Time brought its revenges.  The dead Protector was not treated too respectfully by his soldiery.  Evelyn, describing Cromwell’s “superb funeral,” says that the soldiers in the procession were “drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.”

Whether the use of tobacco prevailed as generally among the Cavalier forces is less certain; but as King Charles hated the weed, courtiers may have frowned upon its use.  One distinguished cavalier, however, either smoked his pipe, or proposed to do so, on a historic occasion.  In Markham’s “Life of the Great Lord Fairfax” there is a lively account of how the Duke, then Marquis, of Newcastle, with his brother Charles Cavendish, drove in a coach and six to the field of Marston Moor on the afternoon before the battle.  His Grace was in a very bad humour.  “He applied to Rupert,” says Markham, “for orders as to the disposal of his own most noble person, and was told that there would be no battle that night, and that he had better get into his coach and go to sleep, which he accordingly did.”  But the decision as to battle or no battle did not rest with Prince Rupert.  Cromwell attacked the royal army with the most disastrous results to the King’s cause.  His Grace of Newcastle woke up, left his coach, and fought bravely, being, according to his Duchess, the last to ride off the fatal field, leaving his coach and six behind him.

So far Markham:  but according to another account, when Rupert told him that there would be no battle, the Duke betook himself to his coach, “lit his pipe, and making himself very comfortable, fell asleep.”  The original authority, however, for the whole story is to be found in a paper of notes by Clarendon on the affairs of the North, preserved among his MSS.  In this paper Clarendon writes:  “The marq. asked the prince what he would do?  His highness answered, ’Wee will charge them to-morrow morninge.’  My lord asked him whether he were sure the enimy would not fall on them sooner?  He answered, ‘No’; and the marquisse thereupon going to his coach hard by, and callinge for a pype of tobacco, before he could take it the enimy charged, and instantly all the prince’s horse were routed.”

Gardiner evidently follows this account, for his version of the story is:  “Newcastle strolled towards his coach to solace himself with a pipe.  Before he had time to take a whiff, the battle had begun.”  The incident was made the subject of a picture by Ernest Crofts, A.R.A., which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888.  It shows the Duke leaning out of his carriage window, with his pipe in his hand.