"We consume it in millions of tons; we employ thousands of ships in transporting it. Millions of men spend their lives in cultivating the plants from which it is extracted, and the fiscal duties imposed upon it add largely to the revenue of nearly every established government. It may be said, therefore, to exercise a more direct and extended influence, not only over the social comfort, but over the social condition, of mankind, than any other production of the vegetable kingdom, with the exception, perhaps, of cotton alone."--_J. F. W. Johnston, M.A._[51] Coffee is mentioned in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, date 1621, several years before coffee-houses were introduced into England. The first coffee-house was opened in 1650, at Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew, "at the Angel; and there it (coffee) was, by some who delighted in novelty, drunk." About this time, Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London, one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for him every morning. But the novelty thereof, drawing too much company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law, to sell coffee publicly, and they set up the first coffee-house in London, in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill. The sign was Pasqua Rosee's own head. Tea was first sold in London by Thomas Garway, in Change Alley, in 1651, at from 16_s_. to 50_s_. per pound; it had been previously sold at from six pounds to ten pounds per pound. Pepys, in his _Diary_, tells, Sept. 25, 1669, of his sending "for a cup of Tea, a China drink he had not before tasted." Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, about 1666, had introduced Tea at Court. And, in Sir Charles Sedley's _Mulberry Garden_, we are told that "he who wished to be considered a man of fashion always drank wine-and-water at dinner, and a dish of tea afterwards."[52] Spices and other condiments are mentioned in the Countess of Leicester's accounts, viz., anise, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, cummin, dried fennel, saffron, sugar, liquorice, mustard, verjuice, and vinegar, the prices of which were very low. It must not be supposed, from the low prices of some of these articles, that they were generally used in the country; the arrival of a ship laden with spices was an event of such importance, and perhaps rarity, that the King usually hastened to satisfy his wants before the cargo was landed. Thus in the 10th of Henry the Third, the bailiffs of Sandwich were commanded to detain, upon their coming to port, two great ships laden with spices and precious merchandises, which were expected from Bayonne; and not to allow anything to be sold until the King had had his choice of their contents.