were", says Robinson, "generally meeting places of those who were
conservative in their views regarding church and state, being friends of
the ruling administration. Such persons were terms 'Courtiers' by their
adversaries, the Dissenters and Republicans."

Most of the coffee houses were established in Boston, the metropolis of
the Massachusetts Colony, and the social center of New England. While
Plymouth, Salem, Chelsea, and Providence had taverns that served coffee,
they did not achieve the name and fame of some of the more celebrated
coffee houses in Boston.

It is not definitely known when the first coffee was brought in; but it
is reasonable to suppose that it came as part of the household supplies
of some settler (probably between 1660 and 1670), who had become
acquainted with it before leaving England. Or it may have been
introduced by some British officer, who in London had made the rounds of
the more celebrated coffee houses of the latter half of the seventeenth
century.

_The First Coffee License_

According to early town records of Boston, Dorothy Jones was the first
to be licensed to sell "coffee and cuchaletto," the latter being the
seventeenth-century spelling for chocolate or cocoa. This license is
dated 1670, and is said to be the first written reference to coffee in
the Massachusetts Colony. It is not stated whether Dorothy Jones was a
vender of the coffee drink or of "coffee powder," as ground coffee was
known in the early days.

[Illustration: THE MAYFLOWER "COFFEE GRINDER"

Mortar and pestle for "braying" coffee to make coffee powder, brought
over in the Mayflower by the parents of Peregrine White]

There is some question as to whether Dorothy Jones was the first to sell
coffee as a beverage in Boston. Londoners had known and drunk coffee for
eighteen years before Dorothy Jones got her coffee license. British
government officials were frequently taking ship from London to the
Massachusetts Colony, and it is likely that they brought tidings and
samples of the coffee the English gentry had lately taken up. No doubt
they also told about the new-style coffee houses that were becoming
popular in all parts of London. And it may be assumed that their tales
caused the landlords of the inns and taverns of colonial Boston to add
coffee to their lists of beverages.

_New England's First Coffee House_

The name coffee house did not come into use in New England until late in
the seventeenth centur