and what a number there are besides, he adds, "that doe keepe houses,
set open shoppes, that have no other trade to live by but by the
selling of tobacco." Rich says he had been told that a list had been
recently made of all the houses that traded in tobacco in and near
about London, and that if a man might believe what was confidently
reported, there were found to be upwards of 7000 houses that lived by
that trade; but he could not say whether the apothecaries', grocers'
and chandlers' shops, where tobacco was also sold, were included in
that number. He proceeds to calculate what the annual expenditure on
smoke must be. The number of 7000 seems very large and is perhaps
exaggerated. Round numbers are apt to be over rather than under the
mark.

Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of the new habit is to
be found in the fact that by the seventeenth year of the reign of
James I--the arch-enemy of tobacco--that is, by 1620, the Society of
Tobacco-pipe-makers had become so very numerous and considerable a
body that they were incorporated by royal charter, and bore on their
shield a tobacco plant in full blossom. The Society's motto was
happily chosen--"Let brotherly love continue."

A further witness to the prevalence of smoking and to the enormous
number of tobacco-sellers' shops is Camden, the antiquary. In his
"Annales," 1625, he remarks with curious detail that since its
introduction--"that Indian plant called Tobacco, or Nicotiana, is
growne so frequent in use and of such price, that many, nay, the most
part, with an insatiable desire doe take of it, drawing into their
mouth the smoke thereof, which is of a strong scent, through a pipe
made of earth, and venting of it againe through their nose; some for
wantownesse, or rather fashion sake, and other for health sake,