Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/131

 gth s. ix. FEB. is, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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and Katherine his wife levied a fine with him and others for a moiety of the third part ; while in 1435 William Mitton, son and heir of Sir Richard and Margaret Mitton, levied another fine with John Harpur and others for another moiety of the third part. Having thus acquired a moiety of the manor, "John Harpur of Ruysshale, esquire, and Alianora his wife," parted with it in 1458, 36 Henry VI., to Thomas Hethe.* Of the further fortunes of the manor I have no information.

To end with the point from which we started, I think we have in the descent of the manor a clear explanation of the reason why the king's writs were attested at Pontefract- on-Thames. King Edward II., in travelling from Surrey or Essex into Kent, stayed a dav or two with his trusty counsellor John A bel, in the manor house of which the last vestiges have been absorbed in Millwall Dock, and there transacted his official business. Although John Abel was dead in 1326, when the king's little son passed the night at Pontef ract with his gouvernante, the hospitable traditions of the house survived, and Joan Abel, with her husband Sir William Vaughan, doubtless did their best to entertain the party. In con- clusion, I may say that while I am gratified at being able to throw some light on one of the obscurer points connected with the his- tory of mediaeval London, I should be glad to receive some further information on the later history of the manor, which seems to have been closely connected with the Essex manor of West Tilbury.t

W. F. PRIDEAUX.

TOBACCO : NEW ITEMS.

1 . IN * Travels of Evliya Effendi ' (2 nd S. v. 453) it is stated that, in converting a building about one thousand years old at Constantinople into a monument of Sultan Mustafa, a tobacco pipe was found among the stones which smelt of smoke.

Here is a coincidence taken from the Evening News, 20 Sept., 1901 :

" Whilst digging up the soil in the garden con- nected with the Egerton (Manor) House at Wine- wall, near Colne, the gardener came upon a clay smoking-pipe in fairly good condition, having a short stem. The date is 1450, the initials are

P. W. With the exception of being of a smaller concentration, the style is somewhat similar to the current make. A strong tobacco odour is emitted from the pipe. St. James's Gazette"

2. In the Athenaeum for 1 August, 1857, is a long article on tobacco. There it is stated

i age, i. Jx)~8. t Cf. the Genealogist, xviii. 183.
 * 'Calendar of Feet of Fines,' ed. Hardy and

that the Chinese say that they had a know- ledge of tobacco long, long ago. In Hone's 4 Every-Day Book ' is a short article, in which it is stated that

" Mr. Crocker describes a pipe which was found at Bannockstown, County Kildare, sticking between the teeth of a human skull, and it is accompanied by a paper, which on the authority of Herodotus : Strabo : Pomponius Mela : and Solinus : goes to prove that the Northern Nations of Europe were acquainted with tobacco, or an herb of similar pro- perties, and that they smoked it throifgh small tubes of course, long before the existence of America was known."

3. Although 'N. & Q.' records James I.'s hatred of tobacco and Charles I.'s and Charles II.'s dislike for it, yet it does not mention, I think, that

" the Tobacco pipe Makers' Company were Incor- porated by Charter, their privileges existing through the City of London and Westminster, the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales ; they have a Master, four Wardens, and about twenty Assistants. They were first Incorporated by King James I. in his seventeenth year. Confirmed again by Charles I. ; and lastly, the 29th April in the fifteenth year of King Charles II. in all the privi- leges of their aforesaid Charter. Their Coat of Arms is a tobacco plant in full blossom, and the device is said to be given by this Company on all their Publick Occasions." Stow.

4. No contributor has yet referred to ' Par- ticulars concerning Tobacco, digested in a Chronological Order from Prof. Beck man n's "Introduction to Technology."' It is much too lengthy to send you. 1 extract the last paragraph only :

' He remarks that even before the discovery of the fourth Quarter of the Globe, a sort of tobacco was smoked in Asia. This conjecture being made to the celebrated traveller, M. Pallas, he gave the following answer : * That in Asia, and especially in China, the use of tobacco for smoking is more ancient than the discovery of the New World.' I, too, scarcely entertain a doubt. Among the Chinese, and among the Mogul tribes who had the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and become so indispensable a luxury ; the tobacco purse affixed to their belt so necessary an article of dress ; the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have taken the model of theirs, so original ; and lastly the pre- paration of the yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into a pipe, so peculiar ; that we cannot possibly derive all this Erom America by way of Europe ; especially as India, where the habit of smoking tobacco is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China. May we not expect to find traces of this custom in the first account of the Voyages of the Portuguese

and Dutch to China? Ulloa says it is not

Drobable that the Europeans learned the use of

Tobacco from America, tor, as it is very ancient in

he Eastern Countries, it is natural to suppose that

he knowledge of it came to Europe from those

regions, by means of the intercourse carried on

with them by the commercial States on the Mediter-