From Chapter 3: 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 20
s. 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 30
s.—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 10
s. for the heinous offence of allowing a brother parishioner to smoke in his house.
From Chapter 6: John Philips, the author of "Cyder" and the "Splendid Shilling," was an undergraduate at Christ Church, during Aldrich's term of office, and no doubt learned to smoke in an atmosphere so favourable to tobacco. In his "Splendid Shilling," which dates from about 1700, Philips says of the happy man with a shilling in his pocket:
Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or Pun ambiguous or Conundrum quaint.
But the poor shillingless wretch can only
doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chill'd fingers; or from tube as black
As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet,
Exhale Mundungus, ill-perfuming scent.
>The miserable creature, though without a shilling, yet possessed a well-coloured "clay."
It is significant that the writer of a life of Philips, which was prefixed to an edition of his poems which was published in 1762, after mentioning that
smoking was common at Oxford in the days of Aldrich, says apologetically, "It is no wonder therefore that he [Philips] fell in with the general taste ... he has descended to sing its praises in more than one place." By 1762, as we shall see,
smoking was quite unfashionable, and consequently it was necessary to explain how it was that a poet could "descend" so low as to sing the praises
of tobacco.