The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
A Sussex rector, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, in 1656 and
again in 1662, paid 1s. for two ounces of tobacco, _i.e._ at the
rate of 8s. per lb. Presumably the rector bought the more expensive
Spanish tobacco and the squire the cheaper Virginian. At the annual
parish feast held at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London, on May 24,
1666, the expenses included 3d. for tobacco for twenty or more
adults. This too was doubtless Virginian or colonial tobacco. The
North Elmham Church Accounts (Norfolk) for 1673 show that 12s. 4
d. was paid for "Butter, cheese, Bread, Cakes, Beere and Tobacco and
Tobacco Pipes at the goeing of the Rounds of the Towne." On the
occasion of a similar perambulation of the parish boundaries in
1714-15 the churchwardens paid for beer, pipes and tobacco, cakes and
wine. The account-books of the church and parish of St. Stephen,
Norwich, for 1696-97 show 2s. as the price of a pound of tobacco.
These entries, and many others of similar import, show that at feasts
and at social and convivial gatherings of all kinds, tobacco
maintained its ascendancy. Pipes and tobacco were included in the
usual provision for city feasts, mayoral and other; and smoking was
made a particular feature of the Lord Mayor's Show of 1672. A
contemporary pamphleteer says that in the Show of that year were "two
extreme great giants, each of them at least 15 foot high, that do sit,
and are drawn by horses in two several chariots, moving, talking, and
taking tobacco as they ride along, to the great admiration and delight
of all the spectators." Among the guests at a wedding in London in
1683 were the Lord Mayor, Sheriff and Aldermen of the City, the Lord
Chief Justice--the afterwards notorious Jeffreys--and other "bigwigs."
Evelyn records with grave disapproval that "these great men spent the
rest of the afternoon till 11 at night, in drinking healths, taking
tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges, who had but a
day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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