In some letters of the Appleton family, printed some time ago from the originals in the Bodleian Library, there is a curious letter, undated, but of 1652 or 1653, from Susan Crane, the widow of Sir Robert Crane, who was the second wife of Isaac Appleton of Buckman Vall, Norfolk.  Writing to her husband, Isaac Appleton, at his chamber in Grayes Inn, as his “Afextinat wife,” the good Susan, whose spelling is marvellous, tells her “Sweet Hart”—­“I have done all the tobakcre you left mee; I pray send mee sum this weeke; and some angelleco ceedd and sum cerret sed.”  How much tobacco Mr. Appleton had provisioned his wife with cannot be known, but it looks as if she were a regular smoker and did not care to be long without a supply.  In 1631 Edmond Howes, who edited Stow’s “Chronicles,” and continued them “onto the end of this present yeare 1631,” wrote that tobacco was “at this day commonly used by most men and many women.”

Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country.  Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St. Austins,” she calls it) she disliked “the custome of the country which is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking, which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them.”  What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk?  Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among women in the west of England.  Dunton, in that Athenian Oracle which was a kind of early forerunner of Notes and Queries, alluded to pipe-smoking by “the good Women and Children in the West.”  Misson, the French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that “Tabacco” is very much used in England, says that “the very Women take it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties.  But why the very Women?  What Occasion is there for that very?  We wonder that in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and why should we wonder at it?  The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall wonder that the Women of Middlesex do not take Tabacco:  And why should they wonder at it?  In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant Things!” And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!