Tradition.TheRainbow Coffee-house, near Temple Bar, one of the oldest taverns in the metropolis, was kept by James Fan, a barber, soon after the introduction of coffee into England. Three years previous to the Restoration, anno 1657, he was presented by the Inquest ofSt.Dunstan’s in the West, “For making and selling a sort of liquor called ‘Coffee,’ as a great nuisance and prejudice of the neighbourhood,” &c. Strange as it may appear, within half a century of this period, namely in 1708, there were upwards of three thousand Coffee-houses in London alone. An old author says, Who would have thought, after the prejudice against coffee, which was considered pernicious and a public nuisance, it would have been, as now, so much drunk “by thebest of quality, and byphysicians?”
Tradition.TheRainbow Coffee-house, near Temple Bar, one of the oldest taverns in the metropolis, was kept by James Fan, a barber, soon after the introduction of coffee into England. Three years previous to the Restoration, anno 1657, he was presented by the Inquest ofSt.Dunstan’s in the West, “For making and selling a sort of liquor called ‘Coffee,’ as a great nuisance and prejudice of the neighbourhood,” &c. Strange as it may appear, within half a century of this period, namely in 1708, there were upwards of three thousand Coffee-houses in London alone. An old author says, Who would have thought, after the prejudice against coffee, which was considered pernicious and a public nuisance, it would have been, as now, so much drunk “by thebest of quality, and byphysicians?”
TheRainbow Coffee-house, near Temple Bar, one of the oldest taverns in the metropolis, was kept by James Fan, a barber, soon after the introduction of coffee into England. Three years previous to the Restoration, anno 1657, he was presented by the Inquest ofSt.Dunstan’s in the West, “For making and selling a sort of liquor called ‘Coffee,’ as a great nuisance and prejudice of the neighbourhood,” &c. Strange as it may appear, within half a century of this period, namely in 1708, there were upwards of three thousand Coffee-houses in London alone. An old author says, Who would have thought, after the prejudice against coffee, which was considered pernicious and a public nuisance, it would have been, as now, so much drunk “by thebest of quality, and byphysicians?”