Everard’s _Panacea_ (Antwerp, 1587), it is remarked that ‘Captain Richard Grenfield and Sir Francis Drake were the first planters of it here (England), and not Sir Walter Raleigh, which is the common error; so difficult is it to fix popular discoveries.’ These few selections show us how easily origins are lost sight of. It seems ungracious to pluck a plume from one so eminently distinguished for important services rendered to his Queen and country as Sir Walter Raleigh; yet nothing in history is more certain than that the common belief crediting him with the first introduction of tobacco into this country is a myth. History, whilst awarding him the palm for potatoes, points to Sir John Hawkins as the first to bring to his countrymen the peaceful pleasures of the pipe. Certainly, the weight of probabilities are in his favour. Taylor, the Water Poet, says: ‘Tobacco was first brought into England in 1565, by Sir John Hawkins.’ And Edmund Howes, in his continuation of Stow’s _Annals_ says: ‘Tobacco was first brought and made known by Sir John Hawkins about the year 1565, but not used by Englishmen for many years after, though at this day it is commonly used by most men and many women.’ These accounts correspond with Hawkins’s second voyage, viz., October 18, 1564, returning September 20, 1565. Confirmatory evidence comes from John Sparkes, the younger, who, in his account of this voyage, says that Hawkins, ranging along the ‘coast of Florida for fresh water, in July 1565, came upon the French settlement there under Landoniere, where the natives, when they travel, have a kind of herbe dryed, which with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire and the dryed herbe put together, they do suck through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live four or five days without meat or drink, and this all the Frenchmen used for the purpose.’ Hearing these wonderful stories told of the Indian’s herbe, nothing could be more natural than that Hawkins should make trial of it for himself, and, liking it, secure specimens of the plant for cultivation and use at home. To see and hear and get all he could, was the sole end and aim of his ploughing the Spanish main. Bearing in mind that he got back to England in September 1565, we see that the statements of Taylor, the Water Poet, and Howes, the annalist, that tobacco was brought by Sir John Hawkins in 1565, are consistent and reliable. Collateral evidence on the point is to be found in L’Obel’s work on Botany,[6] written in 1570, wherein he says: ‘Within these few years the West Indian tobacco-plant has become an inmate of England.’ This of itself is conclusive against the Raleigh theory. But let us look a little further into the matter. In 1570, Raleigh was a youth of eighteen, and had just gone to France to fight in the Huguenot cause. Again, in the State Archives, there is still extant an edict issued by