The young Double had enjoyed few advantages: “I was first bound to a Shoemaker in London, and being an impudent young Rogue, I got into the Gang of Loyal Apprentices that Address’d to King Charles II and I was one of those who were Treated with Hide-Park Venison at the x Tavern.” Encouraged in this way Double had commenced life as a Tory, and had got a place in the Customs: “But in King James’s time, the Commissioners of the Customs detected me in a notorious Fraud, and turn’d me out, upon which I became a Male-Content.” It may be that some of Davenant’s own experience as a Commissioner of Excise in James’s reign lies behind this circumstance of Double’s early career.

After various scrapes and misadventures, the great crisis of Double’s early life happens in November 1688, “just the Week after the King landed at Torbay”:

I had eat nothing all day, and had not a Farthing in my Pocket, but knew an Ale-house where I could have Credit for a black Pudding and a Pot of Ale; thither I stole about six at Night, and found sitting at the Kitchin-Fire, smoaking his Pipe, an Essex Gentleman, who . . . had been drinking the Prince of Orange’s Health.

This is the significantly-named Mr Aletope, whom Double then proceeds to get drunk on the unfamiliar drink of wine and cheat at backgammon by means of loaded dice. Double wins 200 pounds, which the honest Aletope pays at once “from his scrutore”, and this is the seed from which Double grows his monstrous fortune:

And now I am at my Ease, I have my Country-House, where I keep my Whore as fine as an Empress: You know how I am lodg’d in Town, where I am serv’d all in Plate. I have my French Cook, and Wax-Candles; no Butchers Meat comes upon my Table; I drink nothing but Hermitage, Champagne, and Burgundy: Cahors Wine has hardly admittance to my side-board; my very Footmen scorn French Claret.

The implicit rankings of French wine in this passage are interesting. Hermitage has precedence. It is still, of course, one of the most notable wines of France, particularly in vintages such as 1978 or 1990; but even the most committed advocates of the Northern Rhone would hesitate to place it first. Champagne and Burgundy — no surprises there. But Cahors? Now, if drunk at all, then experimented with largely on the strength of the myth of the “black” wine said to have been made there in the distant past. Today’s Cahors shows little affinity with the heroic wines attributed to the region. But clearly Tom Double will tolerate it on occasion. Most striking of all perhaps is the contempt for claret, the finest examples of which are now by far the most expensive French wines, thanks to the Chinese and their unreasoning veneration of Chateau Lafite.

So what did Blair and Brown drink at the infamous Granita dinner? I think we should be told.