78 



The Soverane Herbe 



ding the members to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, 

 and read the sermons they preached. 



The Great Plague, 1665, did much to increase the 

 popularity and establish the use of tobacco. It was 

 proved that its medicinal virtues, forgotten for some 

 time, really existed, and that as a prophylactic 

 tobacco was, and is, unequalled. It is recorded that 

 no tobacconist's household was invaded by the 

 plague ; past the smoking -shop marked by the 

 tobacco-crowned, wooden Indian, as by the blood- 

 plashed doorposts of the Israelites, Death's servant, 

 the dread plague, passed. Doctors, nurses of the 

 plague-stricken, and the collectors and buriers of the 

 dead smoked freely to prevent infection. Dear old 

 Samuel PepySj going down Drury Lane on June 7, 

 1665, saw some houses marked with the red cross 

 and ' Lord, have mercy upon us.' ' It put me in an 

 ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was 

 forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell to and chaw, 

 which took away my apprehension.' 



Of the universal practice of smoking in the closing 

 years of the seventeenth century we have ample proof. 

 Widespread as is the habit to-day, it is almost 

 insignificant compared with the absolutely universal 

 smoking, by both sexes, all ages and classes, under all 

 circumstances and in all places, of two hundred years 

 ago. M. Jorevin de Rochefort in 1671 published in 

 Paris an account of his travels in England the previous 

 year. He notes the general habit of smoking in his 

 account of an evening he spent at Worcester : ' The 

 supper being finished, they set on the table half a 

 dozen pipes and a pacquet of tobacco for smoking, 



