THE EARLY COMMERCE OF PLYMOUTH. 329 
by no means of the distinctly maritime character which now 
belongs to them. As to the gentlemen of Plymouth, I suspect 
they followed the ladies then as they do now, and confounded the 
shopping as vigorously as their successors. But they had some 
compensations. For example, there were the tobacco shops, which 
there is ample evidence did a good business. Letters patent had 
been granted for the exclusive sale of tobacco in Plymouth in 
1634 to Thomas King, Abraham Briggs, John Adlington, John 
Wilcock, Nicholas Harris, Henry Honey, Richard Tapper, and 
George Rattenbury; London being the only place at which tobacco 
could be landed. The proof of the extent to which smoking was 
patronized is in the report of Garrard to Lord Stafford in 1663, 
that Plymouth had yielded £100 and as much yearly rent to 
the licensees, besides which there were many unlicensed shops 
which the magistrates had to put down. 
And I dare say that while the ladies shopped, the gentlemen 
gossipped. So far as I am aware, Plymouth had but two barbers 
in those days. One, John Voysey, put forth his pole on the New 
Quay ; but where his rival, John Addams, beautified his Majesty’s 
lieges I cannot say. ‘There were probably more, but these are the 
only ones whose names have been preserved, and so we must make 
the most of them. They were the newsmongers of those days. 
They knew whose ships had come home, and whose ships had not. 
They had heard, no doubt, how Master Nat. Northcott, the mercer, 
had got down such a fine lot of stuffs that his rival in trade, Master 
Allen, was unable to match them, and was jealous accordingly. 
Perhaps they had their complaints of the doings of Goldstone 
Langaller, son of a Frenchman, probably one of the refugee 
Huguenots ; who was pushing into business as an apotheeary, and 
so interfered with the barber chirurgeon’s ancient prerogative of 
phlebotomy. And if not they, no doubt many of their customers, 
mightily approved the fining in 1663-4 of sundry butchers who 
had dared to kill bulls without baiting them, when the right of 
being baited had been one of the privileges restored to the bulls 
of Plymouth at the glorious restoration of the Merry Monarch. 
Either Voysey or Addams had his quip, we may be sure, for John 
Teape, when, in spite of the efforts of that worthy clockmaker, 
the Guildhall clock would not keep time; and I dare say Voysey 
thought it a move in the right direction when, in 1670-1, a dial was 
bought of John Bennet to put on the Barbican, especially as, with 
