a good scholar and an "arch rogue", who had formerly "written
for the Parliament" but who later became a paid spy. L'Estrange, who had
a patent on "the sole right of intelligence", wrote in his
_Intelligencer_ that he was alarmed at the ill effects of "the ordinary
written papers of Parliament's news ... making coffee houses and all the
popular clubs judges of those councils and deliberations which they have
nothing to do with at all."

The first royal warrant for coffee was given by Charles II to Alexander
Man, a Scotsman who had followed General Monk to London, and set up in
Whitehall. Here he advertised himself as "coffee man to Charles II."

Owing to increased taxes on tea, coffee, and newspapers, near the end of
Queen Anne's reign (1714) coffee-house keepers generally raised their
prices as follows: Coffee, two pence per dish; green tea, one and a half
pence per dish. All drams, two pence per dram. At retail, coffee was
then sold for five shillings per pound; while tea brought from twelve to
twenty-eight shillings per pound.

_Coffee Club of The Rota_

"Coffee and Commonwealth", says a pamphleteer of 1665, "came in together
for a Reformation, to make 's a free and sober nation." The writer
argues that liberty of speech should be allowed, "where men of differing
judgements croud"; and he adds, "that's a coffee-house, for where should
men discourse so free as there?" Robinson's comments are apt:

Now perhaps we do not always connect the ideas of sociableness and
freedom of discussion with the days of Puritan rule; yet it must be
admitted that something like geniality and openness characterized
what Pepys calls the Coffee Club of the Rota. This "free and open
Society of ingenious gentlemen" was founded in the year 1659 by
certain members of the Republican party, whose peculiar opinions
had been timidly expressed and not very cordially tolerated under
the Great Oliver. By the weak Government that followed, these views
were regarded with extreme dislike and with some amount of terror.

"They met", says Aubrey, who was himself of their number, "at the Turk's
Head [Miles's coffee house] in New Palace Yard, Westminster, where they
take water, at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, where was
made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for
Miles to deliver his coffee."

Robinson continues:

This curious refreshment bar and the interest