14 The Soverane Herbe 



Croix, returning from Portugal, whither he had been 

 as Papal Nuncio, took some tobacco-plants with him 

 to Italy, where it was called, in honour of its patron, 

 Erba Santa Croce. The Cardinal himself owed his 

 name to an ancestor's deeds in transporting a portion 

 of the true Cross from Palestine to Rome, and a 

 seventeenth century poetaster declared that this 

 worthy's descendant had won equal fame by carrying 

 tobacco into Italy. About the same time as the 

 Cardinal's return with tobacco, a French envoy also 

 took the plant into Italy, and for some time it was 

 called Tornabona, after him, in some districts. 



Not until some years after its introduction to the 

 Continent did tobacco find its way to England, and 

 then, as an instance of our insularity and indepen- 

 dence of Europe, it was brought direct from America. 

 The exact date it is difficult to determine, and not 

 easier to whom rightfully to ascribe the honour of its 

 introduction. Popularly Raleigh is regarded as the 

 patron saint of smoking in England, but there is 

 little doubt that he did not introduce it, though he 

 as certainly popularized the practice, and made it 

 fashionable. 



Taylor, the Water Poet, says that tobacco was first 

 brought into England in 1565 by Sir John Hawkins, 

 and quaintly adds : ' It is a doubtful question whether 

 the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, 

 for both appeared about the same time.' 



Stow, in his ' Annals,' states that tobacco, ' that 

 stinking weed so much abused to God's dishonour,' 

 came into England about the twentieth year (1577) 

 of Queen Elizabeth. Lobelius, in ' Novum Stirpium 



