5 
As every one knows, or ought to know, we are indebted to Sir 
Walter Raleigh for this popular product. lu 1585 he introduced 
it into England, and having an eye to business he persuaded 
» 
“ Good Queen Bess” to give him a patent for the possession of 
Virginia, from which excellent supplies have been, and are still, 
procured. The first Tobacco plant grown in Great Britain was 
imported from Virginia. Raleigh, not satisfied with his property 
in America, obtained from the Virgin Queen, in addition thereto, 
12,000 acres of forfeited land in Cork and Waterford, on a portion 
of which the Tobacco plant was afterwards regularly cultivated. 
Raleigh was a courtier—a gentleman of position and great 
influence—and it is not surprising that the habit of smoking 
which he adopted became very fashionable. 
We accordingly read in one of his biographies that the “ ladies 
and great and noble men” of Queen Elizabeth’s Court, “ would 
not scruple to blow a pipe sometimes very sociably.” At Sir 
Walter’s house in Islington he frequently entertained his guests 
with a “mug of ale with grated nutmeg and a pipe,” and I have 
no doubt that when in less prosperous times he was confined in 
the Tower of London, he had recourse to the grateful weed, though 
he may have been robbed of his beer. Elizabeth’s successor, 
James the First, “ was a Goth,” or what to us smokers is the 
same thing, an anti-tobacconist. He was disgusted with the 
“ precious stinke” of the pipe and cigar, and did his “ level best 1 ' 
to put down the habit of smoking amongst his long suffering 
subjects. 
In 1604 (let this, be a warning to Colonial Governors), in a 
most unconstitutional manner, without the consent of Parliament, 
he issued a warrant raising the tax on tobacco from two pence 
to six shillings and ten pence for every pound value. 
But if the memory of James the First is anathematized by 
all smokers, his action was absolutely mild when compared with 
that of Pope Urban the Eighth, and that of the King of Persia 
and Czar of Muscovy. The Pope threatened excommunication to 
all using tobacco in churches, certainly an unseemly and intolerable 
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