w smoking:

_As I walked between
Westminster Hall
And the Church of Saint Paul,
And so thorow the citie,
Where I saw and did pitty
My country men's cases,
With fiery-smoke faces,
Sucking and drinking
A filthie weede stinking._

Tobacco-selling was sometimes curiously combined with other trades. A
Fleet Street tobacconist of this time was also a dealer in worsted
stockings. A mercer of Mansfield who died at the beginning of 1624,
and who apparently carried on business also at Southwell, had a
considerable stock of tobacco. In the Inventory of all his "cattalles
and goods" which is dated 24 January 1624, there is included "It. in
Tobacco 19.li 0. 0." Nineteen pounds' worth of tobacco, considering
the then value of money, was no small stock for a mercer-tobacconist
to carry.

But the apothecaries were the most usual salesmen, and their shops
and the ordinaries were the customary day meeting-places for the more
fashionable smokers. The taverns and inns, however, were also filled
with smoke, and taverns were frequented by men of all social grades.
Dekker speaks of the gallant leaving the tavern at night when "the
spirit of wine and tobacco walkes" in his train. On the occasion of
the accession of James I, 1603, when London was given up to rejoicing
and revelry, we are told that "tobacconists [_i.e._ smokers] filled up
whole Tavernes."

King James himself is an unwilling witness to the popularity of
tobacco. He tells us that a man could not heartily welcome his friend
without at once proposing a smoke. It had become, he says, a point of
good-fellowship, and he that would refuse to take a pipe among his
fellows was accounted "peevish and no good company." "Yea," he
continues, with rising indignation, "the mistress cannot in a more
mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair
hand a pipe of tobacco."

Smoking was soon as common in the country as in London. On Wednesday,
April 16, 1621, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons, Sir
William Stroud, who seems to have been a worthy disciple of that
tobacco-hater, King James I, moved that he "would have tobacco
banished wholly out of the kingdom, and that it may not be brought in
from any part, nor used amongst us"; and Sir Grey Palmes said "that if
tobacco be not banished, it will overthrow 100,000 men in England, for
now it is so common that he hath seen ploughmen take it as they are at
plough." Per