among the Ten Commandments, a policy which was renewed in 1675 when a Court called "La Chambre de Tabac" was instituted.

In Germany, a decree, issued by the Town Council of Bautzen, 1651, indicates clearly the disgust with which the spread of tobacco was still regarded by many.

The Greek Church in 1634 followed the example of the Church of Rome and forbade her adherents to take tobacco in any shape or form. This action was supported by the Russian State, and Tsar Michael decreed that for the first breach smokers should be whipped, and for the second executed, while snuff-takers were to have their noses amputated.

Those in authority in the Orient, both lay and ecclesiastical, were as determined as Western potentates to suppress the new custom, since in Turkey, Persia and India, the death penalty was inflicted on tobacco takers."

Japanese penalties were less severe, but equally unavailing.'

In a letter written in 1614 from Osaka by William Eaton to Richard Wickam at Yeddo it is stated that "at Yeddo at least 150 persons have been appre

1 Penn, The Sovrane Herbe.

2 Natural History of Tobacco: Harleian-Miscellany, ut sup. 3 Handbuch der Tabakskunde, pp. 1-6.

4 Cal. of State Papers: Colonial, E. Indies, 1614, March.

hended for buying and selling tobacco, contrary to the Emperor's command, and are in jeopardy of their lives"; also he states that great stores of tobacco have been burnt.

All these prohibitions, both in Europe and in Asia, failed to achieve their object, and by the end of the seventeenth century, as was the case with the Papal Bull, they had been formally repealed, or were ignored. Tobacco had won its place in the trade and estimation of all civilized countries, and had already become almost a necessity of life in many parts of the world. It had spread not only throughout the civilized world, but had preceded civilized Iman into darkest Africa and the remote islands of the Far East.

CHAPTER II

THE INTRODUCTION OF TOBACCO INTO ENGLAND

TOBACCO did not arrive in England until some years after its first appearance on the Continent. Though there are various traditions of its introduction it is impossible to give any precise date, for doubtless, as in the case of other countries, it was first observed and introduced by English sailors during the second half of the sixteenth century. There is a tradition that one of the Marian martyrs smoked on the way to execution, but it is impossible to verify this. Some small quantities of tobacco probably reached England during the reign of Queen Mary as a result of the close connection which at that time existed between England and Spain.

With the reign of Queen Elizabeth we are on surer ground, for there are several unmistakable accounts of tobacco given by different English explorers. The earliest English description at first hand appears in the story of Hawkins' second voyage in 1565.1 "The Floridians when they travel have a kinde of 1 Hakluyt's Voyages, Vol. X, p. 57.

herb dried, who with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with a fire and the dried herbe put together, do suck through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live ✓four or five days without meat or drinke, and this

also the Frenchmen used for this purpose, yet do they hold opinion withal that it causeth water and fleame to void from their stomakes." Three years later, as has already been shown, Thevet's work was published and translated anonymously and, as the above-quoted description was not published till many years after, Thevet's translated work must have the credit of being the first description of tobacco to be printed in English.

From then on, the knowledge and use of tobacco spread rapidly in England. Lobelius,' afterwards botanist to James I., states that attempts were being made to plant tobacco in England in 1571, and two years later, the custom of smoking was beginning to attract notice. In these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe, called 'Tabaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlie taken up and used in England against Rewmes and some other diseases ingendred in the longes and inward partes and not without effect."

1 Lobelius, Plantarum seu stirpium Historia (Antwerp), 1570. 2 Harrison's Chronologie, 1573 ed., 1877.

Drake and his men, in 1579, were presented with tobacco by the natives on the West Coast of North America, under the belief that they were gods.1

Hakluyt wrote in 1582: "The seed of Tabacco hath bene brought hither out of the West Indies, it groweth heere, and with the herbe many have been eased of the rheumes, etc."2

During the next decade and a half tobacco became a comparatively common commodity, for travellers and explorers of the last years of the sixteenth century frequently refer to it, but give no description either of its properties or manner of use, for its novelty had by then disappeared.

In the last voyage of Drake and Hawkins there is given an account of the tobacco trade between the Europeans and the natives of the West Indies3: "In it (Dominica) groweth great store of tobacco, where most of the Englishmen and Frenchmen barter knives, hatchets, saws and suchlike yron tooles in truck of tobacco," and before the end of the century the demand for tobacco had grown to such an extent that English sailors' were beginning to regard West Indian Islands as valuable or otherwise according to the amount of tobacco they produced.

No account of the introduction of tobacco into

1 Hakluyt's Voyages, Vol. IX, p. 119.

"

2 Ibid., Vol. V, p. 242: Remembrances for Masters," etc. 3 Ibid., Vol. X, p. 228.

4 Ibid., Vol. X, p. 478.