&> PENT ANDREA. 



lings and tenpcnce a pound on the importation of It,? 

 yet the sovereignty of habit and subsequent policy, con- 



<3 Rymer has preserved a warrant dated the 17th of October, 

 1604, to impose an additional duty of 6s. and 8d. per pound, 

 the preamble of which will serve to shew the grievances of 

 which the King thought he had good reason to complain. 



" Wheras tobacco, being a drug of late years found out, and 

 by merchants, as well denizens as strangers, brought from 

 foreign parts in small quantity into this realm of England, and 

 other our dominion^, was used and taken by the better sort both 

 fhen and now only as physic, to preserve health, and is now at 

 this day, through evil custom and the toleration thereof, ex- 

 cessively taken by a number of riotous and disordered persons 

 ©f mean and base condition, who, contiary to the use which 

 persons of gocd calling and quality make thereof, do spend 

 most of their time in that idle vanity, to the evil example and 

 corrupting of others, and alsodo consume that wages which many 

 of ihem get by their labour, and wherewith their families- 

 should be relieved, not caring at what priee they buy that 

 drug, but rather devising how to add to it other mixture, there- 

 by to make it the more dtlightful to the taste, though so much. 

 the more costly to their purse, by which great and immode- 

 rate taking of tobacco thehiealth of a great number of our peo- 

 ple is impaired, and their bodies weakened and made unfit for 

 labour, the estates of so many mean persons so decayed and 

 consumed as they are thereby driven to unthrifty shifts, only to 

 maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof; besides that also a 

 great part of the treasure of our land is spent and exhausted by 

 this only drug, so licentiously abused by the meaner sort." Al!. 

 which enormous inconveniences, as they are stated, the king pro- 

 poses to remedy by h)irgon an additional duty of six shillings- 

 and eightpence per pound, * to act as a prohibition to its impor- 

 loties^except for ratdical purposes. 



* I'Ue uravious duty was twopence oe? pound*. 



