How rapidly the indulgence in intoxicating drink increased from the Commonwealth to the eighteenth century we are able to learn from the poets and moralists of the time, as well as from the graphic pictures of life which have been bequeathed to us by the pencil of Hogarth; but before reverting to the oft-told tale, we have to speak of a satisfactory phase in the drinking customs of the country, which commenced at the epoch under consideration, and which is happily still in steady progress. We mean the introduction into England of those non-alcoholic beverages which we find to have exercised so potent and beneficial an influence upon the morals of German society. Tea was first imported into England from the Netherlands in 1666 by Lords Arundel and Ossory, but it was then only used medicinally, its price (about 60s. per lb.) being for a long time a virtual prohibition against its use as a beverage. Coffee was, however, a much more popular article of consumption. The first coffee-house is said to have been opened in Paris in 1643; and either in 1652 or 1657 (writers differ as to the date) the first was established in London. Coffee was soon served in taverns along with wine, beer, and tobacco, and although it met with opposition from the satirical writers of the day, it was drunk by men of every class, from the labourers and apprentices to the members of the Privy Council, and it interfered considerably with the consumption of alcoholic drinks. There were ere long coffee-houses for all ranks of society, such as the “Grecian” in Threadneedle Street, said to have been the first opened, where noblemen and the committee of the Royal Society met, and many others of more modest pretensions, for the accommodation of merchants, tradesmen, and the labouring classes. The character of the clubs, too, was changed by the introduction of tea and coffee and chocolate. Those institutions had existed from the reign of Elizabeth, the first having been the “Mermaid” in Friday Street, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh; and the other leading men connected with it were Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher. Ben Jonson founded a club which met at the “Devil” Tavern between Temple Bar and the Temple Gates, for which he wrote a code of rules in Latin verse called “Leges Conviviales.”[271] The clubs found no favour with the Puritans, who endeavoured to abolish them; whilst in Charles II.’s time the coffee-houses were so inconvenient to royalty, that an attempt was made to suppress them. The latter incident occurred in 1675, when on the 29th December a royal proclamation ordered them to be closed, “because in such houses, and by the meeting of disaffected persons in them, divers false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and spread abroad, to the defamation of His Majesty’s Government, and the disturbance of the peace of the realm.” The dissatisfaction caused by this proceeding was, however, so great that the proclamation was soon withdrawn.