Coffee-Houses

First opened by Jacobs. a Jew, in Oxford, 1650, and by Pasquet, a Greek, in Lombard St., London, 1652. They immediately became fashionable as the resorts of the poets and wits, the great marts of news and go ip, and an important factor in the forming of public opinion. In 1675 the government became alarmed at the political influence of the coffee-houses and shut them up, only reopening them on condition that the proprietors should prevent their customers "uttering scandalous reports against the government or the ministers." Clubs were only a development of these coffee-houses.