{156} Coffeehouse Threats

Dec 20

“The conversations in London’s coffeehouses frequently turned to politics, in vigorous exercises of free speech that drew the ire of the government, especially after the monarchy was restored in 1660.

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“Charles II, worried that plots were being hatched in coffeehouses, decided that the places were dangerous fomenters of rebellion that the Crown needed to suppress. In 1675 the king moved to close down the coffeehouses, on the grounds that the ‘false, malicious and scandalous Reports’ emanating therefrom were a ‘Disturbance of the
Quiet and Peace of the Realm.’

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“Like so many other compounds that change the qualities of consciousness in individuals, caffeine was regarded as a threat to institutional power, which moved to suppress it, in a foreshadowing of the wars against drugs to come.” — Michael Pollan; This Is Your Mind on Plants, p. 110