SOURCE: Anderson, Susan Campbell. “A Matter of Authority: James I and the Tobacco War.” Comitatus 29 (1998): 136-63.

In the following essay, Anderson examines James's attitude toward tobacco and its use through a survey of his writing on the subject.

In the summer of 1604, only a year after acceding to the English throne, King James I implemented a daring, and some might say foolhardy, measure: complaining that, “at this day, through evil custom and the toleration thereof … a number of riotous and disordered persons of mean and base condition … do spend most of their time in that idle vanity,”¹ he raised the duty on tobacco from 2d. to 6s.8d. per pound, a staggering increase of 4000 percent. Given the enormous popularity of smoking at the time, his decree was bound to be unpopular. At roughly the same time, an anonymous pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, appeared in the bookstalls, and...