England's First Coffee House

Outside of the habituated few, tea generally remained little known until the brewed leaf was first served to the public in a London coffee house that advertised tea as beverage in the late summer of 1658: “That Excellent, and by all Physitians approved, China Drink called by the Chineans, Tcha, by other Nations Tay alais [sic] Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-head, a Cophee-house in Sweetings Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London.”

There were several Coffee Houses in Samuel Pepys' time around the Royal Exchange and it is most likely that Pepys will have visited many of them during the period he was writing his diaries. The question is how to best differentiate between them in the different diary enties.

Some of the most celebrated Coffee Houses close to the Exchange were the Sultaness Head Coffee House, Pasqua Rosée & Bowman’s Coffee House and Great Coffee House (or Morat’s Coffee House at the sign of the Turk’s Head). The latter was located in Exchange Alley and is almost certainly the one mentioned in Pepys’ diary entry for 28th May 1663.

Mavi Boncuk |  The site of England’s first coffee house, established by a ‘Turk’ (in different sources referred as a Greek or Armenian from Turkey), Pasqua Rosee, and in existence by 1654. Coffee houses played an important part in the social and business lives of the country’s better-off urban population in the 18th century. This one became the Jamaica Coffee House in 1674, changing into a wine house in 1869.

Pasqua Rosée[1]born in the maritime Republic of Ragusa was formerly the servant of one Daniel Edwards[2], a Levant Company merchant in Smyrna. Edwards traded in the Middle East, and while there had developed a taste for this exciting Arabic drink. He assisted Rosée both financially and practically in setting up the business. However he seems to have soon fallen out with Mr Edwards and teaming up with his former employer’s coachman, they established a coffee-house in St Michael’s Alley. The first coffee house in London (by some accounts the first in Britain had opened two years previously in Oxford[3]) was an instant success. Firstly, because this was Cromwell’s Britain, where alchohol was strongly discouraged – coffee was seen as a more respectable alternative and therefore to be encouraged. And secondly, because unlike the standard breakfast drinks at the time (wine and small beer), coffee would actually wake you up. By the end of the century, literally hundreds of coffee houses had sprung up across the city.

Different coffee houses attracted different clientele. Garraway’s was the haunt of scientists and natural philosophers. St James’ was favored by traders and mariners. Will’s was for poets and White’s for actors and musicians. 

For the curious: Ironically, though, the coffee itself would have tasted pretty awful. Coffee was taxed by the barrel, i.e. it had to be made up long before it was served. As a result, what you’d be buying would have to be reheated. And filtering wouldn’t be invented for three hundred years.

[1] The coffee house in question was opened by Pasqua Rosee, an Armenian gent, formally the servant of one George Edwards. Edwards traded in the Middle East, and while there had developed a taste for this exciting Arabic drink. He assisted his Rosee both financially and practically in setting up the business. The first coffee house in London (the first in Britain had opened two years previously in Oxford) was an instant success. Firstly, because this was Cromwell’s Britain, where boozing was strongly discouraged – coffee was seen as a more respectable alternative and therefore to be encouraged. And secondly, because unlike the standard breakfast drinks at the time (wine and small beer), coffee would actually wake you up. By the end of the century, literally hundreds of coffee houses had sprung up across the city. Pasqua Rosee served “two or three dishes” of coffee “at a time twice or thrice a day.” Rosee was also a champion of the new drink, publishing a handbill advertisement entitled “The Vertue of the Coffee Drink” (c.1652). Rosee claimed “coffee good against sore eyes… & will very much stop any defluxion of rheums… & so prevent the cough of the lungs.” His belief that coffee “will prevent drowsiness & make one fit for business” has proved more resilient than other claims for its benefits.

Rosee’s story, and that of London’s first coffee house, is also available for a listen in the ODNB biography podcast.

Source

[2] The coffee-house of Pasqua Rosee and Daniel Edwards can be located in the culture of coffee-drinking associated with merchants of the Levant Company. Daniel Edwards was a member of one of the principal families engaged in the Levant trade, and was active in the Smyrna Factory in the period 1646 to 1651. He was bound apprentice in the Draper's Company in 1639,32and, having been apprenticed to his brother William, was finally admitted to the Levant Company on 13 January 1652/ 53.33Daniel Edwards played an active and important role in the Parliamentary party in the two major scandals that engulfed the Levant Company in the period: the separate conspiracies of Sir Sackvile Crow (in 1646-1647)34 and Sir Henry Hide (in 1650)35 to seize the profits of the Levant trade for royalist purpose. The Edwards family, lead by Joseph Edwards, was one of the most prominent in this prosperous Ottoman city: their house a centre for the social life of the 'Franks' or foreign community. Their balls and suppers frequently attracted women from the Greek community, and even Turkish guests. Although Izmir (Smyrna) was noted for its boisterous cross-cultural socialising, in December 1651, the Council of State in London wrote to the English consul, Spencer Bretton, complaining that 'Some of the English residents there live in much licentiousness', further asking him to send them a list of 'names and their miscarriages' .36The European traders in Izmir relied on a 'cosmopolitan and commerce-oriented "Levantine" subculture' of non-Muslim Ottomans, especially those Armenians, Greeks andJews who had valuable knowledge of local languages and customs. European merchants favoured the Greek community as a source for servants: Consul Paul Rycaut later advised that Greek or Armenian servants were both cheaper and better than English.37 Pasqua Rosee, according to the antiquarians, comes from this community (certainly his name suggests he was Christian): such a man would have been well placed to gain skills in coffee preparation, and have some knowledge of the local coffee-bean market and coffee-houses.38 There were at least forty coffee-houses in Izmir, 'according to the register that Ismail Pasha ... [made] in 1657-58' and noted by the Turkish historian Evliya (:elebi (?-1674).39The French antiquarian Jean de Thevenot, when visiting Izmir in the 1650s, remarked both on the numerousness and sociable nature of the 'Cahue-hane' or coffee-houses he encountered (which he called 'cabarets publics de cahue').4o

[3] The date 1651 for the coffee house in Oxford noted in the diary of Anthony Wood (cf. Brian Cowan, The social life of coffee) is said by Markman Ellis (The coffee-house: a cultural history, London, 2004) to have "very little credibility", having been conjecturally added by Andrew Clark when he edited the diary in the late nineteenth century.

32. Percival Boyd, Roll of the Drapers' Company of London (London:J.A. Gordon at the Andress Press, 1934). 

33. Minute books of the General Court of the Levant Company, 13 January 1652/53, PRO SP 105/151, p. 186. 34. CSP Venetian, vol. 28, 1647-1652, Oct 19 1647, pp. 20-22. Daniel Edwards was amongst those merchants who signed the Factors General Letter, 28 June 1646 (pp. 67-71) and 4 July 1646 (pp. 71-74) to the Company; and was illegally arrested on Craw's instigation by the prime Chiouz or officer of the Vizier (pp. 72-73). Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire, from the Year 1623, to the Year 1677(London: J.D. for Tho. Bassett, R. Clavell,J. Robinson, and A. Churchill, 1687). For another account see Alfred C. \\Tood, A History of the Levant Company (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), pp. 90-92~ and Gwilym Prichard Ambrose, The Levant Company mainly from 1640-1753 (B. Litt dissertation, University of Oxford, 1932, pp. 241-57). 

35. The Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, Levant Merchant (1647-1656), ed. by \1ichael G. Brennan (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1999), p. 109~ CSP. Venetian, Vol. 28 1647-52, Nov 5 1650, p. 159. The Speech and Confession of Sr Henry Hide (London: C.H, 1651), p. 2 [Thomason tract E.625. (13)]. See also Mark Fissel and Daniel Coffman, 'Viewing the Scaffold from Istanbul: the Bendysh-Hyde Affair, 1647-1651', Albion, 22, 1990, pp.421-48; Daniel Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire 1642-1660 (Seattle and London: lJniversity of Washington Press, 1998), pp. 158-77. 

36. CSP. Dom. Ser. 1651-52, Dec 17 1651, pp. 68-69. 

37. Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 77-92; Sonia Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667-1678 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), p. 11. 

38. Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval J.Vear East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), pp. 72-91. 

39. Evliya Celebi, Evliya Celebi Seyahatnamesi (Istanbul, 1984), vol. IX, pp. 92-93, 96; quoted in Daniel Goffman, 'Izmir: from village to colonial port city', in The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, lzmir, and Istanbul, ed. by Edhem EIdem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 79. 

40. Jean de Thevenot, Travels... into the Levant, trans. Archibald Lo\"cll (London: Henr)' Clark for John Taylor, 1687), pp. 32-34. 

See also:FULL Pasqua Article

Pasqua Rosee's Coffee-House, 1652-1666 MARKMAN ELLIS Queen Mary, University of London

London Numismatic Club Meeting, 3 October 2006

Robert Thompson spoke on `London Coffee-house tokens'.

Traditionally, the first English coffee-house was opened in Oxford in 1650, as stated by Anthony Wood. However, Wood did not make this claim until 1671, and in the earliest version of his diary he merely claimed that coffee was consumed in private in 1650. In London in 1651 Thomas Hodges, Grocer and Turkey merchant, welcomed into his house the young Draper and Levant merchant Daniel Edwards with the prospect of marrying Hodges' daughter. Edwards had returned from Izmir with his Greek man­servant Pasqua Rosee, bringing the habits of Levantine merchants of hard work, Puritan politics, and coffee drinking. The novelty of coffee at Hodges' house impeded the family's work, so Edwards and his father-in-law set up Rosee in a stall in St Michael's churchyard to sell coffee to the public. This was the first coffee-house in Christendom.

Christopher Bowman, apprenticed to Hodges, became free of the Grocers in 1654. As such he was brought in as a partner for Rosee when local ale-sellers queried his right as a foreigner to trade in the City. Their partnership moved across St Michael's Alley to better premises in 1656. Bowman's coffee-house was a prodigious success until 1662.

After the Great Fire his coffee-house was run by George Backler and Stephen Hayward, whose undated halfpenny was issued At the ould Coffee house, formerly Bomans. The earliest dated coffee-house token is from the Solyman, Ivy Lane, in 1663. The 1666 token of James Farr at the Rainbow is another [Fig.]. In 1657 James Farr's building accommodated the bookseller Daniel Pakeman, and from 1663 to 1669 the . printer and bookseller Samuel Speed. His penny token of 1667, new to Williamson, appears in the forthcoming Norweb Tokens Part VII.

The most famous coffee-house keeper was Thomas Garraway, whose establishment flourished in Exchange Alley from 1668/70 until the late nineteenth century. It began in Sweeting's Rents by the Royal Exchange, where Thomas Garway and his wife Elizabeth were living by early 1658. Thomas appears from a notice in Mercurius Politicus to have been the first retailer of leaf tea in England `at the Sultaness­head, a Cophee-house'. Dr Kenneth Rogers drew support from this advertisement for his suggestion that Garraway was the issuer of this anonymous token:

Obv. THE SVLTANESS A COFFEE HOVSE around a female bust to left

Rev. IN SWEETINGS RENTS CORNHIL around arms [Fig.]

Dr Rogers' suggestion can be confirmed through identification of the arms as those of Garway otherwise Garraway.