It was a long time before recognition was obtained for the truth about the "novelty drink"; especially that, if there were any beyond purely social virtues to be found in coffee, they were "political rather than medical."
Dr. James Duncan, of the Faculty of Montpellier, in his book _Wholesome Advice against the Abuse of Hot Liquors_, done into English in 1706, found coffee no more deserving of the name of panacea than that of poison.
George Cheyne (1671-1743), the noted British physician, proclaimed his neutrality in the words, "I have neither great praise nor bitter blame for the thing."
Coffee, with tea and chocolate, was first mentioned in the English Statute books in 1660, when a duty of four pence was laid upon every gallon made and sold, "to be paid by the maker." Coffee was classed by the House of Commons with "other outlandish drinks."
It is recorded in 1662 that "the right coffee powder" was being sold at the Turk's Head coffee house in Exchange Alley for "4s. to 6s. 8d. per pound; that pounded in a mortar, 2s; East India berry, 1s. 6d.; and the right Turkie berry, well garbled [ground] at 3s. The ungarbled [in the bean] for less with directions how to use the same." Chocolate was also to be had at "2s. 6d. the pound; the perfumed from 4s. to 10s."
At one time coffee sold for five guineas a pound in England, and even forty crowns (about forty-eight dollars) a pound was paid for it.
In 1663, all English coffee houses were required to be licensed; the fee was twelve pence. Failure to obtain a license was punished by a fine of five pounds for every month's violation of the law. The coffee houses were under close surveillance by government officials. One of these was Muddiman, a good scholar and an "arch rogue", who had formerly "written for the Parliament" but who later became a paid spy. L'Estrange, who had a patent on "the sole right of intelligence", wrote in his _Intelligencer_ that he was alarmed at the ill effects of "the ordinary written papers of Parliament's news ... making coffee houses and all the popular clubs judges of those councils and deliberations which they have nothing to do with at all."
The first royal warrant for coffee was given by Charles II to Alexander Man, a Scotsman who had followed General Monk to London, and set up in Whitehall. Here he advertised himself as "coffee man to Charles II."