He tells his ‘loving subjects’ that smoking is an ‘evil vanitie, whereby the health of a great number of people is impayered, and their bodies weakened and made unfit for labour, and the estates of many mean persons so decayed and consumed, as they are thereby driven to unthriftie shiftes onley to maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof.’ After further admonition and warning of evils in store for the obdurate, the Act proceeds: ‘We do therefore will and command you, our Treasurer of Englande, and herebye also warrant and authorise you to give orders to all Customers, Comptrollers, Searchers, Surveyors and other officers of our Portes, that from and after the six-and-twentieth Day of October next comynge, they shall demand and take to our use, etc., etc., the sum of Sixe shillings and 8d. upon every pound weight thereof, over and above the custome of 2d. upon the pound weight usually paid heretofore.’ The penalties for evading payment were, forfeiture of cargo, ‘and such further Penalties and coporal punishments as the qualitie of suche so high a Contempt against Our Royal and Expresse Commandmente in this manner published shall deserve.’ The imposition, equivalent to about thirty shillings of our present money, had a startling effect on the tobacco trade of the country; but when merchants found out that it was meant to apply only to the tobacco imported from Virginia, they naturally had recourse to other markets, as Spain and Portugal, whence it was brought in at the old rate of twopence on the pound that had satisfied Elizabeth. Agriculturists, too, saw in the change an opportunity for extending the home cultivation and manufacture of tobacco, and readily availed themselves of it, particularly in Yorkshire, where all the operations connected therewith were well understood. On the King learning what they were doing, he hastened to promulgate a further edict forbidding husbandmen ‘to misuse and misemploy the soyle of this fruitful kingdom,’ beginning with the words, ‘Whereas we, out of the dislike we have to tobacco.’ Thus expressed, his case against the weed is placed in a more intelligible light than that which he had in the first instance thought it expedient to disclose. However absurd his reasoning, his policy succeeded only too well. Besides dealing a crushing blow to the young colony, his action had other far-reaching effects. It created a daring race of smugglers, who did a thriving contraband trade in tobacco with pirates on the Spanish main; and home dealers saw in the greatly enhanced price of the weed a temptation to ‘sophisticate’ too powerful to be resisted. Scattered through the literature of that period may be found some curious allusions to the practice, as in Ben Jonson’s _Alchemist_, where Abel Drugger, speaking in praise of his tobacconist, says: