Exchange Alley

Yes, that's very true.

The official centre of commerce was the Royal Exchange, but around it, really interestingly, developed a whole sort of set of ancillary commercial enterprises, focused especially on coffeehouses in and around the Exchange, in a place which was called Exchange Alley across the street, across Corn Hill.

There have been coffee houses there for 30 or 40 years, but some of them developed particular focuses on commercial activities.

Jonathan's Coffee House was founded in the 1680s, and by the late 1690s had become a place particularly associated with off-exchange dealing in stocks and shares, partly because John Castang, a Huguenot merchant, had started posting the prices of stocks and commodities on a list he called the course of the exchange.

You could see what the prices were.

Of course, it was always slightly out of date.

But Jonathan's and Garraway's, to an extent, and Exchange Alley became completely crowded with dealers in stocks and bonds and lottery tickets, which was a slightly unlike their title, suggests really a kind of financial instrument, as well as the sale of wholesale commodities.

So the market was made by stockbrokers who did completed deals between buyers and sellers of shares in companies and other financial instruments who were dealing with one real person who wanted to buy with another person, but also stockjobbers who became kind of notorious.

But just imagine the fine lady of today with a large tankard of Burton ale facing her at the breakfast table.

Tea, which is said to have been introduced into China by Diarma, a native of India about A.D. 500, was not familiar in Europe until the end of the 16th century, and it was not until 1657 when Garraway opened a tea house in Exchange Alley that Londoners began tea drinking as an experiment.

In 1662, Pepys writes, Home, and there find my wife making of tea.

Two years before, he called it tea, a China drink, a drink which Mr. Pelling the apothecary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.