In the neighbouring county of Somerset the Justices of the Peace sent presentments to the Council in 1632 of persons within the Hundred of Milverton and Kingsbury West thought fit to sell tobacco by retail; and for Wiveliscombe, Mr. Hancock says in his book on that old town, a mercer and a hosier were selected.

It would seem, from one example I have noted, as if in some places smoking were not allowed in public-houses.  In the account-book of St. Stephen’s Church and Parish, Norwich, the income for the year 1628-29 included on one occasion 20s. received by way of fine from one Edmond Nockals for selling a pot of beer “wanting in measure, contrary to the law,” and another sovereign from William Howlyns for a like offence.  This is right and intelligible enough; but on another occasion in the same year each of these men, who presumably were ale-house keepers, had to pay 30s.—­a substantial sum considering the then value of money—­for the same offence and “for suffering parishioners to smoke in his house.”  I have been unable to obtain any information as to why a publican should have been fined an additional 10s. for the heinous offence of allowing a brother parishioner to smoke in his house.

Penalties for “offences” of this fanciful kind were not common in England; but in Puritan New England they were abundant.  In the early days of the American Colonies the use of the “creature called Tobacko” was by no means encouraged.  In Connecticut a man was permitted by the law to smoke once if he went on a journey of ten miles, but not more than once a day and by no means in another man’s house.  It could hardly have been difficult to evade so absurd a regulation as this.

It has been already stated that the Elizabethan gallant was acquainted with the most fashionable methods of inhaling and exhaling the smoke of tobacco.  A singular feature of the enthusiasm for tobacco in the early years of the seventeenth century was the existence of professors of the art of smoking.

Some of the apothecaries whose shops were in most repute for the quality of the tobacco kept, took pupils and taught them the “slights,” as tricks with the pipe were called.  These included exhaling the smoke in little globes, rings and so forth.  The invaluable Ben Jonson, in the preliminary account of the characters in his “Every Man out of his Humour,” 1600, describes one Sogliardo as “an essential clown ... yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman that he will have it though he buys it.  He comes up every term to learn to take tobacco and see new motions.”  Sogliardo was accustomed to hire a private room to practise in.  The fashionable way was to expel the smoke through the nose.  In a play by Field of 1618, a foolish nobleman is asked by some boon companions in a tavern:  “Will your lordship take any tobacco?” when another sneers, “’Sheart! he cannot put it through his nose!” His lordship was apparently not well versed in the “slights.”