JMS Pearce
Hull, England

Humans throughout history have resorted to drugs to stimulate or tranquilize their moods and feelings. Most were of herbal origin, the choice determined by their effects, local availability, and trading. But social factors and politics also played a part.

Soon after the Republicans executed King Charles 1 in 1649, the dictatorial Oliver Cromwell inflicted a new puritanical regime on the English people. Though doubtless many broke the rules, his trenchant puritanism banned sports fixtures, theaters, and Christmas festivities. Those found working on a Sunday could be put in the stocks. But, most unpopular of all, drinking alcohol was deemed sinful, and many inns were closed. By coincidence, though not surprisingly, another beverage quickly appeared to replace alcohol and its associated convivial, social ambience. By accident rather than intention, the sedative properties of alcohol gave way to a stimulant. That was coffee.

Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, and cocoa. Its pharmacology is well established. A methylxanthine derivative, it antagonizes adenosine receptors (A1 and A2A) and the release of certain stimulant neurotransmitters in the brain, thus inhibiting fatigue and drowsiness.

The coffee plant Coffea arabica was first discovered in Ethiopia and cultivated in Yemen, where legend tells that a ninth-century goat herder noticed its energizing effect on his animals. From there it spread. The Arabs cultivated coffee plants and built their first plantations in fifteenth-century Yemen. In the Islamic world, coffee was brewed by Sufi monks as a precious substance used in religious rituals. Before the 1650s, the consumption of coffee in England was rare, restricted to those who had traveled, or were merchants in the Middle East (Levant), and to a few scientists, some associated with the Royal Society.¹

Less than three years after Cromwell’s prohibitions of pubs and inns, coffee was probably first introduced to England by Daniel Edwards in 1652. John Houghton FRS, who had traded as an apothecary and dealer in tea, coffee, and chocolate, subsequently delivered “A Discourse on Coffee”, published in the Philosophical Transactions in September 1699.

Houghton commented:

I cannot learn the ufe of any part of this Plant, except the Berries, of which boil’d in Water, a Drink is made, and drunk much among the Arabians and, and alfo now in Europe.

To the fame Houfe of Merchandife where this Raftall was, came Mr. Daniel Edwards a Merchant from Smyrna (where Coffee had been ufed immemorialiy) who brought with him, Anno 1652, a Greek Servant, named, Pasqua who made his Coffee, which he drank two or three Difhes at a time, twice or thrice a Day… I am inform’d that Dr. Harvey the famous Inventor of the Circulation of the Blood, did frequently use it.²

Although William Harvey died in 1657, Houghton’s assertion of his drinking coffee is confirmed in John Aubrey’s Brief Lives: “He was wont to drinke coffee; which he and his brother Eliab did, before Coffee houses were in fashion in London.”³ Harvey is said to have bequeathed fifty-six pounds of coffee to his colleagues at the College of Physicians, in order that they might forgather once a month and drink a cup in his memory.

So enamored of coffee was Edwards that on return from Smyrna to London he brought with him his servant Pasqua Rosée, skilled as a coffee-man, and set him up in a shed in the churchyard of St. Michael Cornhil. A plaque in St. Michael’s Alley today refers to the site of “The Sign of Pasqua Rosee’s Head.”

Rosée was not a freeman of the City of London, so was not permitted to trade. Edwards therefore made his father-in-law’s coachman Christopher Bowman Rosée’s partner, because as a freeman of the City he was allowed to trade. John Aubrey reported:

The first Coffee house in London was in St Michael’s Alley in Cornehill, opposite to the church which was sett up by one … Bowman (Coachman to Mr Hodges, a Turkey-merchant, who putt him upon it) in or about the year 1652. ‘Twas about four yeares before any other was sett up, and that was by Mr Farr. This was the Rainbow [in Fleet Street].³

They advertised “The Vertue of the Coffee Drink…It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout and scurvy…a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypocondriack winds and the like.” Their business prospered.

When Rosée disappeared in 1658, Bowman turned the shed into a profitable coffee house, which became the Jamaica Coffee House in 1674. Similar coffee houses quickly appeared⁴; they were so popular that by May 1663, there were eighty-two in the City alone.

Coffee houses were very different from modern cafes. They were places for commercial enterprise but also for scientific and philosophical debates, sociable and polite conversation, culture and politics.⁵ They were nicknamed “penny universities” because a penny was the price of a cup of coffee, served in a place of intellectual conversation. They also served as a forum for certain gentlemen’s clubs, and academicians associated with the early Royal Society. It appears coffee drinking was more a sociable base for having conversation and a drink with friends than a custom for sharing its stimulant, excitatory effects.*

They were not universally popular. The diarist John Evelyn said it was “most deplorable, that the gentlemen sit, and spend much of their time … drinking of a muddy kind of Beverage, and Tobacco.” The quality of coffee was often poor and prices high during the second half of the eighteenth century. Coffee consumption was reduced by high taxes and by tea imported by the East India Company after the 1660s.

Inns flourished, and alcohol drinking re-emerged after Cromwell’s death in 1658. In Britain, coffee drinking continues mainly using Arabica beans imported from Brazil. Connoisseurs wisely avoid the inferior tasting Robusta beans grown in Vietnam and used for instant coffee, which constitutes about 75% of coffee prepared at home and is contained in cheaper blends. In the US, brewed coffee (drip coffee) almost exclusively made from Arabica beans, is the more common (60 to 65%) choice.

À chacun son goût.

End note

* Though varying widely, a 120 to 180 ml cup (dish) of coffee may contain approximately 60–120 mg of caffeine. The recommended daily consumption should not exceed 400 mg.

References

1. Ellis M. Pasqua Rosee’s Coffee-House, 1652-1666. The London Journal. Taylor & Francis, 2004.
2. Houghton John II. A discourse of coffee, read at a meeting of the Royal Society, by Mr. John Houghton, F. R. S. Phil. Trans. R. Soc.1699; 21:311-7.
3. John Aubrey, Brief Lives. Ed. by John Buchanan-Brown. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
4. Timbs J. Club life of London with anecdotes of the clubs, coffee-houses and taverns of the metropolis during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. London: Richard Bentley, 1866. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41516/41516-h/41516-h.htm#Page_1
5. Cowan B. The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffee House. Yale University Press, 2005.