DISLIKED BY PURITANS. Ill 



A destiny as proper to befall 



To mortal swine, as to swine naturall. 



Upon this point we may this riddle bring — 



This subject hath more subjects than the king. 



Variety and surfit doth feed the spittle, 



And fill the grave ; Nature's content with little. 



Cromwell believed with King James L, that grow- 

 ing tobacco in England was " thereby to misuse and 

 misemploy the soill of this kingdom;" and he sent 

 his troopers to trample down the growing crops where- 

 ever they found them.* It is recorded that the soldiers 

 smoked at the Protector's magnificent funeral, as if to 

 publicly triumph over their recovered liberty. Evelyn, 

 in his Diary, on the 22nd of October, 1658, notes, that 

 the Protector's funeral " was the joyfullest funeral I 

 ever saw ; for there were none that cried but dogs, 

 which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, 

 drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they 

 went." 



The Puritans, from the earliest days of their "plant- 

 ation " among us, abhorred the fume of the pipe. Ben 

 Jonson notes it, and the puritanical Justice Overdoo 

 rails against it in Bartholomeiv Faire. A citizen's 



* It had been extensively grown in Gloucestershire, as appears from the 

 following passage :In " Harry Hangman's Honour ; or the Gloucester- 

 shire Hangman 's Request to the Smoahers or Tobacconists in London : a 

 quarto pamphlet in the king's collection (marked in ink, June 11, 1655), 

 he says : "the very planting of tobacco hath proved the decay of my 

 trade, for since it hath beene planted in Gloucestershire, especially at 

 Winchcourt, my trade hath proved nothing worth." He adds, "Then 

 'twas a merry world with me ! for indeed before tobacco was there planted 

 there being no kind of trade to employ men, and very small tillage, neces- 

 sity compelled poor men to stand my friends, by stealing of sheep and 

 other cattel, breaking of hedges, robbing of orchards, and what not." 



