The concern which the King had professed for the ‘many mean persons’ of decayed fortune in debt for tobacco had not resulted in helping them out of their difficulties, but rather the contrary. From Aubrey we learn that its cost had risen to the value of silver. He says, ‘I have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham market they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco. Now (1680) the Customes of it are the greatest his majestie hath.’ In various documents of the period, tobacco is mentioned amongst the most expensive luxuries. Even in Elizabeth’s reign its price ranged from 10s. to 18s. a pound, according to the quality. Meanwhile, jovial spirits were amusing themselves with a lively paper warfare over the virtues and vices of the rare Indian plant that, according to the King, had bewitched them. Early in the fray (1602), appeared anonymously a booklet entitled, _Work for Chimney Sweepers_, or a _Warning to Tobacconists_, calling the smoker’s attention to the necessity for securing the services of one of those useful members of the community. At that time it was the fashion among gallants of the weed to draw the smoke into the lungs and to eject it ‘through the organs of the nose, with a relish that inviteth,’ says the gay, laughing, Doctor Barton Holiday, who took such a wicked delight in tormenting King James at Woodstock in his play of the _Marriage of the Arts_. This was speedily answered by _A Defence of Tobacco_, printed by Richard Field for Thomas Man, wherein the author shows that the ‘warning’ should have roosted at home, where, in its absence, zeal had outrun discretion, and had thereby damaged the cause it would fain have served. Verbose titles, full of alliteration, fire and fun, were much appreciated by the militant writers of this period. Witness the following heading to a poem against tobacco by Joshua Sylvester, Gent., the favourite poet of King James: ‘Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered (about their eares that idely idolize so base and barbarous a weed; or leastwise over-love so loathsome a vanitie), by a volley of Holy shot, thundered from Mount Helicon.’ After this brave warning we are prepared to hear that Hell hath smoake Impenitent tobacconist to choake. Though never dead, there shall they have their fill; In heaven is none, but light and glory still. Samuel Rowlands in his _Knave of Clubbs_ (1611) writes in a lighter strain, and asks:—