10
THE CLAY TOBACCO-PIPE IN BRITAIN
William Harrison, Rector of Radwinter in Essex, writing in
1588, says that in 1573, "the smoke of the Indian herb Tobacco"
was "taken in from a little ladell" and was "greatly used in
England", although it seems likely that Indian-cured tobacco,
imported from America, must have been smoked at this early
date. The year 1586 may be taken as the earliest certain date
when tobacco cultivation was attempted in this country, and its
drying and curing sufficiently understood; the making of tobacco-,
pipes must already have started on a small and experimental
scale by this date, although the earliest record of a tobacco-pipe
makers' name is dated 160316.
THE EARLIEST PIPES
At first, silver seems to have been used in England to make
the "little ladell" for smoking by the wealthy, while a half-walnut
shell pierced with a stout straw served the yeoman who dared
experiment with the new weed2. But it soon became apparent
that neither metal nor a thin shell was adequate and comfortable
to contain smouldering tobacco, and a fine kaolin from Purbeck
in Dorset7 was then used to mould the "clay pipes" which have
persisted in general use almost to our own day, and which in turn
has given the name "pipe-clay" to that material.
The wealthy smokers at the turn of the sixteenth century,
while willing to admit the superiority of clay as a material for
pipe bowls, were yet loth to give up the luxury of silver for the
stem and mouthpiece. So we find occasionally the little clay bowl
mounted in silver, the elegant appurtenance of a Jacobean noble-
man defying the fulminations of his Sovereign; indeed, the
silver-mounting of clay pipe bowls (sometimes broken favourites)
has continued to the present time.
EARLY OPPOSITION TO SMOKING
James I, who wrote his famous 'Counterblaste to Tobacco' in
1604, had very hard things to say of this 'filthie habit" and other
European sovereigns followed his lead, condemning the smoking
habit with varying degrees of severity and punishment.
The Star Chamber of England in 1614 put a tax of 6/10 a
pound on tobacco. At first, this was imposed as a royal dis-
couragement to smokers, but later, when it was found that the
habit could not be suppressed so easily, the tax was retained as a
valuable source of revenue to the Crown; a nice British compro-
mise.
Perhaps the smoking habits of men in the early seventeenth
century were rather beastly; the phrase "drinking tobacco", used
commonly of what we should call smoking, together with frequent
reference to exhalation through the nose, imply the "carrying
away of noisesome rheums and humours", as its supporters
claimed.