The Social History of Great Britain During the Reigns of the Stuarts

expect, from its being sold dear. "Saloop is the root of the male orchis; when boiled, it is somewhat hot and disagreeable.”* Coffee-houses were numerous; they had them both by land and by water: there was a large one (and it must have been a very pleasant one) floating on the Thames. This, in summer weather, must have been a delightful place of resort, away from clatter and dust or mud, and enjoying the cool, refreshing breeze, occasionally enlivened by the distant sounds of some charming peel of bells "swelling with musical cadence upon the listening ear."

If the present race had so fine an opportunity of passing away a few hours in such a sort of half social solitude, with " the fineflavoured pinch" or "the fragrant weed,"

"Where care, like smoke, in turbid wreaths

Round the gay ceiling flies," HORACE.

how pleasant would it be to muse on the following lines, by Young:

"Let not the cooings of the world allure thee:
Which of her lovers ever found her true ?"

TOBACCO AND SNUFF.

"Tobacco's pungent leaves proclaim

The Indians naught but death could tame."

THESE two articles (which may be spoken of as one) were the cause of much pamphleteering. King James lashed its use with all his feeble powers, which brought forth replies from various wits in prose and poetry. It has outlived all the witlings, and seems to have become one of the necessaries of life.† It has not the ill effects which were formerly assigned to it From a work of Dr. Holland, entitled " Medical Notes and Reflections," 1839, it does not appear to be a cause of dyspepsia. Snuff-taking increased very much after Sir George Rooke's expedition to Spain, great quantities having been taken and sold as prizes.

Dr. Beach, in his "Family Physician," recommends the following compound for the head: "High laurel, sassafras, and blood-root, of each one ounce, well mixed and finely powdered." * Cooke's Third Voyage.

It was a Captain Lane, in 1586, who taught Raleigh smoking. The English smoking has generally been attributed to that enterprising and un

fortunate man.

According to Dodsley, (on agriculture,) they also used the follwing compound:

-He the salubrious leaf

Of endial sage, the purple flowering head
Of fragrant lavender, enlivening mint,
Valerian's fetid smell, endows benign
With their cephalic virtues."

No doubt, like many other things which we take, it may be abused; for Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, died smoking tobacco: but it has its use. Bulwer has thus spoken of it: "A pipe! it is a great soother, a pleasant comforter; blue devils fly before its honest breath; it ripens the heart; and the man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan." Charles Lamb, the poet, thus speaks of it enthusiastically:

"For thy sake, tobacco, I

Would do anything else but die."

Light tongs, with a long rivet, like tailors' sheers, and a spring attached to make them close, were soon introduced for the more ready reaching and handing round a piece of hot coal for lighting pipes. I saw an ancient pair, of polished steel, very bright, the two ends which held the coal filed and fashioned like a delicate lady's hand. These seem now to have gone out of make; but, I expect, would be worth reviving in this smoking country.

If this should meet the eye of any one inclined to speculate upon the subject, I will give them the proper instructions. I should like to see, in an equal company of smokers and anti-smokers, some knotty question propounded to each, to be answered off-hand, and each answer taken down without any communication with each other. I have no doubt but the deliberation the whiffs would occasion would be the cause why the smokers' solution would be considered the best: smoking stops twattle.

In this country I have noticed their use as being very conducive to sociability; as being an easy and pleasant introduction; as a means of lessening some aristocratic pride, which riches in all societies create. The snuff-box, the cigar, and the pipe, with its filling and lighting, seem to be as open to all as the wild prairie is to a new race of squatters.

This article was soon made exciseable, from which an immense revenue is derived; and none is allowed to be grown in any part of Great Britain. As the greater part is exported from this country, the exise is a benefit to it, rather than otherwise.

LAWS RESPECTING RELIGION.

"How long halt ye between two opinions?" 1 KINGS 18: 21.

"One faith, one measure, and one coin

Would all the world in harmony conjoin."

BEDILIUS ALL MONATIS.

THE religious persecutions all over Europe produced some extraordinary circumstances in forcing people to emigrate. I will first give some of the English enactments.

The first attack on the monastics was the suppression of the Knights' Templars, by Edward II., about 1307.

The first act to suppress the monasteries was passed 1535, by Henry VIII,

The next act was in the first year of Edward VI. ; an act against speaking irreverently against taking the sacraments in both kinds."

The next was in the second year of the same reign: there came forth the book of common prayer, and rites and ceremonies. The next was in the third year of the same reign: the priests were permitted to marry.

In the first year of Queen Mary's reign all these laws were repealed, and the Catholic religion re-established.

The first year of Queen Elizabeth she abolished again the Catholic religion; and an oath was imposed upon all people to take, declaring her supremacy in all things, spiritual and temporal.

Her second act re-enacted the common prayer book.

Her third act excluded all from any share in the tithes, or any other church property, who did not swear to, and subscribe to, certain articles.

Another act, "to restrain the queen majesty's subjects in their true obedience." This act was made against all manner of dissenters, then called non-conformists, (there were other acts against the Catholics,) who were called "schismatical and wicked people." These were enacted for punishment by fine, imprisonment, banishment, or death.

These laws continued through the reigns of James I., Charles I.,* under Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II.; and never began to be mitigated until the reign of James II., which mitigation was the sole cause of driving him from the throne.

In 1772 Lord Folkstone said, in a debate, that that part of the liturgy which calls King Charles a martyr, was composed by Father Patré, the Jesuit confessor of King James II. This debate, which was moved by Mr. Montague, to get rid of this fast, was lost in the house of commons by a vote of 97 for, and 127 against, abolishing it.

In the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Edward an act was passed" against quarrelling and fighting in churches and church-yards:" the constant disputing about religion, which these laws created, caused these quarrels.

The makers of these persecuting laws did not seem to consider that

Religion was intended

For something else than to be mended;"

nor attend to the following maxim of Confucius : "He who persecutes a good man, makes war against himself and all mankind."

The learned Selden says: σε Νο man was punished for perjury by man's law until Queen Elizabeth's reign; it was left to God as a sin against him: the reason was, because it was so hard a thing to prove a man perjured. I might misunderstand him, and yet he swears as he thought."-Table Talk.

A writer in the Boston Pilot (W. Comstock) very properly observes: "Cromwell had found fanaticism very serviceable in the field, where, like steam power, it propelled his followers to a charge which battled every obstruction before it, until the bravest cavaliers rolled in the dust at the feet of the saints; yet he discovered that authority, obedience, system, and regularity were indispensable requisites in affairs of state. Accordingly he seized the reins of government with a strong hand, and vaulted into the vacant throne as naturally as if he had been brought up to the business."

In Edward VI.'s reign an act was passed, compelling people to pay tithe on their personal labour in the exercise of any art, trade, or employment.

An act, called the "Test and Corporation Act," was passed in the reign of Charles II., which excluded from all offices in corporations, and from all offices of trust and emolument under the crown, all persons who should not receive the sacraments according to the rites and ceremonies of the established church. Every dissenter was thus shut out from all offices of trust, and also out of the universities, who had any scruples against these "rites and ceremonies."

In 1602 there was a proclamation to restrain the Puritans from going to Virginia. Bishop Bancroft would at that time, if he could, have extended his law-church all over the world, and kept the people at home to endure it, whether they liked it or not.

In 1604 King James I. expelled the Jesuits; while the revocation of the edict of Nantes sent over plenty of industrious, ingenious manufacturers to London, (all Protestants.)

Archbishop Laud told them, "Though their opinions were. connived at, yet it was not fitting such a schism should be tolerated."

"The Church of England, as by law established," has yet to learn the following lines of Dryden parodied:

"The pulpit's laws the pulpit's patrons give;

Those who live to preach, must preach to live."

PERSECUTION IN THE OLDEN TIME.

THE following curious document is a specimen of what was done in old times:

"A special release granted by the crown, June 24th, 1634, to Sir Edward Cary, Knight, with a grant to Thomas Risdon, Esq., and Christopher Maynard, Gent. WOLSELEY

"Sir Edward Cary, of Marldom, Knt., was convicted in law on the 16th of March, 1629, of being a recusant. In virtue of a writ from the crown office, an inquisition was taken October 1st, 1630, in the Parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, by John Davye, Esq., High Sheriff of Devon, by which it was certified that the said Sir Edward Cary was seized of and in The whole Manor of St. Mary Church, of the clear (per annum) £5 0

value of

The Manor of Coffinswell,