Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

Evidently the intention was to make things pleasant for the royal foe of tobacco during his visit. It would appear to be a fair inference from the wording of this prohibition that when the King was not at Cambridge, graduates and scholars and students could resume their liberty to resort to inns, taverns, ale-houses and tobacco-shops, and presumably to take tobacco in St. Mary's Church, without question.

The prohibition, in the regulation quoted, of smoking in St. Mary's Church, referred, it may be noted, to the Act which was held therein. Candidates for degrees, or graduates to display their proficiency, publicly maintained theses; and this performance was termed keeping or holding an Act.
It is, of course, conceivable that the prohibition, so far as the church and Trinity College Hall were concerned, was against the taking of snuff rather than against smoking; but the phrase "to take tobacco" was at that time quite commonly applied to smoking, and, considering the extraordinary and immoderate use of tobacco soon after its introduction, it is not in the least incredible that pipes were lighted, at least occasionally, even in sacred buildings.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

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."

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