82 The Soverane Herbe 



England. Seventy years later, on March 23, 1693, 

 the House found it necessary to enact that no 

 member was ' to take tobacco into the Gallery or to 

 the Table sitting at Committees.' 



Smoking had long been practised in churches. In 

 161 5 the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge found it 

 necessary to proclaim ' that noe graduate, scholler or 

 student of this Universitie presume to take tobacco 

 in St. Mary's Church uppon payne of final expellinge 

 the Universitie.' The Puritans frequently heard out 

 three-hour sermons of their preachers to the soothing 

 and edifying accompaniment of a pipe. In New 

 England this became so common that, the exercises 

 being greatly disturbed ' by the clinking of flints and 

 steel and the clouds of smoke in church,' in 1669 the 

 colony of Massachusetts had found it necessary to 

 enact a law ' that any person or persons that shall 

 be found smoking of tobacco on the Lord's Day, 

 going to or coming from the meetings, within two 

 miles of the meeting-house, shall pay twelve pence 

 for every such default.' History has handed down to 

 us the names of four Puritan worthies who suffered 

 for combining tobacco-smoke with Sabbath sanctity. 

 Richard Bury, Jedediah Lombard, Benjamin Lom- 

 bard and James Maker were fined twelve pence in 

 accordance with this law ' for smoking tobacco at the 

 end of Yarmouth meeting-house on the Lord's Day.' 

 In connection with this it is noteworthy that those 

 most unworldly of mankind, the Quakers, were 

 obliged to come to a compromise with tobacco. ' It 

 being considered,' runs an entry in the minute-book 

 of a Lancashire meeting-house in 1691, ' that the too 



