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. The said Garway did purchase a quantity thereof, and first sold the said tea in leaf or drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing merchants into those Eastern countries. On the knowledge of the said Garway’s continued care and industry in obtaining the best tea, and making drink thereof very many noblemen, physicians, merchants, &c., have ever since sent to him for the said leaf, and daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof. He sells tea from 16s. to 50s. a pound.
The opposition beverage, coffee—mention is made of the “cophee-house” in the “Tcha” advertisement—had been known in this country some years before, a Turkey merchant of London, of the name of Edwards, having brought the first bag of coffee to London, and his Greek servant, Pasqua Rosee, was the first to open a coffee-house in London. This was in 1652, the time of the Protectorate, and one Jacobs, a Jew, had opened a similar establishment in Oxford a year or two earlier. Pasqua Rosee’s coffee-house was in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. One of his original handbills is preserved in the British Museum, and is a curious record of a remarkable social innovation. It is here reprinted:—
THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK,
First made and publicly 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,