From Chapter 4:
Among the documents in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there is a letter patent under the great seal of Charles I, in 1634, granted for the purpose of correcting the irregular sales and restraining the immoderate use of tobacco in Scotland. The letter states that tobacco was used on its first introduction as a medicine, but had since been so largely indulged in and was frequently of such bad quality, as not only to injure the health, but deprave the morals of the King's subjects. These were sentiments worthy of King James. Mr. Matthew Livingstone, who has calendared this document, says that the King therein proceeds, in order to prevent such injurious results of the use of tobacco, to appoint Sir James Leslie and Thomas Dalmahoy to enjoy for seven years the sole power of appointing licensed vendors of the commodity. These vendors, after due examination as to their fitness, were to be permitted, on payment of certain compositions and an annual rent in augmentation of the King's revenue, to sell tobacco in small quantities. The letter further directs that the licensees so appointed shall become bound to sell only sound tobacco—an admirable provision, if a trifle difficult to enforce—and to keep good order in their houses and shops. "The latter clause," adds Mr. Livingstone, "would almost suggest that the tobacco was to be sold for consumption on the premises,"—as I have no doubt it was—"and that the smokers were probably in the habit at their symposiums of using, even as they may still, I dare say, other indulgences not so soothing in their effects as the coveted weed"—a suggestion for which there seems little foundation in the clause to which Mr. Livingstone refers.

From Chapter 7:
The country gentlemen of the time followed the hounds and enjoyed rural sports of all kinds, drank ale, and smoked tobacco. They had their smoking-rooms too. Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield, Sussex, noted in his Journal under date March 26, 1751: "I went to Mr. Baker's for the list of scholars, and found him alone in the smoaking-room; he ordered a pint of mild beer for me, an extraordinary thing." Gale himself was a regular smoker, and too fond of pints of ale.

Fielding has immortalized the squire of the mid-eighteenth century in his picture of that sporting, roaring, swearing, drinking, smoking, affectionate, irascible, blundering, altogether extraordinary owner of broad acres, Squire Western. We may shrewdly suspect that the portrait of Western is somewhat over-coloured, and cannot fairly be taken as typical; but there is sufficient evidence to show that in some respects at least—in his enthusiasm for sport and love of ale and tobacco—Western is representative of the country squires of his day.