The "Kingdom of Great Britain" is a proper name for the new entity forged by Scotland, Wales, and England through the Act of Union: we are almost a century away from the establishment of the United Kingdom, and the British society is far from united at this stage. The Scots are very detached to the rest of the Kingdom, reaping the benefits of their citizenship, but hardly contributing to the well being of the Union. Wealth Inequality is ubiquitous in England and Wales, causing a marked difference between the lives of the nobility and the vast majority of the population. Even though Great Britain not yet a socially and culturally homogeneous kingdom, a developing aura of nationalism and patriotism is now starting to unify Britain as a nation. Protestantism first consolidates the newborn society from many different roots. Victories in battles and wars, along with the dominance of the British Empire in the world, fortify such bonds and improve the quality of life in the entire country. From the transcripts of the Old Bailey trials, we learn that these feelings aren't abstract ideals mentioned by history books, but tangible beliefs that recur in the lives of all individuals.
The common denominator of these three accounts is tea. Tea is omnipresent in the lives of the Britons: it serves the social function of bringing together comrades as well as people from different classes and genders, as we gain from the second and third accounts. Despite its universality, tea still preserves its upper class feel, as one can infer from the silver teapot stolen in the first essay. It is crucial to recognize that tea was first introduced the public in England in a relatively recent period, the early 1600s. : it only took the East Indian Company a few decades to takeover the monopoly of the good1.
