If you happen to be in London’s cobbled streets of Leadenhall Market, you might spot a small framed sign heralding the arrival of a drink that forever changed Britain. “Here stood the first London coffeehouse at the sign of Pasqua Rosee’s head, 1652,” it reads. The commemorative ceramic tablet lies just outside the walls of the Victorian Jamaica Wine House in the heart of the labyrinthine St. Michael’s Alley. Pasqua Rosee was an Armenian-born servant of a British merchant named Daniel Edwards employed by the Levant Company, which once monopolized England’s trade with the Ottoman Empire. In 1652, Rosee opened a coffee-serving stall in St Michael’s churchyard to entertain Edwards’ guests. It became the go-to coffee house where London’s merchants congregated each day. It wasn’t long before coffeehouses began popping up all over London. However, some thought this open sharing of news and political ideas was a threat to the monarchy, and in 1675 King Charles II’s ministers attempted to close down coffeehouse on the grounds of their “evil and dangerous effects.” The king feared that coffee may provoke instigation or the plotting of violence against the throne and ordered them all closed. In addition, coffee was perceived to be a threat to masculinity, as some pointed out that men were beginning to gossip like women. People even began accusing coffee of wasting their time, when they should have been working. It was also considered an exotic luxury that had no nutritional value. The dramatic decline of coffee consumption in 19th-century Britain caused the nation to become a tea-drinking society by the 1820s. Today, with a Starbucks on every corner in America, the coffee chain is migrating across the pond. Who knows if drinking tea will fall by the wayside in England.
