Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of customers. St. Paul’s, for instance, was patronized by the clergy, both by those with fat livings and by ’battered crapes,’ who plied there for an occasional burial or sermon. Dick’s was frequented by members of the Temple, with whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept the house, were great favourites; wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a comedy, called ’The Coffee-House,’ in which the ladies were thought to be indicated—the engraver having unfortunately fixed upon Dick’s Coffee-House as the frontispiece scene—the Templars attended the first representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. Button’s, in Covent Garden, was the resort of Addison and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of Savage and Davenant—in fact, of the wits of the time. At this house was the lion’s head through whose mouth letters were dropped for the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_. The head was afterwards transferred to the Bedford Coffee-House, under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was purchased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn Abbey; Bedford’s was the successor of Button’s, and is described in the ’Memoirs’ of it as having been signalized for many years as ’the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.’ In 1659 was founded the Rota Club by James Charrington, a political writer, and its members met at Miles’s, in Old Palace Yard. Pepys attended one of its meetings on January 10, 1659-60. It was a kind of debating-society for the dissemination of Republican opinions. Coffee-houses, indeed, at that period became important political institutions. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper then existed; in consequence, these houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion vented itself, and so threatening to the Court did, in course of time, their influence appear, that on December 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee-houses, ’because in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of disaffected persons in them, diverse false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty’s Government, and to the disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm.’ The opinions of the judges were taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently reported ’that retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, but as it was used to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalize great men, it might also be a common nuisance.’ On a petition of the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea, permission was granted to keep open the coffee-houses until June 24 next, under an admonition that ’the masters of them should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them.’ This, of course, was a huge joke on the part of the Cabal, who thus constituted the concoctors and dispensers of ’dishes’—to use the