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Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914

Tobacco-selling was sometimes curiously combined with other trades. A Fleet Street tobacconist of this time was also a dealer in worsted stockings. A mercer of Mansfield who died at the beginning of 1624, and who apparently carried on business also at Southwell, had a considerable stock of tobacco. In the Inventory of all his "cattalles and goods" which is dated 24 January 1624, there is included "It. in Tobacco 19.li 0. 0." Nineteen pounds' worth of tobacco, considering the then value of money, was no small stock for a mercer-tobacconist to carry.

But the apothecaries were the most usual salesmen, and their shops and the ordinaries were the customary day meeting-places for the more fashionable smokers. The taverns and inns, however, were also filled with smoke, and taverns were frequented by men of all social grades. Dekker speaks of the gallant leaving the tavern at night when "the spirit of wine and tobacco walkes" in his train. On the occasion of the accession of James I, 1603, when London was given up to rejoicing and revelry, we are told that "tobacconists [i.e. smokers] filled up whole Tavernes."

King James himself is an unwilling witness to the popularity of tobacco. He tells us that a man could not heartily welcome his friend without at once proposing a smoke. It had become, he says, a point of good-fellowship, and he that would refuse to take a pipe among his fellows was accounted "peevish and no good company." "Yea," he continues, with rising indignation, "the mistress cannot in a more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair hand a pipe of tobacco."

Smoking was soon as common in the country as in London. On Wednesday, April 16, 1621, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons, Sir William Stroud, who seems to have been a worthy disciple of that tobacco-hater, King James I, moved that he "would have tobacco banished wholly out of the kingdom, and that it may not be brought in from any part, nor used amongst us"; and Sir Grey Palmes said "that if tobacco be not banished, it will overthrow 100,000 men in England, for now it is so common that he hath seen ploughmen take it as they are at plough." Perhaps this terrible picture of a ploughman smoking as he followed his lonely furrow did not impress the House so much as Sir Grey evidently thought it would; at all events, tobacco was not banished.

Peers and squires and parsons and peasants alike smoked. The parson of Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, was so devoted to tobacco that when his supply of the weed ran short, he is said to have cut up the bell-ropes and smoked them! This is dated about 1630. In the well-known description of the famous country squire, Mr. Hastings, who was remarkable for keeping up old customs in the early years of the seventeenth century, we read of how his hall tables were littered with hawks' hoods, bells, old hats with their crowns thrust in, full of pheasants' eggs; tables, dice, cards, and store of tobacco-pipes.

Sir Francis Vere, in the account of his services by sea and land which he wrote about 1606, mentions that on an expedition to the Azores in 1597, the Earl of Essex, waiting for news of the enemy at St. Michael, "called for tobacco ... and so on horseback, with those Noblemen and Gentlemen on foot beside him, took tobacco, whilst I was telling his Lordship of the men I had sent forth, and orders I had given." Presently came the sound of guns, which "made his Lordship cast his pipe from him, and listen to the shooting."

Another famous nobleman, Lord Herbert of Cherbury—

was a smoker, as we know from a very curious passage in his well-known autobiography. He appears to have smoked not so much for pleasure as for supposed reasons of health. "It is well known," he wrote, "to those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily be believed, or hath been observed in any else, which sweetness also was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take tobacco, which towards my latter time I was forced to take against certain rheums and catarrhs that trouble me, which yet did not taint my breath for any long time." The autobiography was written about 1645, so as Lord Herbert did not smoke till towards the latter part of his life—he died in 1648—he clearly was not one of those who took to tobacco in the first enthusiasm for the new indulgence.

When Robert, Earl of Essex, and Henry, Earl of Southampton, were tried for high treason in Westminster Hall on February 19, 1600-1, the members of the House of Lords, who with the Judges formed the Court, if we may believe the French Ambassador of the time, behaved in a remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and "yvres de tabac"—drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly have been written had smoking not been a common practice among noble lords.

Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, would appear to have been a smoker. In a letter addressed to him, John Watts, an alderman of London, wrote: "According to your request, I have sent the greatest part of my store of tobaca by the bearer, wishing that the same may be to your good liking. But this tobaca I have had this six months, which was such as my son brought home, but since that time I have had none. At this period there is none that is good to be had for money. Wishing you to make store thereof, for I do not know where to have the like, I have sent you of two sorts. Mincing Lane, 12 Dec. 1600."

A curious scene took place at Oxford in 1605 when King James visited the University. Two subjects were debated by learned dons before his Majesty, and one of them, at his own suggestion, was, "Whether the frequent use of tobacco is good for healthy men?" Among those who spoke were Doctors Ailworth, Gwyn, Gifford and Cheynell. The discussion, needless to say, being conducted in the presence of the author of the "Counterblaste to Tobacco," was not favourable to the herb. The King summed up in a speech which hopelessly begged the question while it contained plenty of strong denunciation. After his Majesty had spoken, one learned doctor, Cheynell, who is described by the recorder, Isaac Wake, the Public Orator of the University, as second to none of the doctors, had the courage to rise and, with a pipe held forth in his hand, to speak both wittily and eloquently in favour of tobacco from the medicinal point of view, praising it to the skies, says Wake, as of virtue beyond all other remedial agents. His wit pleased both the King and the whole assembly, whom it moved to laughter; but when he had finished, his Majesty made a lengthy rejoinder in which he said some curious things. He objected to the medicinal use of tobacco, and quite agreed with previous speakers that such a use must have arisen among Barbarians and Indians, who he went on to say had as much knowledge of medicine as they had of civilized customs. If, he argued, there were men whose bodies were benefited by tobacco-smoke, this did not so much redound to the credit of tobacco, as it did reflect upon the depraved condition of such men, that their bodies should have sunk to the level of those of Barbarians so as to be affected by remedies such as were effective on the bodies of Barbarians and Indians! His Majesty kindly suggested that doctors who believed in tobacco as a remedial agent should take themselves and their medicine of pollution off to join the Indians.