St Nicotine of the Peace Pipe

by Edward Vincent Heward

Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,

…

But keeps it in fine lilly pots, that, opened,

Smell like a conserve of roses, or French beans.

He has his maple block, his silver tongs,

Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper.

In Bartholomew Faire he presents us with a picture of one, Ursula, a vendor of roast pig, bidding her servant ‘Look to’t, sirrah, you had best! three pence a pipe full I will ha’ made of all my whole half pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of coltsfoot, mixed with it too, to eke it out.’ That sophisticating practices were growing apace may be gleaned from Dr. Barclay, of Edinburgh, who in his Nepenthes (1614) speaks of ‘tobacco merchants apparelling European plants with Indian coats and enstalling them in shops as righteous and legitimate tobacco.’ (How very conservative we English are!) ‘Some others, indeed, have tobacco from Florida that they sophisticate and farde in sundrie sorts with black spice, galanga, aqua-vitæ, Spanish wine, anise seedes, oyle of spicke, and such like.’ Less expensive materials than these were more commonly used (and perhaps still are), as the leaves of rhubarb, dock, burdock, plantain, oak and elm, also chickory and cabbage leaves steeped in tar-oil.

If the manufacturers of these and less innocent ‘mixtures’ really find themselves unable to withstand the pressure from without for a cheap smoke, let them confine their sophisticating ingenuity to simple vegetable products, such, for instance, as satisfied Dame Ursula. Coltsfoot or the leaves of the lettuce, being slightly narcotic, would form a harmless make-belief for the good folk who persuade themselves that they could not sleep a wink were they deprived of their evening comfort. Ages ago both Greeks and Romans, according to Dioscorides and Pliny, found comfort in smoking through a reed or pipe the dried leaves of coltsfoot, which relieved them of old coughs and difficult breathing. We can picture the legionary in Britain’s bleak atmosphere, while pacing the Roman Wall, trying to console himself in his lonely vigil with the vapour from his ‘elphin pipe,’ fragments of which have been found among the ruins of those early memorials to the Scots’ persistent determination to travel southwards. And as to the lettuce, it has been famous since the time of Galen (Claudius Galenus), who asserts that he found relief from sleeplessness by taking it at night. Regardless of these things, the Nicotian epicure of to-day enjoys the inestimable advantage of luxuriating in the delicate aroma of the Cuban leaf, while fancying himself wafted on his upward way to Nirvana. The charming simplicity that leads to this ideal conception of existence is most refreshing; the being so lost to the outer world can hardly be blamed if he says rude things when compelled to touch Mother Earth.

But King James had not yet done with tobacco. A monarch of his remarkable idiosyncrasy, as displayed in his creation of a new and lucrative business for the sale of distinguished titles and high offices of State, where he himself possessed the sole monopoly, would naturally see his way to a further stroke of ‘good business’ in the tobacco market. Accordingly, we are not surprised to learn that, viewing with a jealous eye the flourishing state of the new industry, the idea occurred to him that the State coffers might be replenished by taking a still deeper interest in the weed. Hence the issue of a royal proclamation to his loving subjects that they were forbidden to deal in tobacco unless they purchased Royal Letters Patent granting them a license to do so. These could only be procured, on payment of a yearly sum, from the persons who farmed from the King the right to enforce and collect the tax. In the Stafford Letters, compiled by Gerrard, relating to the collection of the new tax, it is stated that ‘some towns have yielded twenty marks, £10, £5, £6, fine and rent; none goes under. I hear that Plymouth hath yielded £100 and as much yearly rent.… The tobacco licences go on apace; they yield a good fine, and a constant yearly rent.…’ In some instances a life-lease to deal in tobacco was granted on payment of a lump sum. As to the King’s method of dealing with State affairs of the kind, let Sir Anthony Weldon speak from personal knowledge. He says of the King that ‘he was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man. He had a trick of cousen (cozen) himself with bargains under hand, by taking £1,000 or £10,000 as a bribe, when (at the same time) his Counsel was treating with his Customers to raise them to so much more yearly; this went into his Privy purse; wherein he thought he had over-reached the Lords, but consented himself; but would as easily break the bargain upon the next offer, saying he was mistaken and deceived, and therefore no reason he should keep the bargain. This was often the case with the Farmers of the Customs.’

There is a document in the State Archives which throws a curious side-light on the King’s ideas of statecraft. The settlers in Guiana had become tobacco-planters, and required a trade-charter with this country. A charter was granted them, in which a clause was inserted to the effect that one-tenth of the tobacco grown there should go to the King. Thus, in a roundabout way, the King became a tobacco merchant.