London Coffeehouses (1652): The Penny Universities

London’s coffeehouses began in 1652, when Pasqua Rosée opened the city’s first coffee stall in St Michael’s Alley, off Cornhill. Within a few decades hundreds of coffeehouses had spread across London, becoming cheap meeting places where people read the news, argued about politics and made deals. Nicknamed “penny universities”, they helped shape English public life, business and science.

Background: coffee reaches England

Coffee drinking spread from Yemen through the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, and coffeehouses were common in Istanbul, Cairo and Damascus. English merchants of the Levant Company met the drink while trading in Ottoman ports.

The first known English coffeehouse opened in Oxford around 1650–1651, run by a man named Jacob at the Angel, according to the antiquary Anthony Wood. London followed soon after.

Pasqua Rosée’s coffeehouse

Daniel Edwards, a Levant Company merchant, had grown used to coffee in Smyrna (now İzmir) and brought his servant Pasqua Rosée back to London. Rosée, probably of Greek origin, prepared coffee for Edwards’ friends. So many came that around 1652 Edwards helped him set up on his own in St Michael’s Alley, at first in a shed in the churchyard of St Michael, Cornhill.

Rosée advertised with a handbill, The Vertue of the Coffee Drink, claiming that coffee aided digestion and helped against many ailments. A blue plaque in the alley now marks “the first London coffee house at the sign of Pasqua Rosee’s Head”. The original building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the Victorian Jamaica Wine House stands on the site.

The spread of the coffeehouse

After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, coffeehouses multiplied rapidly. Contemporary claims of thousands are exaggerated, but historians estimate several hundred in London by around 1700. Rival drinks such as tea and chocolate were also served.

Customers paid about a penny for entry and a dish of coffee. Unlike taverns, coffeehouses served no alcohol, and in principle any respectable man could sit at the long tables and join the talk, whatever his rank. Women ran some coffeehouses, but customers were overwhelmingly men. A satirical Women’s Petition Against Coffee appeared in 1674, complaining that men wasted their time there.

Centres of news, business and science

Coffeehouses were where Londoners went for news. Newsletters, gazettes and pamphlets were left on the tables, and in an age of censorship much political gossip passed by word of mouth. Different houses attracted different crowds: Will’s in Covent Garden was known for the poet John Dryden and his literary circle.

Business followed. Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse, open by the late 1680s, became the meeting place of merchants, shipowners and insurers, and gave its name to Lloyd’s of London. Share dealers gathered at Jonathan’s and Garraway’s in Exchange Alley, a forerunner of the London Stock Exchange.

Science also had its coffeehouses. Fellows of the Royal Society often continued their discussions over coffee, and Robert Hooke’s diary records frequent meetings at Garraway’s, Jonathan’s and other houses.

The attempt at suppression, 1675–1676

The government distrusted coffeehouses as places where criticism of the king spread. On 29 December 1675 Charles II issued a proclamation ordering them to close from 10 January 1676, claiming they caused idleness and the spreading of “false, malitious and scandalous reports”.

The order provoked wide protest, including from coffee sellers, customers and ministers worried about lost tax revenue on coffee. Just before it was due to take effect, a further proclamation allowed the houses to stay open for six months if their keepers promised to prevent seditious talk. In practice the ban was abandoned and never enforced.

Myths and facts

Myth: there were 3,000 coffeehouses in London. Figures in the thousands come from later anecdotes and are not supported by records. Historians working from licences and trade directories suggest a few hundred around 1700, still a remarkable number for a city of roughly half a million people.

Myth: coffeehouses were open to everyone. Entry was cheap and conversation relatively free across social ranks, but customers were largely middle- and upper-class men, and the poor rarely took part.

Myth: the 1675 ban closed the coffeehouses. The proclamation never took effect. Within days the government retreated, and coffeehouses went on flourishing into the eighteenth century, when papers such as The Spectator were written for and read in them.

Timeline

• c. 1650–1651: England’s first known coffeehouse opens in Oxford.
• 1652: Pasqua Rosée opens London’s first coffeehouse in St Michael’s Alley.
• 1660: The Restoration of Charles II; coffeehouses spread rapidly.
• 1666, September: The Great Fire destroys the City, including the first coffeehouse.
• 1674: The Women’s Petition Against Coffee is published.
• 1675, 29 December: Charles II issues a proclamation to suppress coffeehouses.
• 1676, January: The proclamation is withdrawn before it takes effect.
• 1680s: Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse becomes a centre of shipping insurance.

Why it matters

London’s coffeehouses created a new kind of public space where news and ideas circulated among people of different backgrounds. They nurtured journalism, financial markets and scientific networks, and historians see them as an early example of the “public sphere” in which citizens debate public affairs.