The heart of the maritime world: London's 'mercantile' coffee houses in the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence, 1756-83
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The heart of the maritime world: London’s ‘mercantile’
coffee houses in the Seven Years’ War and the
American War of Independence, 1756–83
Anna Brinkman-Schwartz
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King’s College London, United Kingdom
Abstract
This article focuses on the role of mercantile coffee houses during the Seven Years’ War and the
American War of Independence. The purpose is to examine mercantile coffee houses as public
and private spaces, and to examine why people chose them as spaces in which to conduct business.
The article examines how London’s mercantile coffee houses enabled the maritime population
to understand, and remain informed about, maritime affairs during both wars. This includes how
their presence facilitated the co-ordination of transoceanic trade, how their existence concentrated
people in one place, and how they helped facilitate maritime and naval logistics.
At noon on 20 January 1757, at Lloyd’s Coffee House on Lombard Street in London, an
auction was held in order to sell seven lots consisting of ships and goods condemned as
lawful prize in the war against France. The ships on sale were relatively small – between
38 and 60 tons – and the prize goods were mostly spirits, wine, wheat and sugar. Any
person interested in the sale or in the full inventories of the lots could inquire at Lloyd’s
Coffee House. All of this information was contained in a small advertisement on the
second page of the newspaper London Intelligencer. The same page contained five other
advertisements for prize auctions being held at various coffee houses in London in the
coming weeks.1
Mercantile coffee houses such as Lloyd’s were a far cry from their literary counterparts,
where men such as Dr. Johnson and James Boswell spent much of their time. They are
the less well-known coffee houses, the other coffee houses, which were concentrated in
the City of London, near St. Paul’s, Cornhill and the riverfront. They were also found
further west, on Fleet Street and near Charing Cross. There was no clear distinction
between a ‘literary’ coffee house and a ‘mercantile’ coffee house, nor would they have
been understood as such by their owners or patrons. However, the term mercantile coffee
house is used in this article to refer to those coffee houses in which a variety of trade and
business was habitually conducted.The term, by design and necessity, does not exclude any
particular coffee houses, because business could be conducted in any of them. However,
there were coffee houses where this was more the norm than in others, and these tended
to be clustered in the geographical areas mentioned above.These mercantile coffee houses
were frequented less by literary figures and more by merchants, brokers, investors, ships’
captains and other members of London’s maritime community. These other, mercantile
London coffee houses played a vital role in Britain’s maritime community during the
Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and the American War of Independence (1775–83), as they
had done throughout much of the eighteenth century. During these two wars, mercantile
1
London Intelligencer, 13 Jan. 1757.
© The Author(s) 2021. DOI:10.1093/hisres/htab018 Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 509
coffee houses in London were hubs of Britain’s global maritime networks. They fulfilled
two main purposes for their patrons. The first was to provide a physical place where
people could go in order to meet, conduct business and manage mercantile affairs with
some level of public legitimacy. The second was to provide a place where people could
reliably go to acquire and discuss news and information in either printed or verbal form.
Coffee houses brought London’s mercantile and maritime populations together because
they were public spaces where anyone with a stake, or interest, in Britain’s maritime
world could come to seek and exchange information and conduct business. Some of
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the logistics that allowed Britain to, in some measure successfully and efficiently, conduct
its maritime wars in the second half of the eighteenth century were facilitated by the
existence and functions of these mercantile coffee houses.
Mercantile coffee houses in the City of London tended to be clustered in the area
around St. Paul’s, Lombard Street and Cornhill. On the north side of Cornhill was the
Royal exchange (a haunt of merchants, brokers and bankers), and directly to the south,
on the far side of Lombard Street, was the general post office. Coffee houses that were
in close proximity to both the exchange and the post office were well placed to offer
the latest news from abroad and easy access to goods and people at the exchange. Many
merchants would spend mornings at the exchange and afternoons in the coffee houses.2
In a city like London, often difficult and unpleasant to navigate, the proximity of the
coffee houses, the exchange, the post office and the riverfront was of great benefit to
conducting maritime trade efficiently and expediently.
This article’s purpose is to examine mercantile coffee houses as both public and private
spaces, and to discern why people chose them, and how they used them, as areas in which
to conduct public and private business. The article will also examine how London’s
mercantile coffee houses enabled the maritime population to understand, and remain
informed about, maritime affairs during Britain’s wars from 1756 to 1783. This includes
how their presence supported and facilitated the co-ordination and management of
transoceanic trade, how their existence concentrated information and people in one
place, and how they helped facilitate maritime and naval logistics during wartime.
The conflicts considered in the article, the Seven Years’ War and the American War
of Independence, were chosen because of their global and wide-ranging maritime
dimensions, which required Herculean efforts in logistics. The Seven Years’ War was
fought in Europe, North America, the West Indies, the East Indies,Africa, and the Atlantic,
Pacific and Indian Oceans. It was truly a war of global proportions.3 The American War of
Independence also had global dimensions with campaigns conducted in North America,
the West Indies, the Mediterranean, West Africa and the East Indies (though, notably, not
on mainland Europe).The American War of Independence, when assessed from a colonial
and overseas imperial perspective, was a continuation of the Seven Years’ War, wherein
Anglo-Spanish, Anglo-French and Anglo-Dutch disputes had not been resolved.4 Both
wars were similar in character, and required a level of investment in maritime logistics (in
terms of ships, supplies, infrastructure, people, money and planning) that had rarely been
seen before in Britain’s wars.5 Examining the role of mercantile coffee houses during this
period, then, allows for an analysis of how they functioned and contributed to Britain’s
war machine in the first ‘global’ conflicts of the long eighteenth century.
London Metropolitan Archives (henceforth L.M.A.), ACC/1017/0949, ‘Journal of John Eliot III’.
2
D. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War 1754–1763 (Harlow, 2011), p. 8.
3
4
A. Brinkman, ‘The court of prize appeal as an agent of British wartime foreign policy: the maintenance of
Dutch and Spanish neutrality during the Seven Years’War’ (unpublished King’s College London Ph.D. thesis, 2017).
5
C. Buchet, The British Navy, Economy and Society in the Seven Years War (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 4–10.
Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021) © 2021 Institute of Historical Research510 London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83
The investigation of how the mercantile wartime coffee houses functioned is broken
down in this article into three sections. The first section highlights the contribution
of scholarship on trade and commercial networks, communication networks, and
coffee house culture in the eighteenth century. It sets out, and challenges, some of the
historiography that conceives of the coffee house evolving into an increasingly private
space over the course of the eighteenth century. This work offers the hypothesis that
it was the conjunction of commercial, official and social networks within mercantile
coffee houses that created a space in which many aspects of wartime maritime logistics
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could thrive.
The second section looks at the kinds of private business conducted in the public
spaces that were the mercantile coffee houses. The question underlying the analysis is
‘Why did people choose to conduct private affairs in such a public space?’ The answer
is twofold: convenience and efficiency. As mentioned, the proximity of mercantile coffee
houses to the exchange, the post office and the riverfront made them perfect gathering
places for people in all walks of maritime life. As public spaces, anyone from a lowly
able seaman to the owners of a joint-stock company could confidently enter a coffee
house in order to conduct their business. Such diverse and convenient gatherings would
probably never have been possible in a private house or private place of business.
The second section also examines questions of legitimacy in mercantile circles, and the
coffee house as a place to conduct maritime business and be seen to conduct business.
Such business in coffee shops might include goods being traded, privateer captains looking
for crew, brokers buying and selling ships and cargoes, and groups who owned shares in
a ship or venture meeting to discuss their plans and to seek investors. By delving into
the letters and diaries of the people who used these London mercantile coffee houses, it
is possible to analyse and demonstrate how the coffee house facilitated connections and
interactions between members of the maritime community who sought to profit from
business, and to wage war, in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The third section of the article is inextricably tied to the publication and circulation of
the newspapers that were widely read and discussed in London coffee houses during the
mid to late eighteenth century. The functionality of coffee houses as nodes of maritime
trade and information networks would not have been possible without the London
newspapers. Newspapers and coffee houses enjoyed a symbiotic relationship in which
the newspapers provided two critical services: they offered relevant wartime information
to groups of people who were expected to frequent coffee houses, and they informed
readers of events taking place within and outside coffee houses.The provision of relevant
wartime information is analysed in the form of commercial news and advertisements,
navy board announcements, and admiralty announcements. Each of these categories
provided important information about the war to various interest groups in London’s
maritime community, and it was expected that these groups would go to coffee houses
in order to collect that information.
Information about public commercial events taking place in coffee houses is also
analysed in the third section. These events fall into three categories: the fitting-out of
warships and privateers, commercial auctions, and prize auctions. All three of these
activities relied on an efficient and thorough spread of information throughout the
maritime community. Members of the community needed to know where, how and
within what time frame a ship was taking on a crew. They also needed to know where,
when and what was being sold at auctions. Without the spread of this information, the
fitting-out of ships and the trading of goods would have been much more difficult and
less efficient.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 511
The arguments made in this article rely upon three types of sources from the Seven
Years’ War and the American War of Independence: the diaries and correspondence of
people within London’s maritime community, ministerial and naval correspondence,
and many of the newspapers commonly found in coffee houses. Of the three source
types, it is the newspapers that present two complicated methodological problems. The
first is an issue of uncertainty, because it is difficult to gauge the effect and influence
of newspapers on their audience. Unlike surviving correspondence, which gives the
researcher a window into the thoughts and actions of the correspondents, a surviving
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newspaper gives little or no insight into the thoughts and actions of its readers. This
does not mean, however, that newspapers have nothing to offer historians about
both readers and publishers. Selling and producing newspapers was, fundamentally,
a business designed to be profitable. If certain types of content and notices were
consistently printed in certain newspapers, then it can be assumed that the publishers
(or those paying to have the content included) considered that content to attract
readers and, therefore, worth continuing. For the same reason, coffee houses carried
the newspapers to attract clientele to their rooms. Much of the newspaper content
that will be examined in this article was recurring in many of the newspapers found
in mercantile coffee houses during the two wars. It was believed, among the London
maritime community, that newspapers and coffee houses were a good and reliable
way of spreading information to those within the community who needed to receive
it. This is not to say that newspapers were inherently viewed as reliable sources but,
rather, that they were used efficiently by the maritime community to convey news and
logistical information on commercial affairs.6
The second methodological problem when using newspapers as sources is how to
usefully sort through the vast amount of material that was printed in newspapers in
the eighteenth century, when their production was booming.7 This article relies almost
exclusively on the newspapers found within the British Library’s Burney Collection,
which originally comes from the newspaper collection of Reverend Charles Burney
(1757–1817) and is heavily weighted toward London newspapers.8 The collection was
started by Burney when he began to compile old newspapers from Gregg’s coffee
house in London.9 Coffee houses in the mid eighteenth century were known for
having repositories of old newspapers for patrons to use in a reference-like capacity.10
When the British Museum acquired the Burney collection, additions were made to
it from other acquisitions, but it remained a London-centric collection of roughly
1,290 titles.11 For the arguments and analyses of this article, therefore, the Burney
collection represents a very usefully curated collection of newspapers. The collection
is London-focused, a large portion of the collection contains papers from a single
coffee house, and it includes the period of the Seven Years’ War and the American War
of Independence.
6
J. Black, The English Press, 1621–1861 (London, 2001), p. 65. See also L. O’Neill, ‘Dealing with newsmongers:
news, trust, and letters in the British world, ca. 1670-1730’, Huntington Library Quarterly, lxxvi (2013), 215–33, at
p. 221.
7
P. Goring, ‘A network of networks: spreading the news in an expanding world of information’, in Travelling
Chronicles: News and Newspapers From the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century, ed. S. G. Brandtzæg, P. Goring
and C. Watson (Leiden, 2018), pp. 3–26, at p. 4.
8
Goring, ‘Network of networks’, p. 21.
9
A. Prescott, ‘Searching for Dr. Johnson: the digitisation of the Burney newspaper collection’, in Brandtzæg,
Goring and Watson, Travelling Chronicles, pp. 51–71, at p. 52.
10
M. Ellis, ‘Coffee-house libraries in mid-eighteenth-century London’, The Library, x (2009), 3–40, at p. 23.
11
Prescott, ‘Searching for Dr. Johnson’, pp. 53–4.
Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021) © 2021 Institute of Historical Research512 London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83
For the research on this article, the newspapers that needed to be read were bounded
by time, and by whether they were taken in at mercantile coffee houses. This greatly
limited the number of newspapers that had to be read to those published during the
Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence. The group of newspapers
was further limited by concentrating on certain titles commonly taken in at mercantile
coffee houses such as the London Evening Post and Lloyd’s Evening Post among others.12 It
was possible, therefore, to read the relevant publications in their entirety.
*
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London’s mercantile coffee houses in the second half of the eighteenth century were part
of a large web (or group of networks) that made trade and communication possible across
European empires. Research on eighteenth-century networks of trade, communication
and knowledge exchange is well established. Notable work on trade networks has been
produced by scholars such as Sheryllynne Haggerty, Xabier Lamikiz and Perry Gauci,
among others.13 Scholarship on communication networks and knowledge exchange in
the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world owes much to articles such as those by
Haggerty, Pat Hudson and Carolyn Downs.14 In the realm of print culture and coffee
houses, the work of Brian Cowan, in his book The Social Life of Coffee: the Emergence
of the British Coffee House; Jeremy Black, in his book The English Press; Bob Harris,
in his article ‘The London Evening Post and mid-eighteenth-century British politics’;
and Markman Ellis, in his article ‘Coffee-house libraries in mid-eighteenth-century
London’, have all greatly contributed to the understanding of how newspapers and
coffee houses contributed to the shaping of eighteenth-century British society.15 This
article does not challenge or contradict any of the scholarship mentioned above; in fact,
it greatly relies upon it as a foundation. However, while the scholarship on networks
in the mid eighteenth century has documented how merchants forged and maintained
their trade networks, and how print culture and coffee house culture contributed to the
creation of social networks in Britain, the two are rarely analysed together other than in
a passing reference.The role of the subset of mercantile coffee houses in London as a vital
12
See below for an explanation of which newspapers were taken in at which coffee houses and how this is
largely determined through instructions on where and how to place advertisements in certain newspapers.
13
S. Haggerty, ‘Merely for Money’? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815 (Liverpool, 2012). See also
D. Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785
(Cambridge, 1995); X. Lamikiz, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World: Spanish Merchants and Their
Overseas Networks (Woodbridge, 2013); P. Gauci, William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire (New
Haven, Conn., 2013); and Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed.
P. Stern and C. Wennerlind (Oxford, 2014).
14
S. Haggerty, ‘A link in the chain: trade and the transhipment of knowledge in the late eighteenth century’,
International Journal of Maritime History, xiv (2002), 157–72; P. Hudson, ‘Correspondence and commitment: British
traders’ letters in the long eighteenth century’, Cultural and Social History, xi (2014), 527–53; C. Downs, ‘Networks,
trust, and risk mitigation during the American Revolutionary War: a case study’, Economic History Review, lxx
(2017), 509–28; O’Neill, ‘Dealing with newsmongers’; A. Borucki, ‘Across imperial boundaries: black social net-
works across the Iberian South Atlantic, 1760–1810’, Atlantic Studies, xiv (2017), 11–36; P. Gervais, ‘Neither imperial,
nor Atlantic: a merchant perspective on international trade in the eighteenth century’, History of European Ideas,
xxxiv (2008), 465–73; and N. Glaisyer,‘Networking: trade and exchange in the eighteenth-century British Empire’,
Historical Journal, xlvii (2004), 451–76.
15
J. Harris, ‘The Grecian Coffee House and political debate in London 1688–1714’, London Journal, xxv (2000),
1–13; J. Barrell, ‘Coffee-house politicians’, Journal of British Studies, xliii (2004), 206–32; B. Cowan, ‘Publicity and
privacy in the history of the British coffeehouse’, History Compass, v (2007), 1180–213; B. Cowan, The Social Life
of Coffee: the Emergence of the British Coffee House (New Haven, Conn., 2005); Ellis, ‘Coffee-house libraries’; and
Prescott, ‘Searching for Dr. Johnson’, pp. 53–4.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 513
node of trade networks has remained understudied. The importance of newspapers to
mercantile networks, and the access that coffee houses granted to people needing to read
or hear mercantile news, has also been understudied. This article thus seeks to further
the historiography of mid eighteenth-century social, mercantile and communication
networks by bringing to light the important role of the London mercantile coffee houses
during the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence.
Britain’s war at sea during both conflicts is related to the mercantile coffee houses
of London because it was in these public spaces that the effect of the wars on trade,
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commerce and sea power were read about, discussed and reacted to by those involved.
Information arrived quickly to the maritime coffee houses of London by way of the
more than 7,000 ships that entered the port annually.16 Information from merchant ships,
warships, mail coaches and weekly mail packets (small and fast boats) made its way
quickly to the exchange and to the post office.17 Sailors, captains, merchants and clerks
who were eager to find out the latest news from the maritime world outside London
would gather in the coffee houses close to the exchange and the post office, often on
a daily basis. Being the first to obtain new information on prices, markets, battles, prize
affairs, etc. could further the commercial and financial aspirations of members within
the maritime community.18 As public spaces where news and information were distilled,
it is no surprise that coffee houses also served as places where news was collected for
publication in newspapers. After it was collected and coalesced into print, it would be
disseminated in newspaper form throughout the mercantile coffee houses.19
One coffee house, Lloyd’s, had an arrangement with the post office that came into
being sometime after 1734. The arrangement allowed Lloyd’s to be the first coffee house
to receive freshly arrived news about the comings and goings of ships in British ports.
By the 1730s Lloyd’s was known as a coffee house that catered to patrons involved in
maritime insurance. Timely information about ship movements was invaluable to its
patrons. The master (owner) of Lloyd’s paid around £200 a year to the secretary of
the post office and the comptroller general of the inland department so that Lloyd’s
correspondents in British and Irish ports could send their shipping information to the
coffee house without paying postage. A messenger from the coffee house would wait
at the post office when mail arrived, and any post addressed to the Post Master General
and marked ‘Lloyd’s’ was immediately handed over. In this way, Lloyd’s Coffee House
received the latest shipping information hours before any other coffee house, merchant
or broker. The information was then displayed at the coffee house in what was known
as ‘Lloyd’s List’.20 The business that Lloyd’s arrangement with the post office brought to
the coffee house was well worth the outlay of £200 a year in order to gain an edge in
the market of maritime information.
Coffee house patrons often had a good amount of choice when it came to which
coffee houses and newspapers they might consult. In the 1750s London had six daily
newspapers, six weekly papers and three tri-weekly papers.21 Not all mercantile coffee
houses took in every newspaper printed in London, but most took in several different
publications and kept back copies available.22 Literacy in this period was not universal.
16
J. White, London in the 18th Century: a Great and Monstrous Thing (London, 2012), p. 168.
17
Cowan, Social Life of Coffee, p. 87.
18
Hancock, Citizens of the World, p. 37.
19
Cowan, Social Life of Coffee, p. 172.
20
C. E. Wright and C. Fayle, A History of Lloyd’s From Founding Lloyd’s Coffee House to Present Day (London,
1928), pp. 72–5.
21
White, London in the 18th Century, p. 253.
22
White, London in the 18th Century, p. 255.
Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021) © 2021 Institute of Historical Research514 London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83
Some estimates place male literacy at about sixty per cent and female literacy at about
forty to fifty per cent.23 However, as places where news was discussed and read aloud,
coffee houses provided an excellent venue for those who were not literate to come and
stay abreast of the latest news and information about maritime affairs.
Coffee house culture was not stagnant during the eighteenth century, and the
coffee house as a public space where patrons enjoyed different aspects of a ‘public’ and
‘private’ life morphed and changed with the mores of the times. In British coffee house
historiography there are, broadly speaking, two main lines of thought for how coffee
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house culture developed in the eighteenth century. The first is a simple story of the ‘rise
and fall’ of coffee houses and their role in fostering a British ‘public sphere’. In this line
of thinking, coffee houses were at their peak in the early part of the eighteenth century
and their decline began around 1730.24 The second line of thought on the development
of eighteenth-century British coffee houses was put forward by Brian Cowan in his
article ‘Publicity and privacy in the history of the British coffeehouse’.25 Cowan posits
that there was no such decline in coffee houses or coffee house culture but, rather, that its
purpose as a public space morphed over time. In the early part of the eighteenth century,
coffee house culture and socializing was ‘performative’. Cowan states that
There was a theatrical nature to coffeehouse sociability in its formative century … There was an
assumption that the debates, discussions and activities that took place there would be observed
and commented upon by an audience that was greater than the coterie of habitués who happened
to be on site at the time.26
This ‘performative’ nature of early coffee house culture developed over the course of
the eighteenth century toward a more ‘romantic’ conception of the public sphere. In
the Romantic period, coffee houses allowed for the expression of a patron’s ‘private
life’. Coffee houses became places where people could read or converse in a quiet
atmosphere enabled by architectural changes such as booths and separate function rooms.
The boisterous and performative debates with large audiences were left behind. Cowan
argues that this transformation is reflective of the wider changes taking place in British
society over the eighteenth century.27
The mercantile coffee houses of the Seven Years’ War and the American War of
Independence do not fit neatly into either of these narratives. Though Cowan’s analysis
addressed the fallacy of a ‘rise and fall’ narrative for eighteenth-century British coffee
houses, it does not take into account that mercantile coffee houses in the mid to late
eighteenth century were public spaces crafted for both a performative and informative
sociability, for public gatherings for the viewing and sometimes auctioning of merchandise,
and also for the expression of a more ‘private business life’. Living and working within
London’s maritime community during the Seven Years’ War and the American War of
Independence required access to spaces that could be both private and public at the same
time, often for the same people, and coffee houses filled that role admirably.
*
An important aspect of coffee house commercial support was to serve as a business
address for patrons. Evidence of London’s mercantile coffee houses serving as places for
23
White, London in the 18th Century, p. 253.
24
Cowan, ‘Publicity and privacy’, p. 1181. See also J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere:
an Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, 1989).
25
Cowan, ‘Publicity and privacy’, p. 1181.
26
Cowan, ‘Publicity and privacy’, p. 1186.
27
Cowan, ‘Publicity and privacy’, p. 1194.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 515
business correspondence is scattered throughout the historical record in a somewhat
haphazard way. Much of the evidence survives only in the form of an envelope, or as a
return address at the bottom of a letter. Evidence of coffee houses as a correspondence
address sometimes exists within the body of letters or journals themselves, but this seems
to be more rare. What is clear from the surviving ephemera is that people from all ranks
of society within Britain’s maritime community designated coffee houses as addresses
for their business correspondence. The reasons behind choosing a coffee house as a
correspondence address varied, but a common thread seems to have been convenience
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and assurance of delivery, since coffee houses were well-known establishments with close
connections to the post office.
It is perhaps not surprising that much of the business correspondence that went through
London’s mercantile coffee houses had to do with the payment of bills and wages. Skilled
workers who were part of Britain’s large maritime infrastructure needed, on occasion,
to correspond with bodies such as the navy board (the body in charge of running and
supplying Britain’s naval dockyards)28 in order to settle an issue over payment. Some
of these workers chose to manage their correspondence through coffee houses, which
probably provided the most convenient and expedient way of discharging their business
with the board. Those who lived and worked outside London, or were conducting their
correspondence through a proxy, might also choose a coffee house as an address because
they were known and reliable places to send correspondence. One shipwright, Joseph
Channock, who worked in the navy yard in Port Royal, Jamaica, corresponded with
the board about his wages through an assignee, Allan Auld, who worked at the Deptford
Naval Yard. Allan Auld requested that Channock’s wages from the period of 1 January
to 30 June 1771 be paid to him at Deptford as Channock’s assignee. The sum owed to
Channock in that time would be £11 12s 8d. Auld put down his correspondence address
as ‘Sword Blade Coffee House in Birchin Lane, London’.29 The Sword Blade Coffee
house was in the middle of the mercantile coffee house area around the royal exchange.
Birchin Lane was a main connecting street between Cornhill and Lombard Street.There
is, sadly, no indication as to why Joseph Channock made Allan Auld his assignee for five
months, or why he requested that his monthly wages be paid to an assignee. However,
the letter does indicate that skilled workers across Britain’s maritime community could,
and did, use coffee houses as a place of business correspondence.
Much like skilled dockyard workers, merchants who traded with and out of specific
geographical areas of the British empire also used London coffee houses as correspondence
addresses for business. There were many coffee houses whose clientele was attached to
a specific geographic region of the British empire. These carried names such as the
Jamaica Coffee House, the Virginia and Baltic Coffee House, or the Carolina Coffee
House. While the business carried out in these regionally named coffee houses was not
exclusively conducted by merchants trading to or from those regions, these coffee houses
did essentially specialize in regional trade.30 Such natural divisions within mercantile
coffee houses further increased the efficiency of conducting and organizing maritime
trade within London, even if one was not familiar with the city. One particular merchant,
Richard Batchellor, used the Carolina Coffee House as a place of correspondence while
he conducted business with the board. The commissioners of the navy were in charge
of making sure that naval dockyards were adequately stocked with naval stores such as
28
N. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: a Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (London, 2006), pp. 189–90.
29
The National Archives of the U.K. (hereafter T.N.A.), ADM 106/1207, Letter from Allan Auld to commis-
sioners of the Navy, 8 Jan. 1772.
30
Cowan, Social Life of Coffee, pp. 169–70.
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tar, cable, spars and all the necessary materials to fit out warships. As a result, it was in
their remit to contract with merchants who were able to supply such goods.31 Batchellor
was the owner of some naval stores that had been brought into Plymouth from North
Carolina on the ship Diana.32 He offered to sell the navy 700 barrels of tar and 100
barrels of pitch. If the commissioners agreed to his price, he would have the goods
delivered to the navy yard at Plymouth. He asked that the commissioners get back to
him soon because the Diana was now waiting for orders.33
It is unclear from Batchellor’s wording whether he was the owner of the ship as well
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as the goods. All correspondence about this contract was to be directed to Batchellor
at the Carolina Coffee House in Birchin Lane, Cornhill.34 Batchellor’s request that his
correspondence with the board be directed to the Carolina Coffee House was both
typical and efficient. If he was a London- or near-London-based merchant who traded
to the Carolinas, then he would probably have gone to the Carolina Coffee House
and the exchange several times a week. The people at the board handling his proffered
contract would also have been familiar with the coffee house and, if Batchellor were not
known to them, it would have been easy to acquire information about him from trusted
associates at the Carolina Coffee House.35 Trust was a vital component of maritime trade
in the eighteenth century and the networks facilitated by coffee houses made it easier
to acquire information about a merchant’s reputation and business practices.36 Having
the coffee house as his corresponding address may well have helped lend Batchellor
legitimacy as a merchant and helped streamline his correspondence with the board,
which was clearly of importance in this time-sensitive instance.
The correspondence that filtered through coffee houses was not always confined to
matters of trade and commerce. Because of their close connection to the maritime
world, some merchants were in a position to offer useful maritime intelligence that
was potentially of great value to the British government during times of war. Without
connections at the admiralty or within government, however, there was the question of
how a merchant who was in possession of useful intelligence could make contact with
the appropriate authorities. There is, in all likelihood, no set answer to this question.
Nonetheless, a letter in Lord Shelburne’s papers under the heading of ‘Naval Intelligence’
provides a glimpse into how the task might be accomplished. Lord Shelburne was
prime minister from July 1782 to March 1783 (the tail end of the American War of
Independence), and had previously served as secretary of state for the Southern
department and as home secretary. In February of 1783 Shelburne received a letter from
Mr. Charles Osborne, who was completely unknown to him. Osborne claimed in his
letter that he had seen sheathing copper (for ships’ bottoms) smuggled from England
to Ostend (a port in the Dutch Republic) for the use of the French and Dutch navies
(at this point in the conflict Britain was at war with France, the Dutch Republic and
Spain).37 Osborne further claimed that he was ‘resolved, if possible, to trace out these
31
Hancock, Citizens of the World, pp. 41, 81–4. See also Rodger, Command of the Ocean, pp. 314–15.
32
T.N.A., ADM 106/1207, Letter from Richard Batchellor to commissioners of the Navy, 25 July 1772.
33
Ship names in this article are written as they are in the source material. This means that French, Spanish,
Portuguese and Dutch ship names may be spelled oddly and inconsistently. Foreign ship names were often mis-
spelled in British newspapers and there was little consistency.
34
T.N.A., ADM 106/1207, Letter from Richard Batchellor to commissioners of the Navy, 25 July 1772.
35
See discussion on kinetic networks and weak-tie networks in Downs, ‘Networks, trust, and risk mitigation’,
pp. 510–12. See also discussion on merchant reputations in Haggerty, ‘Merely for Money?’, pp. 100–2.
36
Haggerty, ‘Merely for Money?’, pp. 100–2.
37
Clements Library, Shelburne papers, vol. 146, Navy Intelligence, Letter from Charles Osborne to Shelburne,
5 Feb. 1783 (henceforth ‘Osborne letter’).
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 517
secret foes to their native country who could presume to assist the enemy with so
material an article’.38 Having, allegedly, achieved his goal of discovering the identity
of the smugglers, Osborne returned from Ostend in order to give his information to
the proper authorities. He wrote, ‘Ignorant of the proper department of state etiquette
might require, I have presumed to address your Lordship, on full conviction that the
public welfare is nearest your Lordship’s heart’.39 Osborne ended his letter by informing
Shelburne that he was not able to stay in London for more than a few days but that he
could be found at the Salophian Coffee House in Charing Cross and that he would ‘be
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proud’ to receive Shelburne’s commands on the matter.40
It is not clear from Osborne’s letter whether he was, in fact, a merchant, but his supposed
acquaintance with the smuggling of sheathing copper and his apparent familiarity with
Ostend suggests that he was involved in some sort of maritime trade with the Dutch
Republic. If Osborne was indeed a merchant, and not just a concerned citizen, then
his choice of coffee house is interesting, because it was further west than most of the
mercantile coffee houses of the Cornhill area. It is possible that Osborne, who does not
seem to have lived in the London area, was staying near the Salophian Coffee House and
that it was the most convenient place to have as his correspondence address. His letter
is an indication that coffee houses were used during the wars of the mid eighteenth
century as places for informants to set up correspondence addresses when attempting to
reach members of the government.
This use of a coffee house is further illustrated by an anonymous letter written to Lord
Hardwicke (former lord chancellor and politically significant ally of the government)
during the latter portion of the Seven Years’ War. The letter was cryptic and vague, but
it referred to a critical article that had appeared in the Public Ledger and was ‘levelled at
a Friend of your Lordships’.41 The author of the letter enclosed the offending article in
case Hardwicke had not read that particular edition of the paper, and offered to disclose
the name of the writer should Hardwicke like to know their identity. The author ends
their letter with the information necessary to contact them: ‘Any commands transmitted
to the Globe Coffee House on Thistle Street Hill for AB will by punctually obliged’.42
There is nothing in the Hardwicke Papers to suggest that he ever responded to this letter,
and it is unlikely that the affair went any further. The motives of A.B. are unclear, but it
is possible that they sought to give Hardwicke the information in exchange for money
or a favour. A.B. clearly valued their anonymity, and the use of a coffee house as the
correspondence address aided in preserving it.
From letters like those of Osborne and A.B., it is possible to infer that coffee houses
were used as a place of correspondence by members of the public who wished to make
contact with individuals or institutions with whom they were not socially or professionally
acquainted. Using the coffee house as an address lent some level of legitimacy (at the
very least the person had a working relationship with the proprietor of the coffee house)
to the correspondent. In some cases, the coffee house offered anonymity alongside
legitimacy, a difficult combination to achieve and possibly unique to the mid eighteenth-
century coffee house, where public and private spheres could happily coexist.
In addition to providing a correspondence address, mercantile coffee houses also
served as places to conduct private business face to face. The types of business ranged
38
Osborne letter.
39
Osborne letter.
40
Osborne letter.
41
British Library, Additional MS. 35596, fo. 206r, ‘Anonymous letter to Hardwicke, 1760’.
42
‘Anonymous letter to Hardwicke’.
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from meetings for the Society of East India Commanders, to meetings between ship
captains and those looking to secure passage on an outbound ship.43 Some coffee houses
increasingly catered to specific branches of the maritime community in the second
half of the eighteenth century. A type of specialization emerged, and coffee houses like
Lloyd’s (specializing in shipping insurance) or Garraway’s (specializing in prize and other
maritime auctions), developed into places where it was known and understood that
certain types of maritime business took place.44 This development was, by nature, self-
reinforcing. Specialization, in some instances, followed the narrative of the coffee house
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as an increasingly private space in the eighteenth century. Some mercantile coffee houses
offered meeting rooms accessible only via subscription, or offered private conference
rooms that could be rented out.45 Some coffee houses were monopolized by certain
traders, like Jonathan’s Coffee House, which was a centre of trading in stocks and
securities.46 Due to the growing disrepute of stockbrokers, a group of brokers negotiated
with Jonathan’s in 1762 for the exclusive, and paid, use of the premises in order to impose
some house rules and attempt to regulate the business practices of its members.47 This
had the obvious effect of socially stratifying some of the business that was conducted in
coffee houses, however, this did not seem to happen across the board, nor did it seem to
greatly affect the continuation of business being conducted in the most public parts of a
coffee house. Once again, the mid eighteenth-century mercantile coffee houses offered
a combination of public and private spaces in which to conduct private business.
It can be difficult to envision what the daily life or routine of a merchant who
frequented coffee houses may have looked like. Questions about how often they went,
and what they discussed with whom, are often answered only in snippets embedded
within correspondence. Luckily, some merchants also kept journals, and one in particular,
written by John Eliot III, a Quaker merchant who lived in Putney (now a part of greater
London) during the Seven Years’ War, covers the period from mid July 1758 to early
November 1758. It details his movements and summarizes his business dealings. It is
clear from Eliot’s journal that his business life revolved around frequent trips to the
royal exchange and several coffee houses in the Cornhill area. In this period, Eliot seems
to have had three main areas of business that demanded his attention: the selling and
shipping of pepper that he owned, the insurance and sailing of two ships, and the loss
of the ship Ceres. Eliot kept his pepper in the pepper cellar of the exchange, and on 27
and 29 July 1758 he went there in order to speak with merchants and brokers about the
possibility of shipping some of the pepper to Venice.48 While there, he met with a broker
or merchant named Godin and a broker named William Arnold. Both of these men
helped him resolve his commercial concerns during the period covered by the journal.
43
From 1780 the meetings of the Society of East India Commanders were held at the Jerusalem Coffee House,
which was located in the very centre of the mercantile coffee houses between Cornhill and Lombard Street
(L.M.A., CLC-104-MS31376).
44
In 1769 Lloyd’s Coffee House was split by a disagreement over the type of customers allowed to ‘do business’
on the premises. A large group of merchants and insurance underwriters took issue with the fact that some people
who called themselves brokers and merchants were, in fact, speculators and gamblers. After a dispute with Lloyd’s
over more exclusive access, the group of merchants convinced one of the waiters to start his own coffee house and
call it New Lloyd’s Coffee. In 1774 New Lloyd’s became accessible only through subscription. Wright and Fayle,
History of Lloyd’s, pp. 110–21.
45
Cowan, Social Life of Coffee, p. 80.
46
H. Bowen, ‘“The pests of human society”: stockbrokers, jobbers and speculators in mid-eighteenth-century
Britain’, History, lxxviii (1993), 38–53, at pp. 52–3.
47
White, London in the 18th Century, p. 184. See also Bowen, ‘Pests of human society’, pp. 52–3.
48
‘Journal of John Eliot III’.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 519
The exchange, which was on the north side of Cornhill and just north of the
mercantile coffee houses, was divided into walkways where different types of merchants
could be found conducting business before midday. Along with the semi-segregated
walkways, the exchange offered cellars where merchants could store their goods until
they were sold or boarded onto a ship.49 Much like coffee houses, it offered a space
where merchants could easily congregate and efficiently conduct business with one
another. After noon, when the exchange closed, many merchants shifted their activities
to the nearby coffee houses. On 29 July, Eliot had a meeting with William Arnold, and
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then went to a coffee house along with many other merchants. He next returned to the
exchange on 1 August, where he acquired a shipping note for his pepper. Eliot did not
venture to the coffee houses that day, but he did remark that he sent his friend N. Davis
to visit ‘my sundry brokers in Change Alley’.50 Exchange Alley was a zigzag passage that
connected Cornhill to Lombard Street and to Birchin Lane.The entrance into Exchange
Alley was located across the street from the exchange and it was surrounded on all sides
by mercantile coffee houses. By 3 August Eliot had found a ship, the Queen Elizabeth, to
carry his pepper to Venice, and he ordered Godin to take out a £300 insurance policy
on the Queen Elizabeth for the journey.51 It is unclear whether this policy covered only
the pepper or whether Eliot had a vested interest in the ship at large.
Eliot returned to the coffee houses on 17 August, when he met with the broker
William Arnold about the ship Ceres. Eliot had suffered a loss relating to goods aboard
the Ceres, but it is unclear whether the ship was lost or only some of the goods on board.
Arnold was clearly managing the loss, because he wanted Eliot to sign for the loss.52
The next time that Eliot returned to a coffee house was about a week later, when he
went to the exchange, and then to the Rainbow Coffee House. He found out that day
that the ship carrying his pepper to Venice, the Queen Elizabeth, was in the Downs.53
The last entry about coffee houses in his journal was on 20 November, when he noted
that he saw his Uncle How at Cole’s Coffee House.54 Eliot’s journal provides a useful
snapshot into the life of a merchant who made good use of London’s mercantile coffee
houses to conduct his private business. It would have been much more difficult for Eliot
to efficiently conduct his business affairs involving the Queen Elizabeth and Ceres from
Putney, because this was, in all likelihood, far removed from the other people involved
in the affairs. Eliot appears to have been one of the smaller merchants operating in
London, and, as a consequence, it was probably not cost-effective for him to keep private
premises closer to the mercantile heart of London. The mercantile coffee houses, along
with the exchange, provided the perfect set of spaces for Eliot, and other merchants like
him, to successfully carry out their various ventures in an ad hoc, but reliable, fashion.
There is nothing in Eliot’s journal to indicate meetings were set up in advance: ‘Went to
Change [Royal Exchange] and spoke with Arnold … Afterward N. Davis went down
with his goods to my Sundry Brokers in Change Alley [the location of many coffee
houses]’.55 The language of the journal indicates, rather, that Eliot and N. Davis went to
a coffee house or the exchange with the expectation that they would encounter people
with whom they wished to do business. The nature of Eliot’s affairs were private, and
49
White, London in the 18th Century, p. 174.
50
‘Journal of John Eliot III’.
51
‘Journal of John Eliot III’.
52
‘Journal of John Eliot III’, 18 Aug. 1758.
53
‘Journal of John Eliot III’, 25 Aug. 1758.
54
‘Journal of John Eliot III’, 20 Nov. 1758.
55
‘Journal of John Eliot III’, 29 July and 1 Aug. 1758.
Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021) © 2021 Institute of Historical Research520 London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83
his descriptions of his interactions with brokers and fellow merchants were clearly not
meant to be intruded upon by outsiders, as they concerned prices of goods, shipping
insurance money and commercial losses. Nonetheless, they were all easily conducted in
the public space of a coffee house with the expectation that it would not have an adverse
effect on the business being conducted. The ad hoc style of Eliot’s affairs was possible
only because coffee houses and the exchange were public spaces where merchants and
brokers could reliably and efficiently spend time, and where it was expected that private
business would be conducted. Ad hoc business, in other words, was a norm in mercantile
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coffee house culture.
Newspapers published during the Seven Years’ War and the American War of
Independence also provide evidence of how private business was conducted in
mercantile coffee houses. Advertisements in newspapers were used by merchants and
brokers to communicate with the wider London maritime community. The style of the
advertisements, and the information they contained, confirm that the impromptu style
of Eliot’s business affairs was widespread within the maritime merchant community in
the second half of the eighteenth century. Mercantile coffee houses often served as the
location for ship and merchandise auctions (these will be further explored in the next
section). These sales were advertised, in advance, in various newspapers that catered to
the maritime community, and which were often available at mercantile coffee houses.
The advertisements were small, and often contained a minimum amount of information,
but they also gave particulars as to how more information could be privately sought. It
is from within these details that further understanding of the role of the coffee house in
private business dealings emerges.
One of the most important pieces of information that went along with auction
advertisements in the newspapers was the name of the broker (or brokers) in charge
of the sale, and where and when it was possible to contact said brokers. Some brokers
had private premises, usually near the river, just south of the Cornhill area, and would
conduct business from both coffee houses and their private premises. Some brokers
conducted their business only in coffee houses. For instance, in the 26 July 1777 edition
of the Public Ledger, there were eleven auctions advertised to be taking place in mercantile
coffee houses.56 Six of the auctions were selling ships, or goods brought by ship. Three
auctions would take place in New Lloyd’s Coffee House, one would take place at the
Jerusalem Coffee House, one at Old Lloyd’s Coffee House, four at the New York Coffee
House and two at Garraway’s Coffee House. While all of the brokers in this particular
spread of advertisements were different, this does not seem to be indicative of anything
in particular, as sometimes advertisement spreads within a newspaper issue might all
reference the same broker or many different ones. One of the brokers whose auction
was to take place in New Lloyd’s Coffee House was Peter M’Taggart, who was managing
the sale of a British-built ship, Minerva. Basic information was given about the ship, but
further information could be sought on board the ship, at the place of sale (New Lloyd’s)
or from the broker, who could be found at the Jamaica Coffee House.57 Another broker,
Edward Cahill, was also managing an auction at New Lloyd’s Coffee House, but he was
selling a New England built brigantine named Porcupine and seven other vessels ranging
from ships to snows. Anyone wishing further particulars about this sale was to ‘apply’
to Edward Cahill at the New England Coffee House.58 The advertisements show that
56
Public Ledger, 26 July 1777.
57
Public Ledger, 26 July 1777.
58
Public Ledger, 26 July 1777.
© 2021 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 265 (August 2021)London’s ‘mercantile’ coffee houses, 1756–83 521
brokers also used a variety of mercantile coffee houses as well as offices, if they had them,
for their private business relating to the very public business of auctions, which will be
discussed in the next section.
Brokers did not enjoy a good reputation in the mid eighteenth century, particularly
those involved both in the stock market and other types of trading. They were often
viewed as untrustworthy and conniving.59 Whatever the public attitudes toward them,
brokers nonetheless served an important role in London’s maritime sphere and, as is clear
from the journal of John Eliot III, could have trusted relationships with merchants.
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The brokers who plied their trade in the mercantile coffee houses and were involved in
the maritime sector did not manage only the sale of goods and ships.They also managed
the freighting of goods and passengers, and they used the same advertising methods to
contact prospective and existing clients. In the Public Ledger of 10 January 1761, the broker
Thomas Hubbert had placed four advertisements. Hubbert was brokering the voyages
of four ships involved in the trade between Britain and Iberia. The first advertisement
announced that the ship Greyhound, of about 80 tons burden, was sailing for Madeira
on 15 January, and that anyone who wished to freight (consign goods to be carried) the
Greyhound back to London, or to another port, should see Thomas Hubbert in his office
next to the Jerusalem Coffee House in Exchange Alley. The advertisement also stated
that Hubbert had several other ships to freight and consignments of goods that needed to
be shipped.60 Hubbert was successful enough as a broker to have secured an office in the
heart of the mercantile coffee house and exchange area. This location allowed Hubbert
the advantages of an office to conduct private business and, if needed, he was within
easy distance of the exchange and the coffee houses where many of his peers and clients
would be found. Many of Hubbert’s associates, however, did not share in the benefit of
his prime real estate location, and relied on being able to conduct private business only
in the public spaces of the coffee houses and the exchange.
The second advertisement in the Public Ledger of 10 January declared that the
Portuguese brigantine St. Francisco de Paula S. Anna e Almas was leaving for Madeira in
fifteen days and was well armed and well manned. The commander, Manuel Fernandes
da Silva, could be found every morning at Sam’s Coffee House, at the exchange during
operating hours, and after noon at the Portugal Coffee House. Alternatively, people
could speak to Thomas Hubbert, who represented Commander da Silva. Da Silva made
himself an easy man to find for any merchant wishing to freight their goods on his ship.
He spent his days in the public spaces where merchants who traded with Iberia were
likely to be found, and those who did wish to ship their goods on the St. Francisco would
have made the arrangements with da Silva in private, ad hoc meetings in Sam’s Coffee
House, the exchange or the Portugal Coffee House. As Britain was at war with France at
this time, it was safer in many ways for British merchants to ship their goods in neutral
bottoms like a Portuguese brigantine. By including the comment about the ship being
‘well manned and armed’, Hubbert and da Silva were indicating that goods shipped on
the St. Francisco would be well protected in case French warships or privateers chose to
violate the neutrality of the Portuguese ship.
The third and fourth advertisements put in by Hubbert were very similar to that
regarding the St. Francisco, but the fourth also contained a small notice directed at a
specific merchant. Still on the ship were five sacks and eight barrels of merchandise
marked ‘P.H.’ that were shipped at Seville by Mr. Patrick Harper, and it was requested
59
Bowen, ‘Pests of human society’, pp. 40–1.
60
Public Ledger, 10 Jan. 1761.
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