until extreme old age. The particular virtues are these. It maketh the body active and lusty. It helpeth the headache, giddiness and heaviness thereof. It removeth the obstructions of the spleen. It is very good against the stone and gravel.... It taketh away the difficulty of breathing, opening obstructions. It is good against lippitude distillations, and cleareth the sight. It removeth lassitude, and cleanseth and purifieth adust humours and a hot liver. It is good against crudities, strengthening the weakness of the stomach, causing good appetite and digestion, and particularly for men of a corpulent body, and such as are great eaters of flesh. It vanquisheth heavy dreams, easeth the brain, and strengtheneth the memory. It overcometh superfluous sleep, and prevents sleepiness in general, a draught of the infusion being taken, so that, without trouble, whole nights may be spent in study without hurt to the body. It prevents and cures agues, surfeits, and fevers by infusing a fit quantity of the leaf, thereby provoking a most gentle vomit and breathing of the pores, and hath been given with wonderful success. It (being prepared and drunk with milk and water) strengtheneth the inward parts and prevents consumptions.... It is good for colds, dropsies, and scurvies, and expelleth infection.... And that the virtue and excellence of the leaf and drink are many and great is evident and manifest by the high esteem and use of it (especially of late years) by the physicians and knowing men of France, Italy, Holland, and other parts of Christendom, and in England it hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds the pound-weight; and in respect of its former scarceness and dearness, it hath been only used as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments, and presents made thereof to princes and grandees till the year 1657” (Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. ii. p. 666).

Rugge’s Diurnal says that tea was sold in every street in London in 1659. That statement we cannot believe, especially when we are reminded that a couple of pounds was a present fit for the King to receive. A couple of pounds of a commodity sold in every street in London? On the contrary, there is every kind of evidence that in the seventeenth century tea was perhaps the fashion, but never became a national beverage. Pepys mentions it once or twice, but tea formed no part of his ordinary diet. Evelyn, I believe, does not mention it at all. In the winter of 1683–1684 the Thames was frozen over, and in the fair that was held upon the river, tea, among other things, was sold. No one, I think, ever imagined that tea would become the national beverage, excluding beer from breakfast and from the afternoon meal. A learned physician, Dr. Lister, writing at the close of the century, says that tea and coffee “are permitted by God’s Providence for lessening the number of mankind by shortening life, as a kind of silent plague.” Many attacks were made upon the tea-table. It took men away from the pipe and bottle; it brought together men and women inclined for vice and gave them an opportunity; it was very costly; it offered a drink only fit for women; it destroyed the strength of man and the beauty of woman. The hostility to tea lingered during the whole of the eighteenth century.

In 1652 the first coffee-house was opened in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by one Pasqua Rosee, a native of Ragusa, servant to a Turkey merchant who brought him from Smyrna. Coffee had been introduced into Oxford a little earlier. The following is a copy of Rosee’s handbill (see Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. i. p. 170):—

THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK

First made and publickly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee.

“The grain or berry called coffee, groweth upon little trees only in the deserts of Arabia. It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the Grand Seignour’s dominions. It is a simple, innocent thing, composed into a drink, by being dried in an oven, and ground to powder, and boiled up with spring water, and about half a pint of it to be drunk fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin off the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of that heat.

The Turks’ drink at meals and other times is usually water, and their diet consists much of fruit; the crudities whereof are very much corrected by this drink.

The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and though it be drier, yet it neither heats, nor inflames more than hot posset. It so incloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat within, that it is very good to help digestion; and therefore of great use to be taken about three or four o’clock afternoon, as well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better if you hold your head over it and take in the steam that way. It suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the headache, and will very much stop any defluxion of rheums, that distil from the head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help consumptions and the cough of the lungs.

It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy. It is known by experience to be better than any other drying drink for people in years, or children that have any running humours upon them, as the king’s evil, etc. It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the like. It will prevent drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for three or four hours.

It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and that their skins are exceeding clear and white. It is neither laxative nor restringent.

Made and sold in St. Michael’s Alley in Cornhill, by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.”

Evelyn (writing of the year 1637) says:—