Robert Morton, The nature, quality, and most excellent vertues of coffee ([London, n.p., c. 1670]), 1°. BL: 778. k.15.(11). ESTCR231660.

Robert Morton’s is the most extensive of the early trade handbills. Like the others, it seems likely that it was printed to be sold or given away by apothecaries or the retail coffee trade: the copy in the British Library appears to have been folded into eight. The handbill is a broadsheet printed in two columns. The first two paragraphs of the text closely paraphrase the account of the origin and quality of coffee offered by the coffee-man’s handbill, variously printed as The Vertue of the Coffee Drinke. Thereafter, the analysis of coffee differs: Morton argues that coffee is hot and dry (appropriate for a phlegmatic character, drying up the moisture of colds and catarrhs). The handbill continues with a substantial section on the ‘vertues’ (healing properties) of coffee, and a short section on tea, before ending with a six-line panegyric in praise of coffee. Nothing is known of the publisher or date of publication (ESTC conjectures 1670, confirmed by Ukers and Hünersdorff). Little is known about Robert Morton. He is perhaps the same man noted as a gentleman volunteer in the Middlesex Militia of 1644 (5 October 1644, Journal of the House of Lords, 7 (1802), p. 35). He may also be the Robert Morton, minister from 1635 to 1646 of Bewdley Chapel in the parish of Bewdley, Worcestershire, whose son, Richard Morton (1637–98), was a physician with a considerable practice in London in the 1670s (ODNB). The father may be the same man as the physician and astrologer called Richard Morton (fl. 1662) who published a treatise offering astrological tables and medicinal advice in 1662 entitled An ephemeris for the year of our Lord 1662 with several observations concerning physick and chyrurgery (London, Simon Dover for the Company of Stationers, 1662).There are five extant versions of such handbills, each printed from separately set type, with different layout and printers’ ornaments. None of the handbills are dated and, although diverse authorities have conjectured dates for each, none of the proposed dates are supported by any secure external evidence. The Vertue of the Coffee Drinke ([London, n.p., n.d.]), in the British Library (BL 778.k.15 (9); ESTCR231655), has at the foot of the page printed ‘This drink is to be sold at the Raine-bow in Fleet-Street, between the two Temple-Gates’. There is no imprint or 86date, but the Rainbow Coffee-house is known to have been in existence from 1657. Conjecturally dated by the ESTC as 1670, it is more likely that it was printed at some time in the early 1660s: Hünersdorff conjectures 1662, which is not inappropriate. A nearly identical broadside handbill in the British Library is also entitled The Vertue of the Coffee Drink ([London, n.p., 1652]); BL 778.k.15.(10); ESTCR231651. Wing (CD-Rom 1996) supplied the imprint date of 1652 for this handbill, but without evidence this must remain very unlikely: Hünersdorf suggests 1656, but again without evidence. A third example entitled The vertue of the coffee drink. First publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee (([London, n.p., n.d.]), broadsheet 1/2°; BL C.20.f.2(372); ESTCR226932) signals a connection to Pasqua Rosee, the Levantine servant who established the first coffee-house in London in St Michael’s Churchyard in 1652. The handbill is undated, like the others. While the ESTC conjectures 1675, Hünersdorff suggests c. 1665, which is more likely, not least because Pasqua Rosee’s coffee-house was destroyed in the fire of 1666, and not rebuilt. As Rosee’s involvement with the coffee-house is thought to have ended c. 1657, a date as early as 1657 is possible. See Markman Ellis, ‘Pasqua Rosee’s Coffee House 1652–1666’, London Journal, 29:1 (2004), pp. 1–25. A translation of this handbill was printed in Rome in 1671: Dichiaratione delle virtv della bevanda del caffè tradotta della lingua inglese nella lingua italiana (Roma, Per il Moneta, 1671). A fifth extant printing of the handbill is also entitled The vertue of the coffee drink (([Oxford, printed by William Hall, 1660]); Oxford University Bodleian Library Wood 679 (9); ESTCR186047). This broadsheet too has no imprint or date. Madan identifies it as Oxford printed by William Hall (Falconer Madan, Oxford Books: a bibliography of printed works relating to the University and City of Oxford: Vol. 3 Oxford Literature 1651–1680 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1931), No. 2488). Aubertin-Potter suggests the date of 1657, without supporting evidence. At the foot of the only extant copy in the Bodleian, from the collection of Anthony Wood and in his handwriting, the coffee-seller is identified as ‘by James Gough at mr Sury’es a taylor at Queens Coll Corner Oxon: December: A: 1660’. As so often with Wood, his date of 1660 may not be reliable (as it may have been added at a later period). The phrasing is clearly related to another handbill (The virtues of the chocolate East-India drink. The properties of cavee Egipt drink ([Oxford, William Hall, 1660]), which has printed at its base ‘These drinks are to be sold by James Gough at M. Sury’s neare East gate’. The location identified by Wood – Queen’s College Corner – is the corner of Queen’s Lane and the High Street (Norma Aubertin-Potter, Oxford Coffee Houses, 1651–1800 (Oxford, Hampden, 1987), p. 26). The text of the Oxford handbill is substantially the same, though reset and with different printer’s ornaments, with one addition to the final line – ‘Tehere [sic] are many Thousands in London who have received much benefit by this Drink’. The addition strongly suggests that the Oxford handbill is a late copy (after 1660?) of the London handbills noted above.