Tobacco

• Tasks
• Background
• Teachers' notes
• External links
• Connections to curriculum

 

In 1604, James I of England and James VI of Scotland published his ‘Counterblaste to Tobacco’. He condemned the use of tobacco on the grounds of its poisonous effects on the body. He wrote that smoking was a ‘custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian [very dark] smoke of the pit that is bottomless’.

‘Counterblaste’ also revealed James I’s concern about the potential disruptive effects of tobacco to English society. Writers of the period continuously linked the smoking of tobacco with immorality, disobedience, and even treason. As James I had only just ascended the English throne, it is unsurprising that he felt tobacco might encourage civil disorder and unrest.

Tobacco had been present in England since at least the 1560s, when sailors returning from Atlantic voyages captained by the Merchant Adventurer Sir John Hawkins had brought it home. It was likely that they themselves picked up the habit from Spanish and Portuguese sailors. Despite James I’s protests, there was a tobacco boom in early Stuart England.

Use the documents in this lesson to explore the early Stuart fascination with tobacco, focusing particularly on overseas trade networks and the activity of the Virginia Company, which helped popularise tobacco in England. Find out about the impact of early Stuart colonial ventures on individuals whose stories have often been left out of history.

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Tasks

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Background

During the reign of Elizabeth I and the early 1600s, the English largely consumed Spanish tobacco. The practice of smoking tobacco was popularised by Sir Walter Ralegh in the court of Elizabeth I. One fanciful story described how Sir Walter Ralegh’s servant, seeing him smoking a pipe for the first time, threw a bucket of water on him, assuming that he was on fire.

By the time of James I and James VI, ‘the art of whiffing’ had become so popular that the pamphleteer Barnabe Rich estimated that there were over 7,000 tobacco shops in London by 1614. In 1599, a Swiss traveller to England was astounded at what was quickly becoming a London-wide addiction amongst the elite and middling-sort: ‘They always carry the instrument on them…lighting up on all occasions: at the play, in the taverns, or elsewhere’.

In the context of fraught Anglo-Spanish relations in the period, England was reluctant to remain dependent on Spanish tobacco. As the documents show, many English merchants (along with the French and Dutch) were involved in tobacco-smuggling off the coast of Guyana and Trinidad, engaging in a contraband trade with struggling Spanish settlers. The English had attempted to grow tobacco on the Island of Bermuda but were unsuccessful. 1606 saw the founding of the Virginia Company of London, and by 1607 the Virginia Company settlers landed on Jamestown Island to establish an English colony. John Rolfe brought sweet South American tobacco seeds to the colony and from the mid-1610s tobacco was being exported to England. Members of Parliament, many of whom owned shares in the Virginia Company, were keen to secure an English monopoly on colonial tobacco. Women and physicians had been attempting to grow it in their herb gardens in England, but parliament banned domestic tobacco growing in 1619.

Disease, mismanagement, and poor relations with indigenous peoples of North America eventually resulted in the complete failure of the Virginia Company in 1623. From this point on, the king assumed direct control of Virginia. Despite James I’s early protests against tobacco, and attempts raise the duties on tobacco, his morals gave way to pragmatism. He realised that tobacco could still be a profitable crop in Virginia, so James created a royal monopoly for the crop.

As the English attempted to establish their own colonial outposts, both king and Parliament realised the crucial role of tobacco in furthering imperial ambition and establishing further trading networks. The English used tobacco grown on their plantations to facilitate trade in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Levant.

Lauren Working’s recent book ‘The Making of an Imperial Polity’ explores how colonial projects influenced political culture and taste in London, focusing in particular on tobacco and imperial intent. Working explores how tobacco-smoking was made socially acceptable for London gentlemen as they attempted to distance themselves from what they construed as the ‘savage customs’ of Native Americans in their consumption of tobacco. They re-contextualized the crop and invested it with new meanings of civility and refinement in metropolitan locales. This distancing process was achieved largely through the accoutrements of smoking, which included tobacco pipes and precious tobacco boxes made of gold, silver, or ivory, and often stamped with a heraldic coat of arms.

In fact, the smoking of tobacco can even be construed as a patriotic act which furthered national colonial ambition. The gentlemen in Parliament who owned shares in the Virginia Company were the same men who were smoking socially and writing poems that praised tobacco. Not all men were as positive about the potential effects of colonial enterprise. An anti-tobacco poem written by the merchant Josuah Sylvester: ‘Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered’ (1616) provides an early reflection of the damage caused by early mercantile ventures. His words speak not only of the English colonisers, but also of the Native Americans and Black enslaved peoples whose lives were changed irrevocably by England’s colonial ventures in the seventeenth century. Sylvester asks ‘whether [the] discovery of America, that Newfound World, have yielded to our world more hurt than good’.

How was tobacco viewed in the early Stuart period? Tobacco held an ambiguous position in the Stuart imagination. On one level, tobacco was seen as a ‘holy herb’, a miraculous medicinal remedy, which could cure headaches, heal wounds, depression, and to prevent against the plague. It was even recommended for pregnant women, as physicians believed that the warm and moist qualities of tobacco would nurture the baby’s growth in the womb. There were, of course, detractors to this viewpoint, who held opinions akin to James I, believing it corrupted the body and dulled the senses, a medical opinion that chimes with our present knowledge about the harmful effects on smoking on the body. Other individuals believed quite the opposite, suggesting that smoking tobacco would sharpen the brain and aid ‘divine wit’. As the poet Sir John Beaumont wrote in 1602: ‘Take up these lines Tobacco-like unto thy brain, and that divinely toucht, puff out the smoke again’. It is no coincidence that smoking amongst playwrights, actors, and writers was extremely popular; perhaps even William Shakespeare was partial to a puff or two as he wrote his poems and plays.

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Teachers' notes

This lesson uses sources from The National Archives, in particular some records from the High Court of Admiralty (HCA), to explore the early English tobacco trade. These records have come to light as result of the Prize Papers Project. This is a cataloguing, research, and digitisation project running from 2018 to 2037 on records of the High Court of Admiralty (HCA), covering the capture and judgment of about 35,000 ships. See also the External Links section below.

Before starting, it would be useful to ensure that students are familiar with these key terms and ideas: commodities, intoxicants, colonialism, merchant companies, and the transatlantic slave trade.

The first source that students examine comes from records of the Colonial Office held at The National Archives. It was written a year after James I founded The Virginia Company of London (1606), a joint-stock company that aimed to bring profit to those who owned shares and to establish a colony in Virginia. The source extracts prompt students to think about the ideological motivations for colonial pursuit, and tobacco’s important role within this. It is also important to discuss with students what is missing from the document in describing early contact between indigenous people and European colonists.

The second source is a letter from the diplomat, ambassador, and explorer Thomas Roe, in which he describes his travels in Guyana and Trinidad. His account helps students to observe that England had access to other sources of tobacco beyond Virginia.

Next, students look at extracts from court ‘Interrogatories’ of Frances Carnero’. It provides students with an opportunity to reflect upon the early transatlantic slave trade and to consider the contraband trade in tobacco in Trinidad, São Tomé, and Guyana in the 1610s. These two sources help students to rethink the nature of trade networks and overseas exchange in the Stuart period, calling into question any potential pre-conceptions around Virginia again as the sole provider of tobacco in England in James I’s reign. They also provide the opportunity to explore the significance of the Prize Papers Project in terms of the preservation and cataloguing of archival material.

The fourth sources are extracts from letters between Gilbert Blight, resident in Virginia and dealing in tobacco, and his associates in Plymouth, England. These provide the opportunity to discuss the intimate and personal qualities of the letter form. This may lead onto a discussion of their value as a historical source that provides insights into the daily lived experience of individuals around the globe at European overseas trade and colonialism. The letter between William Bond and Gilbert Blight gives an insight into how the English used tobacco to enter into trade in North Africa. These letters, along with the ‘Interrogatories’ of Frances Carnero’, also provide an opportunity for students to discuss how we understand modern ideas of race and ethnicity in these documents, and how they may differ from understandings of ethnic difference in the Stuart period.

The final source is a letter between two male friends, both of whom were involved in government and state affairs. Students can consider the growing presence of tobacco in England and the fashionable use of tobacco within elite male circles. This may lead onto a discussion of the ambiguous position of tobacco in the Stuart imaginary, as a dangerous intoxicant, a miraculous medicine, and a provoker of divine wit.

Students can also use the image shown at the top of the lesson page as evidence to further explore the self-fashioning of a particular socio-cultural identity through the smoking of tobacco.

You may want to split the lesson for students working individually or use the sources in paired/group work. Students should be encouraged to think about the limitations of looking at different forms of evidence to evaluate their understanding of the early English tobacco trade, and responses to the consumption of tobacco.

All sources are transcribed, and some language is explained/translated in square brackets. In order to retain the spirit of the language we have not further simplified the transcripts. Each transcript sentence is given a new line to reflect how it appears in the document and assist with the reading of the original.

Finally, although this lesson is aimed at Key stage 5, teachers could use these documents and provide their own questions and/or create simplified transcripts to use with younger students.

Sources

Illustration Image 2: ‘Anthony Chute, Tabacco. London: 1595. The earliest depiction of an English man smoking tobacco.’

Image © HathiTrust Digital Library

Source 1a-c: ‘A Description of the now discouered Riuer and Country of Virginia, with the liklyhood of ensuing ritches, by Englands ayd and industry’, 1607. Catalogue Ref: CO 1/1 f.53-7.

Source 2: ‘Report from Thomas Rowe to the Earl of Salisbury, on his voyage to Guyana’, 1610-1611. Catalogue Ref: CO 1/1 f.92-3.

Source 3a-c: ‘Interrogatories of Frances Carnero’, 1611-1613. Catalogue Ref: HCA 24/75

Source 4a & b: ‘Gilbert Blight, letters from Virginia to Plymouth’, 1628-30. Catalogue Ref. HCA 15/1.

Source 5: ‘A letter from Jerard Gore to Anthony Williams. Send a spaniel, sugar, pipes, tobacco, 5 September 1623. Catalogue Ref: SP 46/66 f.24.

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External links

Royal Collection Trust: overview of James’ reign and collection of images of the King

James I, King of England. A Counterblaste to Tobacco. London: 1604. This is available to read online here: Image © HathiTrust Digital Library

The National Archives: ‘The Road to Jamestown’, a talk exploring why the English Crown turned their attention to the New World in the early sixteenth century.

The National Archives blog: ‘Pocahontas in London, 1616-17’

Intoxicating Spaces: The Impact of New Intoxicants on Urban Spaces in Europe, 1600-1850. See in particular ‘Smoke on the Water: Tobacco, Pirates, and Seafaring in the Early Modern World’.

Not Just the Tudors Podcast, created by Suzannah Lipscomb: ‘Ruffs, Pipes, and Pearls’ with Dr Lauren Woking, and ‘The Founding of Jamestown’ with Dr Misha Ewen.

Playing cards found at sea as part of the Prize Papers Project at The National Archives.

Connections to curriculum

Key stage 5

These documents can be used to support any of the exam board specifications covering the Early Stuarts.

AQA GCE History ‘A’ level

1D: Stuart Britain and the Crisis of Monarchy, 1603-1702

OCR GCE History ‘A’ Level

Unit Y108: The early Stuarts and the Origins of the Civil War 1603-1660

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