From Chapter 1:
Another Elizabethan who is often said to have smoked the first pipe in England is Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Virginia, who came home with Drake in 1586. Lane is said to have given Sir Walter Raleigh an Indian pipe and to have shown him how to use it. There is no original authority, however, for the statement that Lane first smoked tobacco in England, and, moreover, he was not the first English visitor to Virginia to return to this country. One Captain Philip Amadas accompanied Captain Barlow, who commanded on the occasion of Raleigh's first voyage of discovery, when the country was formally taken possession of and named Virginia in honour of Queen Elizabeth. This was early in 1584. The two captains reached England in September 1584, bringing with them the natives of whom King James I, in his "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," speaks as "some two or three Savage men," who "were brought in, together with this Savage custome," i.e. of smoking. It is extremely improbable that Captains Amadas and Barlow, when reporting to Raleigh on their expedition, did not also make him acquainted with the Indian practice of smoking. This would be two years before the return of Ralph Lane.

From Chapter 2:
Tobacco engages
Both sexes, all ages,
The poor as well as the wealthy;
From the court to the cottage,
From childhood to dotage,
Both those that are sick and the healthy.

This chapter and the next deal with the history of smoking during the first fifty years after its introduction as a social habit—roughly to 1630.

The use of tobacco spread with extraordinary rapidity among all classes of society. During the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign and through the early decades of the seventeenth century tobacco-pipes were in full blast. Tobacco was triumphant.

From Chapter 4:
In this country tobacco is said to have invaded even the House of Commons itself. Mr. J.H. Burn, in his "Descriptive Catalogue of London Tokens," writes: "About the middle of the seventeenth century it was ordered: That no member of the House do presume to smoke tobacco in the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In "Mercurius Pragmaticus," December 19-26, 1648, the writer says on December 20, speaking of the excluded members: "Col. Pride standing sentinell at the door, denyed entrance, and caused them to retreat into the Lobby where they used to drink ale and tobacco."

From Chapter 2:
The satirical Dekker might class "tobacconists" with "feather-makers, cobweb-lawne-weavers, perfumers, young country gentlemen and fools," but he bears invaluable witness to the devotion of the fashionable men of the day to the "costlye and gentleman-like Smoak."

It was customary for a man to carry a case of pipes about with him. In a play of 1609 ("Everie Woman in her Humour") there is an inventory of the contents of a gentleman's pocket, with a value given for each item, which displays certainly a curious assortment of articles. First comes a brush and comb worth fivepence, and next a looking-glass worth three halfpence. With these aids to vanity are a case of tobacco-pipes valued at fourpence, half an ounce of tobacco valued at sixpence, and three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, "in money and golde." Satirists of course made fun of the smoker's pocketful of apparatus. A pamphleteer of 1609 says: "I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast from his mouth."