A SKETCH OF THEIR HISTORY 13 



" After the Restoration there were shops in London 

 for the sale of chocolate at ten shillings or fifteen shill- 

 ings 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 aristo- 

 cratic relative the chocolate house, there developed a 

 new feature in English social life the Club. As the 

 years passed the Chocolate House remained a rendez- 

 vous, 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 ulti- 

 mately developed into a literary club, including amongst 

 its members Gibbon, the historian, and Byron, the 

 poet. 



Tax on Cacao. 



The growing consumption of chocolate did not 

 escape the all-seeing eye of the Chancellors of England. 

 As early as 1660 we find amongst various custom and 

 excise duties granted to Charles II : 



" For every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea 

 made and sold, to be paid by the maker thereof 



8d." 



Later the raw material was also made a source of 

 revenue. In The Humble Memorial of Joseph Fry, of 

 Bristol, Maker of Chocolate, which was addressed to 

 the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in 1776 



