men as they passe through their country. The Spaniards, both men and
women, that are accustomed to the country are very greedy of this
chocholate." It is not impossible that the English, with the defeat of
the Armada fresh in memory, were at first contemptuous of this "Spanish"
drink. Certain it is, that when British sea-rovers like Drake and
Frobisher, captured Spanish galleons on the high seas, and on searching
their holds for treasure, found bags of cacao, they flung them overboard
in scorn. In considering this scorn of cacao, shown alike by British
buccaneers and Dutch corsairs, together with the critical air of Joseph
Acosta, we should remember that the original chocolatl of the Mexicans
consisted of a mixture of maize and cacao with hot spices like chillies,
and contained no sugar. In this condition few inhabitants of the
temperate zone could relish it. It however only needed one thing, the
addition of sugar, and the introduction of this marked the beginning of
its European popularity. The Spaniards were the first to manufacture and
drink chocolate in any quantity. To this day they serve it in the old
style--thick as porridge and pungent with spices. They endeavoured to
keep secret the method of preparation, and, without success, to retain
the manufacture as a monopoly. Chocolate was introduced into Italy by
Carletti, who praised it and spread the method of its manufacture
abroad. The new drink was introduced by monks from Spain into Germany
and France, and when in 1660 Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain, married
Louis XIV, she made chocolate well known at the Court of France. She it
was of whom a French historian wrote that Maria Theresa had only two
passions--the king and chocolate.

Chocolate was advocated by the learned physicians of those times as a
cure for many diseases, and it was stated that Cardinal Richelieu had
been cured of general atrophy by its use.

From France the use of chocolate spread into England, where it began to
be drunk as a luxury by the aristocracy about the time of the
Commonwealth. It must have made some progress in public favour by 1673,
for in that year "a Lover of his Country" wrote in the _Harleian
Miscellany_ demanding its prohibition (along with brandy, rum, and tea)
on the ground that this imported article did no good and hindered the
consumption of English-grown barley and wheat. New things appeal to the
imaginative, and the absence of authentic knowledge concerning them
allows free play to the imagination--so it happened that in the early
days, whilst many writers vied with one another in writing glowing
panegyrics on cacao, a few thought it an evil thing. Thus, whilst it was
praised by many for its "wonderful faculty of quenching thirst,
allaying hectic heats, of nourishing and fattening the body," it was
seriously condemned by others as an inflamer of the passions!



_Chocolate Houses and Clubs._

    "The drinking here of chocolate
    Can make a fool a sophie."

In the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, tea, coffee, and chocolate were
unknown save to travellers and savants, and the handmaidens of the good
queen drank beer with their breakfast. When Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
forgathered at the Mermaid Tavern, their winged words passed over
tankards of ale, but later other drinks became the usual accompaniment
of news, story, and discussion. In the sixteen-sixties there were no
strident newspapers to destroy one's equanimity, and the gossip of the
day began to be circulated and discussed over cups of tea, coffee, or
chocolate. The humorists, ever stirred by novelty, tilted, pen in hand,
at these new drinks: thus one rhymster described coffee as

     "Syrrop of soot or essence of old shoes."

The first coffee-house in London was started in St. Michael's Alley,
Cornhill, in 1652 (when coffee was seven shillings a pound); the first
tea-house was opened in Exchange Alley in 1657 (when tea was five
sovereigns a pound), and in the same year (with chocolate about ten to
fifteen shillings per pound) a Frenchman opened the first
chocolate-house in Queen's Head Alley, Bishopsgate Street. The rising
popularity of chocolate led to the starting of more of these chocolate
houses, at which one could sit and sip chocolate, or purchase the
commodity for preparation at home. Pepys' entry in his diary for 24th
November, 1664, contains: "To a coffee house to drink jocolatte, very
good." It is an artless entry, and yet one can almost hear him smacking
his lips. Silbermann says that "After the Restoration there were shops
in London for the sale of chocolate at ten shillings or fifteen
shillings per pound. Ozinda's chocolate house was full of aristocratic
consumers. Comedies, satirical essays, memoirs and private letters of
that age frequently mention it. The habit of using chocolate was deemed
a token of elegant and fashionable taste, and while the charms of this
beverage in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. were so highly
esteemed by courtiers, by lords and ladies and fine gentlemen in the
polite world, the learned physicians extolled its medicinal virtues."
From the coffee house and its more aristocratic relative the chocolate
house, there developed a new feature in English social life--the Club.
As the years passed the Chocolate House remained a rendezvous, but the
character of its habitues changed from time to time. Thus one, famous in
the days of Queen Anne, and well known by its sign of the "Cocoa Tree,"
was at first the headquarters of the Jacobite party, and the resort of
Tories of the strictest school. It became later a noted gambling house
("The gamesters shook their elbows in White's and the chocolate houses
round Covent Garden," _National Review_, 1878), and ultimately developed
into a literary club, including amongst its members Gibbon, the
historian, and Byron, the poet.



_Tax on Cacao._