INNS AND TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON


SETTING FORTH THE HISTORICAL AND LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF THOSE
ANCIENT HOSTELRIES, TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MOST NOTABLE
COFFEE-HOUSES, CLUBS, AND PLEASURE GARDENS OF THE BRITISH METROPOLIS

BY

HENRY C. SHELLEY

Author of "Untrodden English Ways," etc.

1909



PREFACE

For all races of Teutonic origin the claim is made that they are
essentially home-loving people. Yet the Englishman of the sixteenth
and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially of the latter,
is seen to have exercised considerable zeal in creating substitutes
for that home which, as a Teuton, he ought to have loved above all
else. This, at any rate, was emphatically the case with the
Londoner, as the following pages will testify. When he had perfected
his taverns and inns, perfected them, that is, according to the
light of the olden time, he set to work evolving a new species of
public resort in the coffee-house. That type of establishment
appears to have been responsible for the development of the club,