212 
Historical Sketch of Tobacco from 1614 to 1625. 
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF TOBACCO FROM JG14 TO 1G25. 
By S. J. W. Tabor, M.D., Shelburne Tails, Ms. 
[Communicated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.] 
Notwithstanding the anathemas thundered by James I., of England, 
against tobacco, the taste for the article continued to prevail in Great 
it is no small proof of its great ascendancy to see it bearing 
up boldly against royal invective and courtly objurgation. Some, or it 
were better to say, many who trim their sails by winds blowing from 
rulers, followed in the wake of James, but the great mass of smokers per- 
sisted in their practice, and the great increase of duties placed upon to- 
bacco did not prevent its importation. The custom, too, prevailed more 
extensively in other parts of Europe than heretofore, and the demand for 
tobacco was greatly increased. In 1615 the Dutch commenced cultivat- 
ing it at home.* It was planted at Amesfort, a place which subsequently 
became famous for raising a valued quality. The tobacco, however, 
which was raised by the Spaniards in the West Indies, was at this time 
the highest esteemed, and in England bore by far the highest price. A 
pound of it brought eighteen shillings, while a pound of that from Vir- 
ginia could only find a market at fifteen shillings less :f still even at three 
shillings a pound, with a steady or increasing demand, the American plant- 
ers made large profits, and in 1616 a perfect mania for cultivating tobac- 
co prevailed among them. Every nook and corner of soil was devoted 
to this vegetable, and the land which ought to have been reserved for the 
cultivation of the necessaries and indispensable comforts of life—the 
very streets of Jamestown itself—a profanation indeed for a town named 
after the “ British Solomon !”—were planted with it.J When Captain 
* Abkurznng von der Anleitung zur Technologic von J. A. Beckmann, p. 158. 
t Kobertson’s History of the Discovery and Settlement of America, book ix. p. 411. 
t Stith’s History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 146. Historical Sketch of Tobacco jrom 1614 to 1625. 
213 
Argal arrived as deputy-governor under Lord Delaware, in 1617, he 
found “ the people dispersed, wlierever they could find room, to cultivate 
the precious weed, the value of which was supposed to be much aug- 
mented by a new mode of cure, drying it on lines rather than fermenting 
it in heaps.”* Nothing received attention but tobacco, for Belknap adds, 
“ the palisades were broken, the church fallen down, and the well of fresh 
water spoiled.” The authorities of the colony endeavored to check this 
mania, but the lust of gain and the maddening spirit of speculation over- 
leaped the bounds of reason, and the people were only restored to their 
senses by the failure of their ill-judged schemes for speedy riches. To- 
bacco by law was priced at three shillings per pound, and the advance 
on goods imported from England was twenty-five per cent.f 
The planters were right in turning their chief attention to tobacco, but 
erred in pushing it to so great an extreme. Their labor before had been 
directed to objects which encountered too much competition in Europe, 
such as the planting of vineyards, the manufacture of tar, glass, and other 
articles. But from this time the industry of Virginia took a new direc- 
tion : tobacco became and has continued her staple: it proved the source 
of her riches, when the cultivation was the result of cool calculation in- 
stead of feverish excitement, and was made a legal tender—the currency 
of the colonyj:—a currency, if not liable to so many fluctuations as the 
issues of modern banks, yet, as we shall see, subjected to exaltations and 
depressions. This weed became peculiar to Virginia, and at a time when 
English chartered companies, the schemes of nobles and British lotteries 
failed to settle the prosperity of the colony on a sure basis, or much in- 
crease its inhabitants, tobacco did all this, and exerted an influence on the 
manners, customs, modes of feeling, interests and politics, in that portion 
of America, which had no inconsiderable bearing on the glorious struggle 
which established the liberty of the United States. From its first plant- 
ing in America it continued to increase in extent of cultivation and value, 
so that the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, referring to King James’s proclamations 
and laws, says.<§> “ since that time tobacco has become an important arti- 
cle of commerce, by which individuals in Europe and America, as well 
as colonies and nations, have risen to great opulence.” 
The year 1619 was a notable one both in the history of tobacco and of 
Virginia. A new importation was made thither from England, and one 
much needed by the colony—an importation of women ! Twelve hun- 
dred and sixty-one persons, through the exertions of Sir Edwin Sandys, 
and the brilliant prospects of the colony, were induced, unlike many who 
had preceded them, to embark from Great Britain with the intention of 
becoming permanent settlers in the New World, and not to gain a fortune 
by planting and commerce, and then return to England to enjoy it.|| Be- 
fore 1619 very few, if any, single women who were not accompanied by 
parents, brothers, or near relatives, had emigrated to America, but this 
* Belknap’s American Biography, vol. ii p. 154. 
t Stith’s History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 147. 
I Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. i. chap. iv. p. 151. 
§ American Biography, vol. i. p. 319. 
U Stith’s History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 165. 214 
Historical Sketch of Tobacco from 1614 to 1625. 
year ninety unmarried women of respectability, pleasing manners at. 
appearance, and, as an author of that year expresses it, “ young and un- 
corrupt,”* went to Virginia among the 1261 persons sent by Sandys, 
literally “ to seek their fortunes.” The corporation transported them at 
its own expense, demanding rigorously, however, a hundred pounds of 
tobacco from the men who married them, and as they were immediately 
united to tenants of the company, or other thriving men, and as the debt for 
a wife was considered a debt of honor, the consignment proved one of profit 
instead of loss. Indeed an act of the Assembly ordained that “the price 
of a wife should have the precedence of all other debts in recovery and 
payment, because, of all kinds of merchandize, this was the most desir- 
able.”! Such novel shipments, of course, occasioned much merriment 
among the wits. Dean Swift, in his poem entitled A Quiet Life and a 
Good Name, speaking of an uncomfortable wife, says, 
“ Zounds ! I would ship Iter to Jamaica, 
Or truck the carrion for tobacco !”+ 
Tom Brown tells his readers of “ virtuous maidens that are willing to 
be transported with William Penn into Maryland, for the propagation of 
These marriages, however, increased, strengthened, and 
benefited the colony, made it more permanent and prosperous, gave it 
more the character of home, and quieted the longings of its inhabitants 
for England. Contentment was in a great degree secured, and trade with 
Europe received fresh impulses. The importation of tobacco to England, 
of what was raised the year before, amounted to twenty thousand pounds.|| 
The product of Virginia tobacco began now to more than supply the 
demand made for it in England, and the Virginia corporation made ar- 
rangements to dispose of the article in Middleburgh and Flushing.il It 
would be supposed that James, if his fears for the health and prosperity 
of his subjects were sincere, would have joyfully beheld the pernicious 
“ drugge ” diverted from his own kingdom. Such was not the case. 
James would not consent that the commodity raised in his colonies should 
find a market out of England. Although his enactments had stated that 
“ a great part of the treasure of his land was spent and exhausted by this 
onelie drugge so licensiously abused,”** yet he found that the duties upon 
it brought money into the royal coffers, and that overcame the dislike he 
had formerly expressed for the weed, and the desire he once manifested 
to rid Great Britain of it. He and his privy council determined to stop 
the trade with Flushing and Middleburgh and all European states,ff and 
concerted measures and enacted laws accordingly. In England, as we 
have seen, no tobacco which had been imported could be sold without 
the payment of large impost. This was enjoined by a decree of the 
* A Note of the Shipping, Men and Provisions sent to Virginia in 1619, p. ], 2, 3. 
t Stith’s History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 197. 
| The Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. xiv. p. 199. 
§ The Works of Mr. Thomas Brown, vol. iii. p. 29. 
|| Maunsell’s Statistics in the Northern Light, vol. i. pp. 110, 111. 
Tr Robertson’s Discovery and Settlement of America, book ix. p. 413. 
** Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xxxi. p. 474. 
tf Stith’s Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 200. Historical Sketch of Tobacco from 1614 to 1625. 
215 
king on the 25th of May, 1619,* and on the tenth of the following 
November he published a proclamation to enforce the decree :f but in 
order that no tobacco should be used which had not paid a tax to the 
king’s treasury, on the 30th of December, 1619, James forbade the cul- 
ture of tobacco in England and Wales,J the only parts of Great Britain 
that had then attempted raising it, and ordered all the plants which were 
growing to be rooted up. 
This last measure was not unwelcome to the American planters, since, 
as a sort of equivalent for the high duties with which tobacco was bur- 
thened, they were ensured against the competition of the plant raised in 
England and sold without being subject to impost. This in some degree 
united the interests of James and tire planters, and in order still further 
to secure the exorbitant taxes to himself, he not only thus gave them the 
exclusive possession of the English market, but on the 7th of April,$ and 
the 29th of June,|| 1620, enacted that the importation and sale of tobac- 
co should require a special license from himself. By the Commissio Spe- 
cialis concernens le Garbling Herbce Nicotiance he appointed a board of 
tobacco inspectors—regular Glentworths perhaps—consisting of eight per- 
sons, “ to the intent,” as he says in his “ princelie consideration,” that the 
“ subjects of his realm should not be occasioned to use any unwholesome 
spices or druggs, to the ympayring of the health, or to buy the bad instead of 
the good, to the ympayring of their substance.”11 Still further to oppress 
the tobacco planters, he commanded the Virginia company to transport to 
their colony “ one hundred dissolute persons convicted of crimes, who 
should be delivered to them by the knight marshall,”** the execution of 
which cost £4000. The same year also beheld the introduction of Afri- 
can negroes into the colony for the culture of tobacco,ff from which 
germ the present existence of slavery in the United States has grown. 
While James I. was making these decrees, laws, and proclamations, 
and procuring no inconsiderable revenue from the importation and con- 
sumption of tobacco, it was continuing to press farther into the recesses 
of Europe, going from marine countries to those which were inland. 
The English first carried the habit of smoking, in 1620, to the city of 
Zittare, in upper Lusatia, and the inhabitants eagerly adopted it.Jlj: The 
same year a merchant, named Konigsman, returned to the city of Straus- 
burgh from Great Britain, where he had been on a trading voyage. He 
learned the use of tobacco during his absence, and introduced the custom 
among the inhabitants of the cathedral town.1^ 
In 1621 sixty more “maids of virtuous education-, young, handsome, 
* Hazard’s Historical Collections, &c., vol. i. p. 89, 
t Ibid, vol. i. p. 90. 
+ Hazard’s Historical Collections, &c., vol. i. p. 93. 
? Rymer’s Fredera Conventionis, tome xvii. p. 190. Commissio Specialis concernens le Garbling 
Herbie Nicotian*. 
|| Ibid, p. 283. A Proclamation for restraint of the disordered Trading of Tobacco. 
IT Ibid, loc. cit. 
** Stith’s Discovery and Settlement of Virginia,p. 167. 
tt Heverley’s History and Present State of Virginia, p. 35. 
jt Pensties snr l’Agriculture des Allemands, par Blasco De Lanzi, p. 183, 
§§ Ibid, p. 219. 216 
Historical Sketch of Tobacco jrom 1614 to 1625. 
and well recommended,”* were sent from London to Virginia, in order 
to furnish the unmarried inhabitants of the colony with desirable wives. 
They arrived safely, and gave so much satisfaction that the price of a 
wife rose from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds 
of tobacco, the value of each pound being three shillings sterling, thus mak- 
ing the sum of £22 10s., or about $100.f In a letter dated London, 
August 21st, of this year, accompanying a consignment of marriageable 
ladies to Virginia, it is said, “We send you a shipment, one widow and 
eleven maids, for wives of the people of Virginia: there hath been espe- 
cial care had in the choice of them, for there hath not one of them been 
received but upon good commendations. In case they cannot be presently 
married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that 
have wives until they can be provided with husbands. There are nearly 
fifty more that are shortly to come, and are sent by our honorable lord 
and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton, and certain worthy gentlemen, 
who, taking into consideration that the plantation can never flourish till 
families be planted, and the respect of wives and children for their people 
on the soil, therefore having given this fair beginning ; reimbursing of 
whose charges, it is ordered that every man who marries them give one 
hundred and twenty pounds of best leaf tobacco for each of them. We 
desire that the marriage be free, according to nature, and we would not 
have those maids deceived and married to servants, but only to such free 
men or tenants as have means to maintain them. We pray you, therefore, 
to be fathers of them in this business, not enforcing them to marry against 
their wills.During this year Lord Coke endeavored to rouse the 
House of Commons to a proper sense of the usurpations James had com- 
mitted in his proclamations and decrees relating to tobacco, and showed 
that the monarch had assumed powers of laying and collecting taxes 
which did not belong to him and which resided in the In 
consequence of his representations, and the exertions of Sandys, Diggs, 
and Farrar, the king’s acts were legalized by an act which was passed by 
the house, though it did not receive full powers in consequence of being 
left amidst the unfinished business at the dissolution of Parliament.|| In 
the course of the debate on this tobacco question, many curious opinions 
were given of the foreign luxury. The Rev. Abiel HolmeslI cites the 
notes given of a speech of Sir. J. Horsely on this occasion. The sketch 
runs as follows :—“ Thought not to speak of this vile weed. When he 
was first a parliament man not known. Thousands have died of this vile 
weed. Abhorreth it the more because the king disliketh it. Prohibited 
to be used in ale houses. No good ground for Virginia. To banish all.” 
Engaged as James was, at this time, in the legal and revenue concerns 
of tobacco, this was not the only way in which it came under his notice. 
He paid a visit to Oxford where there was exhibited before him a comedy 
* Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. i. thap. iv. pp. 154, 155. 
t Chalmer’s Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, p. 46. 
j Hubbard’s Notes to Belknap’s American Biography, vol. ii. p. 166. 
§ Debates of the Commons in 1620 and 1621, vol. i. p. J69. 
|| Chalmer’s Political Annals of the Present United Colonics, pp. 51, 70-74. 
7 Annals of America, from the Discovery by Columbus, &c., vol. i, p. 574. Historical Sketch of Tobacco from 1614 to 1625. 
entitled “ The Marriage of the Arts,” by Burten Holyday, student 
of Christ Church, and afterwards celebrated as a writer and translator. 
Anthony a Wood says it was acted “ with no great applause,”* and that 
King James was with difficulty persuaded to hear it out. The author of 
the Counterblast to Tobacco, although he saw Ben Jonson’s Gipsies Meta- 
morphosed “ thrice performed with increased delight,”f as it greatly be- 
labored tobacco, could not patiently hear the “ Devil’s own weed ” ad- 
dressed as follows, notwithstanding the income he derived from it. 
“ Tobacco’s a musician 
And in a pipe delileth ; 
It descends in a close, 
Through the organs of the nose, 
With a relish that inviteth. 
This makes me sing so ho, so ho boyes, 
Ho boyes! sound I loudly. 
Earth ne’er did breed 
Such a jovial weed 
Whereof to boast so proudly. 
“ Tobacco is a lawyer, 
His pipes do love long cases : 
When our braines it enters, 
Our feete do make indentures. 
While we seal with stamping paces. 
Tobacco-’s a physician, 
Good both for sound and sickly; 
’Tis a hot perfume, 
That expells cold rheume, 
And makes it flow down quickly.” 
And so on, in many more similar laudatory verses, which are too numer- 
ous to quote. 
In Virginia the planting of tobacco had got to. be the main business 
of the colony, and besides buying wives for those who had none, bought 
their merchandize, liquidated their debts, and paid their taxes. Sir George 
Yeardley, their governor, was succeeded this year by Sir Francis Wyatt 
in a similar capacity. Wyatt brought with him a written constitution, 
which Bancroft calls “ the basis on which Virginia erected the superstruc- 
ture of her liberties.’He also bore instructions which commanded 
him to “ draw off the people from the excessive planting of 
The constitution gave a fixedness to their ideas of right, and contributed 
permanency to their resentment at James’s interference with their trade 
and their staple. About this time they defrayed the expense of a mis- 
sion, on a similar subject, by tobacco. King James, during the latter 
part of his reign, kept up a continual effort to obtain the entire control of 
the London Virginia Company. During the controversy the colony des- 
patched an agent to England to protest against the governor possessing 
absolute power, and petition that the liberty of popular assemblies might 
be retained, “for,” it was said, “ nothing can conduce more to the pub- 
lic satisfaction and the public utility.”|| To pay the costs of this em- 
bassy, “ a tax of four pounds of the best tobacco was levied upon every 
male who was above 16 years and had been in the colony a twelve 
month.”H In 1622 it was ascertained that the annual importation of to- 
bacco to England, from America, for the seven preceding years, amounted 
to 142,0S5 pounds.** 
In 1624, in Italy, the Roman Pontiff manifested some of James’s dis- 
position towards tobacco, being provoked by the Spanish ecclesiastics 
* Annals of Oxford, derived and condensed from Anthony a Wood, p. 412. 
t Nichols’s Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, &c., vol. 
iv. p. 714. 
+ Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. i. chap. iv. p. 158. 
f, Belknap’s American Biography, vol. ii. p. 175. 
|| Burk’s History of Virginia, vol. i. pp. 276, 277. 
' 7 Hening’s Statutes at Large, &c. Act xxxv. vol. i. p. 128. 
** Stith’s Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 246. Fatal Case of Intussusception of the Jejunum. 
using it while celebrating the august ceremonies of the mass. This 
pontiff was Maffeo Barberini, the fourth Urban of the Holy See, and he 
demonstrated his execration of such ungodliness by publishing a bull of 
excommunication against all who should take snuff in church. This was 
about contemporaneous with his ordering the brass to be stripped from 
the roof of the venerable Pantheon*—spared even by the Goths and 
Vandals—in order to adorn an altar, thus giving rise to the saying-— 
“ Quod non fecere Barbari, fecere Barberini.” 
On the 26th of August, of the same year, James I., of England, fol- 
lowed up his restrictions and annoying legislation by another “ Procla- 
mation concerning Tobacco.”f On the 29th of September Sir Edwin 
Sandys, as an offset to the many incumbrances which had been placed 
upon the Virginia staple, induced the Commons to move, by a petition 
of grace, in relation to a complete protection of the tobacco of that colony 
against all foreign tobacco, as well as Accordingly almost, 
if not quite, the last public act of James 1. was to issue a proclamation 
to this effect, which was entitled, “ A Proclamation for the utter pro- 
hibiting the importation and use of all tobacco which is not of the proper 
growth of the colony of Virginia, and the Somer Islands, or one of 
England and Wales he represented, in this proclamation, “ as 
utterly unfyt in respect of the clymate, to cherish tobacco for any medici- 
nall use, which is the only good to be approved in yt.” 
By this time Virginia was regarded by the English monarchy as a 
great tobacco plantation, and the only regard or affection felt for the 
cplony was that of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings—the raising 
the greatest possible revenue from it, monopolizing the profits which be- 
longed to the planters, and diverting into the British treasury the fruits 
of their industry. Such, for more than twenty years, was the course of 
James the First, and such was the policy he bequeathed to his successor. 
11 is intimate connection with the subject of tobacco, both by his literary 
publications and his legal acts, has rendered it necessary often to speak of 
him. We have now, however, reached the period of his decease. The 
last law upon tobacco, which he promulgated, I have already referred to, 
and shall, in another number of these articles—which may be considered 
as therapeutical episodes or “ curiosities of medical experience ”—pass 
on to the measures of Charles I. and other sovereigns and countries re- 
specting the vegetable whose biography I am considering. 
* K Compendious History of Italy from Guicciardini and other Sources, p. 316. 
t Rymer’s Fcedera Conventionis, &c., tome xvii. p. 621. 
+ Cubbett’s Parlhnenlary History, vol. i. pp. 1489-1497. 
§ Rymer’s fcedera Conventionis, &c., tome xvii. p. 668.