Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

Who can doubt that Hariot, in reporting direct to Sir Walter Raleigh, showed his employer how "to suck it after their maner"?

All the evidence agrees that whoever taught Raleigh, it was Raleigh's example that brought smoking into notice and common use. Long before his death in 1618 it had become fashionable, as we shall see, in all ranks of society. He is said to have smoked a pipe on the morning of his execution, before he went to the scaffold, a tradition which is quite credible.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

The variations in price of both Spanish and Virginia tobacco were largely due to the frequent changes in the amount of the duty thereon. In 1604 King James I, newly come to the throne, and full of iconoclastic fervour against the weed, raised the duty to 6s. 8d. per lb. in addition to the original duty of 2d. On March 29, 1615, there was a grant to a licensed importer "of the late imposition of 2s. per lb. on tobacco"—which shows that there must have been considerable fluctuation between 1604 and 1615—while in September 1621 the duty stood at 9d. Through James's reign much dissatisfaction was expressed about the importation of Spanish tobacco, and the outcome of this may probably be seen in the proclamations issued by the King in his last two years forbidding "the importation, buying, or selling tobacco which was not of the proper growth of the colonies of Virginia and the Somers Islands." These proclamations were several times confirmed by Charles I, the latest being on January 8, 1631; but they do not seem to have had much effect.

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