The Rainbow Coffee House was a famous coffee house located at 15 Fleet Street, London.[1] It was opened by James Farr in 1657, becoming London’s second coffee house.[2]
The Rainbow provided a meeting place for freemasons and French refugee Huguenots who established an information centre there.[3] The Rainbow was also featured in the furore created by Titus Oates, who accused Sir Philip Lloyd of denying the existence of a Popish Plot there, finding witnesses from amongst the coffee drinkers to testify against him[4]
In 1719 John Woodward wrote a satire The Two Sosias: Or, the True Dr. Byfield at the Rainbow Coffee-House, to the Pretender in Jermyn-Street
David Hughson wrote in 1807 that the Rainbow was replaced by Nando’s Coffee House in the same building, later in the 17th century.
References:
1. Norman, Philip (1905). London Vanished & Vanishing. Macmillan.
2. J J O’Connor; & Robertson; E F. “London Coffee houses and mathematics”. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
3. Koselleck, Reinhart (1988). Critique and Crisis. Oxford: Berg. p. 64. ISBN 085496 535 1.
4. Shelley, Henry C. “Coffee-houses of old London”. Retrieved August 15, 2012.