been
the luxury of a members' smoking-room. Burton was a member of the
Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659, and made
a practice--for which historical students have been and are much his
debtors--of taking notes of the debates as he sat in the House.
Members sometimes objected to and protested against this note-taking,
but Burton quietly went on using his pencil, and though his summaries
of speeches are often difficult to follow, argument and sense
suffering by compression, he has preserved much very valuable matter.
Referring to a debate on January 7, 1656-57, on an attempt to go
behind the previously passed Act of Oblivion, the diarist records that
"Sir John Reynolds had numbered the House, and said at rising there
were 220 at the least, besides tobacconists." This can only mean that
there were at least 220 members actually present in the House when it
rose, not counting the "tobacconists" or smokers, who were enjoying
their pipes, not in the Chamber itself, but in some conveniently
adjoining place, which may have been a room for the purpose, or may
simply have been the lobby referred to above in the extract from
"Mercurius Pragmaticus."

It seems likely that Richard Cromwell was a smoker. In 1689, long
after he had retired into private life and had ample leisure for
blowing clouds, he sent to a friend a "Boxe of Tobacco," which was
described as "A.J. Bod (den's) ... best Virginnea." In a letter to
his daughter Elizabeth, dated 21 January 1705, there is a reference to
this same dealer, whom he describes as "Adam Bodden, Bacconist in
George Yard, Lumber [Lombard] Street." The allusion is worth noting as
a very early instance of the colloquial trick of abbreviation familiar
in later days in such forms as "baccy" and "bacca" and their
compounds.

V

SMOKING IN THE RESTORATION PERIOD

The Indian weed withered quite
Green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay--
All flesh is hay:
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667).

The year 1660 that restored Charles II to his throne, restored a
gaiety and brightness, not to say frivolity of tone, that had long
been absent from English life. The following song in praise of
tobacco, taken from a collection which was printed in 1660, is touched
with the spirit of the time; though it is really founded on, and to no
small extent taken from, some verses in praise of tobacco written b