More Tea Vicar

One wet and cold afternoon, while I was waiting for my next batch of work to come in (I’m a home typist Home Working: The Virtual Life), I made myself a lovely strong, steamy cup of tea, settled back down in front of my computer and, with dunky biscuit in hand, decided to do a bit of delving into the history of my favourite afternoon brew.

According to legend, tea was discovered in China around 2740 BC. The evidence is a bit wishy-washy as to how it all came about but the general consensus of opinion would seem to indicate that a Chinese emperor was sitting under a tree when some leaves from the tree fell into a pot of water he was boiling. He found that the resulting drink cleared his mind and left him with such a feeling of calm that he named it “Tai” meaning “peace” in Chinese. By 600-900 AD tea had become the national drink of China and, during the 8th century a Chinese writer produced a book entirely about tea (called Ch’a Ching – Tea Classic). Shortly after that, Japanese Buddhist monks who’d travelled to China to study, returned to their native country, carrying with them a supply of tea.

From Japan, tea was traded along the Persian caravan routes. The first evidence of tea drinking in Europe doesn’t come until the 16th century when mention is made that Portuguese missionaries and traders working in the East drank it, but it was the Dutch it seems who had the foresight to import it commercially from the late 16th century. In the early part of the 17th century they had set up a trading post on Java and via Java, the first consignment was shipped from China to Holland.

However, the ever cautious Brits were a little less keen to give it a whirl. At the turn of the 17th century, the British East India Company had a monopoly on imported goods outside Europe and it seems more than likely that the initial introduction of tea to England was made by the East India sailors who brought in small amounts. The first evidence that we have of tea becoming popular was an advert in a London newspaper – Mercurius Politicus – from September 1658 which announced that “Tcha” (sometimes called “Tay”) was on sale at a coffee house in “Sweetings Rents” in London which indicated that coffee was introduced to England prior to tea.