The Social History of Smoking

D ROUNDHEAD

s to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrib

th century smoking maintained its hold upon all classes of society, but in the later decades there are distinct signs that the habit was becoming less universal; and it seems pretty clear that

e been numerous. A considerable number of pipes of the Caroline period, with the usual small elongated bowls, were found in 1902 at Chichester

read that when the sentence of the Court presided over by Bradshaw, condemning the King "to death by severing his Head from his Body," had been read, the soldiers treated the fallen monarch with great indignity and barbarity

his soldiery. Evelyn, describing Cromwell's "superb funeral," says that the soldie

, of Newcastle, with his brother Charles Cavendish, drove in a coach and six to the field of Marston Moor on the afternoon before the battle. His Grace was in a very bad humour. "He applied to Rupert," says Markham, "for orders as to the disposal of his own most noble person, and was told that there would be no battle that night, and that he had better get into his coach and

o be found in a paper of notes by Clarendon on the affairs of the North, preserved among his MSS. In this paper Clarendon writes: "The marq. asked the prince what he would do? His highness answered, 'Wee will charge them to-morrow morninge.' My lord asked him whe

a pipe. Before he had time to take a whiff, the battle had begun." The incident was made the subject of a picture by Ernest Crofts, A.R

stone, who has calendared this document, says that the King therein proceeds, in order to prevent such injurious results of the use of tobacco, to appoint Sir James Leslie and Thomas Dalmahoy to enjoy for seven years the sole power of appointing licensed vendors of the commodity. These vendors, after due examination as to their fitness, were to be permitted, on payment of certain compositions and an annual rent in augmentation of the King's revenue, to sell tobacco in small quantities. The letter further directs that the licensees so appointed shall become bound to

k, from this document, and that is that smoking wa

ister of the parish of Eastwood, near Glasgow, the Rev. William Hamilton. They cover two months only and show that the mini

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ilton Chapman for

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eap, the occasional expenditure upon tobacco of a worthy citizen of Exeter some few years earlier. Extracts from the "Financial Diary" of this good man, whose name was John Hayne, and who was

anish"; the other was imported from English colonies-chiefly from Virginia. The "Varinaes" kind, Dr. Brushfield suggests, was obtained from Varina, near the foot of the range of mountains forming the west boundary of Venezuela, and watered by a branch of the Orinoco River. Hayne also notes the purchase of "Tertudoes" tobacco, but what that may ha

o a licensed importer "of the late imposition of 2s. per lb. on tobacco"-which shows that there must have been considerable fluctuation between 1604 and 1615-while in September 1621 the duty stood at 9d. Through James's reign much dissatisfaction was expressed about the importation of Spanish tobacco, and the outcome of this may probably be seen i

spring to his "Tobacka tonges." These were the tongs used for lifting a live coal to light the pipe, to which I hav

the sale of the weed. Hayne bought his supplies from four of the leading goldsmiths of the city, who can be identified by the fact that he had dealings with th

ount of how the blind poet passed his days, after his retirement from public office, was first told by his contemporary Richardson, and has since been repeated by all his biographers. His placid day ended early. The poet took his frugal supper at eight o'clock, and at nin

the subject. The explanation doubtless is that the practice of smoking was so very general and so much a matter of course among men of all ranks and of all opinions, that the mouths of Puritans were closed, so to speak, by their own pipes. A precisian, however, could take his tobacco with a difference. The seventeenth-century diarist, Abraham de

be "usefull for him, and allso that he hath received a lycense from the Courte for the same." But the unhappy smoker having passed the doctor and obtained his licence was still harassed by restrictions, for it was ordered that no man within the colony, after the publication of the order, should take any tobacco publicly "in the streett, highwayes, or any barn-yardes, or uppo

cked backsliders existed, poor slaves of habit, who were in Duxbury fixed 10s. for each offence, and in Portsmouth, not only were fined, but to their shame be it told, set as jail-birds in the Portsmouth cage. In Sandwich and in Boston the fine for 'drinking tobacco in the meeting-house' was 5s. for each drink, which I take to mean chewing tobacco rather than smoking it; many men were fined for thus drinking, and solacing

cco and pipes. One parson, the Rev. Mr. Bradstreet, of the First Church of Charlestown, was very unconventional in his attire. He seldom wore a coat, "but generally appeared in a plaid gown, and was always seen with a pipe in his mouth." John Eliot, the noble

presume to smoke tobacco in the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In "Mercurius P

and protested against this note-taking, but Burton quietly went on using his pencil, and though his summaries of speeches are often difficult to follow, argument and sense suffering by compression, he has preserved much very valuable matter. Referring to a debate on January 7, 1656-57, on an attempt to go behind the previously passed Act of Oblivion, the diarist records that "Sir John Reynolds had numbered the House, and said at risin

ed as "A.J. Bod (den's) ... best Virginnea." In a letter to his daughter Elizabeth, dated 21 January 1705, there is a reference to this same dealer, whom he describes as "Adam Bodden, Bacconist in George Y