70 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



Tobacco was necessarily an expensive habit, and 

 ; one of the earliest objections made to the custom 

 - of smoking, was its ruinous cost. Among the papers 

 at Penshurst, is a note of expenses of Sir Henry 

 Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, among which occurs 

 " three shillings for an ounce of tobacco." This was 

 within about three years of its first introduction to 

 England, and would be equivalent to about eighteen 

 shillings of our present money. Between 1606 and 1638, 

 the accounts of Francis fourth Earl of Cumberland, 

 show the great consumption of money to be in wines, 

 journeys, clothes, presents, and tobacco. Whittaker, in 

 his History of Craven, p. 275, says, " The last heavy 

 article of expence, was tabacco, of which the finest sort 

 cost eighteen shillings per pound, and an inferior kind 

 ten shillings. A single bill for this article amounted to 

 £36 7s. 8cZ." By multiplying this by four, we shall be 

 able to judge of the price, as compared with that of our 

 own day, and so understand the heavy expense of an 

 indulgence in tobacco at this period. Aubrey narrates 

 that in his early days : — " It was sold then for its wayte 

 in silver. I have heard some of our old yeomen neigh- 

 bours say, that when they went to Malmesbury or Chip- 

 penham 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." 

 % Drayton, in the sixteenth song of his Poly-olblon, 

 (1613), complains that — 



' ' Our gold goes out so fast, for foolish foraine things, 

 Which upstart gentry still into our country brings ; 



