"'I think the devil's in the gown,' muttered the curate.

"'I think he be,' dryly replied old Joshua."

The same writer, in his companion volume on "The Old Time Parson,"
mentions that the Vicar of Codrington in 1692 found that it was
actually customary for people to play cards on the Communion Table,
and that "when they chose the churchwardens they used to sit in the
Sanctuary smoking and drinking, the clerk gravely saying, with a pipe
in his mouth, that such had been their custom for the last sixty
years."

Although probably the conduct of the Codrington parishioners was
unusual, it is certain that in the seventeenth century smoking at
meetings held, not in the church itself, but in the vestry, was
common. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Leicester, 1665-6,
record the expenditure--"In beer and tobacco from first to last 7s.
10d." In those of St. Alphege, London Wall, for 1671, there are the
entries--"For Pipes and Tobaccoe in the Vestry 2s.," and "For a grosse
of pipes at severall times 2s." In the next century, however, the
practice was modified. The St. Alphege accounts for 1739 have the
entry--"Ordered that there be no Smoaking nor Drinking for the future
in the Vestry Room during the time business is doing on pain of
forfeiting one shilling, Assention Day excepted." From this it would
seem fair to infer (1) that there was no objection to the lighting of
pipes in the vestry after the business of the meeting had been
transacted; and (2) that on Ascension Day for some inscrutable reason
there was no prohibition at all of "Smoaking and Drinking."

Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember in "The Heart of Midlothian"
one curious instance of eighteenth-century smoking in church--in a
Scottish Presbyterian church, too. Jeanie Deans's beloved Reuben
Butler was about to be ordained to the charge of the parish of
Knocktarlitie, Dumbartonshire; the congregation were duly seated,
after prayers, douce David Deans occupying a seat among the elders,
and the officiating minister had read his text preparatory to the
delivery of his hour and a quarter sermon. The redoubtable Duncan of
Knockdunder was making his preparations also for the sermon. "After
rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, he
produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed almost aloud,
'I hae forgotten my spleuchan--Lachlan, gang doon to the Clachan, and
bring me up a pennyworth of twist.' Six arms, the nearest wit