Tea: the Start of a Legend part 6

She gave this business incredible power, they were able to declare war and make peace; to create laws and repeal them amongst many other rights. This company was like a travelling parliament and boosted the English treasury by colonizing and opening up its own trade routes. The considerable British Navy protected them wherever they sailed. Tea prices were longer monopolized by the Dutch East India Trading Company; instead the British Crown maintained high prices and just monopolized the tea business themselves. This would later cause issues about taxation in the Americas and caused a well-known politically catastrophic event, the well known "Boston Tea Party".

King Charles II of England had been exiled during the Cromwellian civil war, which took place between 1642 and 1651, and fled to Europe to live in The Hague, then later in Portugal. There he married the Portuguese infanta, Catherine De Braganza in 1662. This experience of high society in Holland meant that he became accustomed to tea drinking activities and his new bride being from the nation who first brought tea to Europe through the oriental trade routes that Portugal had developed, was also from a tea drinking background. In addition this marriage brought a dowry to Charles which included Bombay, soon to become very important location for the tea trade and British colonization.
When the English civil war ended and after Cromwell had died a few years later, a leaderless nation turned back to their monarchy and invited Charles II to return as reigning monarch of England and Scotland. His return brought with it the now commonplace practice of taking tea. In fact tea drinking overtook ale drinking in popularity.

By the time the Queen Anne took to the throne in the early eighteenth century, tea drinking had begun to thrive in what were originally primarily coffee houses. Not only was tea consumption very popular in Europe and Britain, popularity in the American colonies had risen and to keep up with demand the British East India Trading Company (which had formed from the John Company) was now importing large amounts of tea from the Far East. Russia, in the meantime, developed its own tea trade through agreements made with China. This put further pressure on the global price. Russia employed a 300 strong camel train to bring tea from China on an 11,000 mile round trip which would have taken months.