On another occasion a nervous barrister, pleading before this same judge, began with repeated references to his "unfortunate client." "Go on, sir," said the judge, "so far the Court is with you."
Of Jonathan Swift it is related that a gentleman who had sought to persuade him to accept an invitation to dinner said, in way of special inducement, "I'll send you my bill of fare." "Send me rather your bill of company," retorted Swift, showing his appreciation of the truth that not that which is eaten, but those who eat, form the more important part of a good dinner.
On the occasion when the "dreadful Judge Jeffreys" was trying Compton, bishop of London, before the Court of High Commission, that prelate, as Campbell relates in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, complained of having no copy of the indictment. Jeffreys replied to this excuse that "all the coffee houses had it for a penny." The case being resumed after the lapse of a week, the bishop again protested that he was unprepared, owing to his continued difficulty in obtaining a copy of the necessary document. Jeffreys was obliged once more to adjourn the case, and in so doing offered this bantering apology:
"My lord," said he, "in telling you our commission was to be seen in every coffee house, I did not speak with any design to reflect on your lordship, as if you were a haunter of coffee houses. I abhor the thoughts of it!"
As the Judge had once been distinctly opposed to the party and principles which he went to such a length in supporting, so had he formerly owed something to the very institution against which his last blow was directed. Roger North relates (and Campbell repeats the story) that, "after he was called to the bar, he used to sit in coffee houses and order his man to come and tell him that company attended him at his chamber; at which he would huff and say, 'let them stay a little, I will come presently,' and thus made a show of business."
John Timbs, in his Clubs and Club Life in London, has a host of anecdotes and stories of the old London coffee houses, among them the following:
Garraway's noted coffee-house, situated in Change-alley, Cornhill, had a threefold celebrity; tea was first sold in England here; it was a place of great resort in the time of the South Sea Bubble; and was later a place of great mercantile transactions. The original proprietor was Thomas Garway, tobacconist and coffee-man, the first who retailed tea, recommending it as a cure of all disorders.
"His Warmest Welcome at an Inn"