ere
in Duxbury fixed 10s. for each offence, and in Portsmouth, not only
were fined, but to their shame be it told, set as jail-birds in the
Portsmouth cage. In Sandwich and in Boston the fine for 'drinking
tobacco in the meeting-house' was 5s. for each drink, which I take to
mean chewing tobacco rather than smoking it; many men were fined for
thus drinking, and solacing the weary hours, though doubtless they
were as sly and kept themselves as unobserved as possible. Four
Yarmouth men--old sea-dogs, perhaps, who loved their pipe--were in
1687 fined 4s. each for smoking tobacco around the end of the
meeting-house. Silly, ostrich-brained Yarmouth men! to fancy to escape
detection by hiding around the corner of the church; and to think that
the tithing-man had no nose when he was so Argus-eyed."

On weekdays many New England Puritans probably smoked as their friends
in old England did. A contemporary painting of a group of Puritan
divines over the mantelpiece of Parson Lowell, of Newbury, shows them
well provided with punch-bowl and drinking-cups, tobacco and pipes.
One parson, the Rev. Mr. Bradstreet, of the First Church of
Charlestown, was very unconventional in his attire. He seldom wore a
coat, "but generally appeared in a plaid gown, and was always seen
with a pipe in his mouth." John Eliot, the noble preacher and
missionary to the Indians, warmly denounced both the wearing of wigs
and the smoking of tobacco. But his denunciations were ineffectual in
both matters--heads continued to be adorned with curls of foreign
growth, and pipe-smoke continued to ascend.

In this country tobacco is said to have invaded even the House of
Commons itself. Mr. J.H. Burn, in his "Descriptive Catalogue of London
Tokens," writes: "About the middle of the seventeenth century it was
ordered: That no member of the House do presume to smoke tobacco in
the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do
not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no
doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In
"Mercurius Pragmaticus," December 19-26, 1648, the writer says on
December 20, speaking of the excluded members: "Col. Pride standing
sentinell at the door, denyed entrance, and caused them to retreat
into the Lobby where they used to drink ale and tobacco."

There is a curious entry in Thomas Burton's diary of the proceedings
of Cromwell's Parliament, which suggests that there may then have