 In the 1690s, the Grecian Coffee House was the favoured meeting place of the opposition Whigs, a group that included John Trenchard, Andrew Fletcher and Matthew Tindal.In the early years of the eighteenth century, it was frequented by members of the Royal Society, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, Edmund Halley and James Douglas, and the poet and statesman, Joseph Addison.Classical scholars were also said to congregate there and on one occasion two of them fought a duel in the street outside because they fell out over where to position the accent on an Ancient Greek word.