garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either can easily
be believed, or hath been observed in any else, which sweetness also
was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take
tobacco, which towards my latter time I was forced to take against
certain rheums and catarrhs that trouble me, which yet did not taint
my breath for any long time." The autobiography was written about
1645, so as Lord Herbert did not smoke till towards the latter part of
his life--he died in 1648--he clearly was not one of those who took to
tobacco in the first enthusiasm for the new indulgence.

When Robert, Earl of Essex, and Henry, Earl of Southampton, were tried
for high treason in Westminster Hall on February 19, 1600-1, the
members of the House of Lords, who with the Judges formed the Court,
if we may believe the French Ambassador of the time, behaved in a
remarkable and unseemly manner. In a letter to Monsieur de Rohan, the
Ambassador declared that while the Earls and the Counsel were
pleading, their lordships guzzled and smoked; and that when they gave
their votes condemning the two Earls, they were stupid with eating and
"yvres de tabac"--drunk with smoking. This was probably quite untrue
as a representation of what actually took place; but it would hardly
have been written had smoking not been a common practice among noble
lords.

Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, would appear
to have been a smoker. In a letter addressed to him, John Watts, an
alderman of London, wrote: "According to your request, I have sent
the greatest part of my store of tobaca by the bearer, wishing that
the same may be to your good liking. But this tobaca I have had this
six months, which was such as my son brought home, but since that time
I have had none. At this period there is none that is good to be had