Note 291 — Chapter XVIII · COFFEE-HOUSES AND TAVERNS.

Wood mentions that the first coffee-house was at Oxford, and was kept, in 1650, by Jacobs, a Jew. The first in London seems to have been kept by a foreigner named Rosa Pasquee, in 1652, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, whilst Hatton says[291]: 'I find it Recorded that one James Farr, a Barber, who kept the Coffee House which now is the Rainbow, by the Inner Temple Gate, (one of the first in England) was in the year 1657 presented by the Inquest of St. Dunstans in the W. for Making and Selling a sort of Liquor, called Coffee, as a great Nusance and Prejudice of the neighbourhood, &c. And who would then have thought London would ever have had near 3,000 such Nusances, and that Coffee should have been (as now) so much Drank by the best of Quality and Physicians.' Of these 'near 3,000' I have, in my searches through the newspapers, etc., of the period, found the names of over 500, which, to preserve them again from falling into oblivion, are to be found in the Appendix to this book.