ABSTRACT
A royal proclamation issued by Charles II on 8 January 1676 withdrawing the proclamation suppressing the coffee-houses of 29 December 1675 (see above, pp. 93–6). Opposition to the first proclamation took two interrelated forms: political and commercial. To the political opponents of the Court, the proclamation went to the heart of the constitutional debate of the seventeenth century, probing the powers of the king had to act in government outside his parliament. A manuscript poem, later attributed to Andrew Marvell, entitled ‘A Dialogue between the Two Horses’ (1676), and circulated through the coffee-houses, directly addressed the proclamation. In an address from the ‘satirist’, the poem predicted the fall of the tyrant Charles II, just like his father Charles I: ‘Let the City drink coffee and quietly groan; / They that conquer’d the father won’t be slaves to the son … / Then, Charles, thy edicts against coffee recall: / There’s ten times more treason in brandy and ale’ (Andrew Marvell, ‘A Dialogue between the Two Horses’, in George de F. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714, Volume I: 1660–1678 (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 275–83). Commercial opposition was led by the successful City coffee-man Thomas Garraway (d. 1692?) who, aided by the lord treasurer Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby (1632–1712), presented a petition from the coffee-men of London to the Privy Council on Friday 7 January 1676. Their petition denied any active role in the dissemination of sedition and news, and presented the coffee-men as tradesmen, who loyally and legally merely sold coffee, holding licenses from the magistrates that simply guaranteed the payment of their Excise duties. As the Privy Council debates record (‘Notes by Williamson of a debate in the Privy Council’, PRO: State Papers: Domestic, Car II, 378, no. 40), this was a subtle but powerful defence, for if the licenses did not grant permission to trade, their withdrawal could not legally close the coffee-houses without further legislation in parliament, which Charles II and his ministers knew would not succeed. A hasty meeting was called of the chief justices on Saturday 8 January 1676, which confirmed that the 98device of withdrawing the licenses was unworkable. Chief Justice Turnor reflected that ‘Any man at common law might sell these liquors. The intent of the Act is to raise a revenue, not to licence a trade’ (CSPD 1675-1676, p. 500).
