welcome his honour to the city, who hath been at London, and since his last being at this city within this year had all his three sons drowned and daughter deceased.

1615, September 1st. The Corporation ordered a butt of sack and half a tun of Gascoyne wine to be given to my Lord Sheffield.

1618, January 9. A butt of sack was given to the Lord Archbishop Matthews (157.), in respect of his love for this city, his Grace having bestowed upon Mr. Hooke,* the city preacher, a dignity in the Church.

1st September, 1619. The Right Hon. Emanuel, Lord Scrope, Lord Lieutenant and Lord President in the North Parts, should have at his coming to this city a butt of sack and half a tun of Gascoyne wine.

May 1629. A tun of claret wine, as a gift from this city, to be presented to Samuel, now Lord Archbishop of York, on his first coming here, 1st July, 1629.

August 17, 1631. Lord Viscount Wentworth, Lord President, to be gratified with 40 chaldrons of coals, to be provided and delivered at the Manor shore for 12s. per chaldron.

21st September, 1632. A butt of sack well rackt to be presented to Richard,† Lord Archbishop of York, as a token of this city's love unto him. A deputation to ride to Bishopthorpe and to welcome his Grace thither, and present their loves to him.

* 1615, October 11th. The Lord Sheffield recommends Mr. Hooke as city preacher. Henry Hooke was collated Archdeacon of York, June 3rd, 1617. † Richard Neile died in York, October 31, 1640.

T

LUXURIES.-TEA AND COFFEE.

EW household words are more familiar to us than these! From the palace of the Sovereign to the

hovel of the poorest of her subjects "the cups that cheer and not inebriate" are now in daily use, and form an important-nay, it may be called an indispensable-part of the ordinary diet of the people of England.

The introduction of these refreshing and wholesome beverages, and their gradual substitution for drinks of a pernicious tendency, have exercised an influence upon the moral and social habits of our fellow-countrymen of incalculable value; and it may not be deemed irrelevant or uninteresting if I attempt to trace the history of their adoption in our own locality.

Two of the earliest of the English travellers in the East were connected with York. George Sandys, one of the sons of Edwyn Sandys, Archbishop of York in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was born in the palace of Bishopthorpe in the year 1577. He was at Constantinople in the year 1610, and published an account of his travels in 1615. Describing the habits of the Turks he says: "Although they be destitute of taverns they have their coffa-houses, which sometimes resemble them. There sit they chattering most of the day, and sippe of a drinke called coffa (from the berry it is made of), in little china dishes, as hot as they can suffer it, black as soot, and tasting not much unlike it (why not that black broth which was in use among the Lacedemonians?), which helpeth, as they say, digestion, and procureth alacrity."

Sir Thomas Herbert, a native of York, visited Asia in the year 1628. His description of the habits of the Persians

contains this passage: ""Twixt meales, which are three a day, at eight, twelve, and four, they meet often in houses like our taverns, where is vendible wine, arack, sherbet, tobacco suckt through water by long canes or pipes issuing from a boule or round vessel. They spit but seldom (the Jewes less), and that liquor which most delights them is coffa, or coho, a drink brewed out of the Stygian lake-black, thick, and bitter, distrained from berries of that quality, though thought good and very wholesome. They say it expels melancholy, purges choler, begets mirth, and is an excellent concoction." The first edition of Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels was published in 1634.

It is obvious that neither of these travellers was so much smitten with the charms of the beverage he thus describes as to be induced either to use it himself or recommend it to others, when he returned to his own country.

It is said that early in the seventeenth century, before Sandys had set out on his travels, the enterprising Dutch merchants, who seem at this period to have monopolized the commerce of the East, had brought into Holland coffee from Arabia and tea from India; yet it is certain that neither one nor the other was known in England until the time of the Commonwealth. From the ordinary chronologies we learn that in London the first coffee-house was opened in 1652, the University of Oxford having had one two years previously.

There is no doubt that tea as a beverage was about that time as well known as coffee; but, from the extreme rarity and consequent high price of the Chinese leaf, the Arabian berry was much more in popular request, and on that account the places of public resort, where both tea and coffee as beverages were sold, received the denomination of coffee-shops or coffee-houses.

The earliest known advertisement by a seller and retailer of tea and coffee is contained in a single sheet or broadside pre

served in the British Museum, which was probably printed in the year 1657 or 1658. By this advertisement, or hand-bill, Thomas Garway (who was the founder of the coffee-house in Exchange Alley, London, still in existence, and well known as Garraway's Coffee-house) gives notice to all persons of eminency and quality, gentlemen and others, who have occasion for tea in leaf, that he has tea to sell from 16s. to 50s. the pound; and, moreover, that such as would have coffee in powder, or the berries undried, or chocolate, might be supplied by him to their content. The advertiser prefaces his announcement with a brief sketch of the natural history of the tea-plant, and a flourishing description of the particular virtues of the drink made from it, to which, in the style of a modern quack medicine advertisement, he ascribes the power of curing all diseases "that the flesh is heir to."

He tells us that the excellences of this leaf and drink are manifest from the high esteem and use of it, especially in late years, among the physicians and knowing men in France, Italy, and Holland, and other parts of Christendom; and in England it had been sold in the leaf for 61., and sometimes as high as 10. the pound weight, and that until the year 1657 it had only been used as a regalia in high entertainments, and as presents to princes and grandees. He says that he purchased a quantity of tea, and was the first who publicly sold it in leaf and drink, and that his house in Exchange Alley was much resorted to by very many noblemen, physicians, merchants, and gentlemen of quality to drink the drink thereof.

We must conclude that the beverages of tea and coffee had made rapid progress in public favour when we find that two or three years after the publication of Garway's advertisement the consumption of them was sufficiently large to induce the Legislature to make them the subjects of taxation.

By one of the first Acts of Parliament passed after the Restoration of King Charles II. an excise duty was imposed

of 4d. per gallon upon every gallon of coffee, and 8d. upon every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea, made and sold, such duty to be paid by the makers.

Ten years afterwards these duties were increased to 6d. per gallon upon coffee, and 1s. per gallon upon tea, chocolate, and sherbet.

Notwithstanding the heavy duties thus imposed upon tea and coffee, the love of these beverages and the number of places where they were made and sold, and the habit of resorting to such places, increased so enormously that they were regarded by the suspicious Government of that day as places where the disaffected met and spread scandalous reports respecting the conduct of the King and his Ministers. During the administration of Lord Arlington, in 1675, the Judges were consulted as to the expediency of recalling the licences of the coffee-houses, and it was their solemn opinion that, "although upon the main they thought the retailing of coffee might be an innocent trade, yet, as it was used to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalise great men and the like, it might also be a common nuisance." Fortified by the opinion of the Judges of the land, the Government issued a proclamation for the suppression of all the coffee-houses in London. But they soon discovered that they had made a great mistake, and a few days afterwards they suspended the proclamation under the pretext that the revenue would be injured by thus diminishing the consumption of excisable articles. Consequently the coffee-houses, as well as their frequenters, continued to increase and multiply; and Lord Macaulay tells us that, during the latter years of King Charles II., they "might not improperly have been called a most important political institution."

It is not to be supposed that, whilst the people of London thus indulged in the use of the novel and agreeable beverages of tea and coffee, and in the pleasures and advantages of