148 ST NICOTINE 



round the table. Sir Walter Raleigh, standing in a stand 

 at Sir Ro. Poyntz parke at Acton, took a pipe of tobacco, 

 which made the ladies quitte it till he had donne.' The 

 author of a gossipy Touv in Wales (Pennant), in 1810, 

 speaking about the great houses and their associations, says 

 that Captain Price, of Plasyollin, with Captains Myddelton 

 and Koet, on their return from the Azores in 1591, 'were 

 the first who had smoked or (as they called it) drank 

 tobacco publicly in London, and that the Londoners 

 flocked from all parts to see them. Pipes were not then 

 invented, so they used the twisted leaves, or segars. The 

 invention is usually ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh. It 

 may be so, but he was too good a courtier to smoke in 

 public, especially in the reign of James.' Again, in the 

 1659 translation of Dr. Everard's Panacea (Antwerp, 

 1587), it is remarked that 'Captain Richard Grenfield and 

 Sir Francis Drake were the first planters of it here 

 (England), and not Sir Walter Raleigh, which is the 

 common error ; so difficult is it to fix popular discoveries.' 

 These few selections show us how easily origins are lost 

 sight of. 



It seems ungracious to pluck a plume from one so 

 eminently distinguished for important services rendered to 

 his Queen and country as Sir Walter Raleigh ; yet nothing 

 in history is more certain than that the common belief 

 crediting him with the first introduction of tobacco into this 

 country is a myth. History, whilst awarding him the palm 

 for potatoes, points to Sir John Hawkins as the first to 

 bring to his countrymen the peaceful pleasures of the pipe- 

 Certainly, the weight of probabilities are in his favour. 

 Taylor, the Water Poet, says : * Tobacco was first brought 

 into England in 1565, by Sir John Hawkins.' And 

 Edmund Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Anna/s 



