Polite conversation led to reasoned debate on politics, science, literature, poetry, commerce, and religion, earning London coffeehouses the nickname ‘penny universities,‘ as that was the price of a cup of coffee. Influential patrons included Samuel Pepys, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Isaac Newton. Several great British institutions can trace their roots back to these humble coffeehouses.

The London Stock Exchange had its beginnings in Jonathan’s Coffee House in 1698 where gentlemen met to set stock and commodity prices.

Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffee houses were the beginnings of the great auction houses of Sotheby’s and Christies.

Lloyd’s of London had its origins in Lloyds Coffee House on Lombard Street, run by Edward Lloyd, where merchants, shippers and underwriters of ship insurance met to do business.

In 1726 Voltaire went to England to live in exile. Here, Voltaire found the coffee spaces that the British contemporaries honored as “Penny University”. He met and became friends with British intellectuals such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Edward Young. During the debates, he approached the ideas of the enlightened founders Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke, William Shakespeare.