A counterblaste to tobacco.. . . . by James I
This month’s featured text is A Counterblaste to Tobacco. . . by James I (1566-1625). James Stewart was the only son of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. After Mary Queen of Scot's abdication from the throne of Scotland, James became King James VI of Scotland at the age of thirteen months. Upon Elizabeth I's death, he became King James I of England in March of 1603. His nickname during his reign was "the wisest fool in Christendom," an apt title given the many paradoxes in the man himself. On the one hand, he was a great scholar and poet both producing many of his own books on religion and kingship, and even poetry. Among James's many books are Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottish Poesie (1584), Daemonologie (1597), The Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1600), Basilikon Doron (1600), A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), and Meditation on the Lords Prayer (1619). Additionally, James was a great patron of poets like Ben Jonson and a patron of scholars and translators like those who eventually produced the first authorized edition of what became known as the King James Bible. On the other hand, James' ideas about monarchy, specifically the divine right of kings, put him into constant conflict with Parliament, and his disastrous foreign and financial policies which left England in a state that his son, Charles I, was unable to remedy, and in part caused the English Civil War.

A Counterblaste to Tobacco is one of the interesting tracts in the history of both the early British Empire and the tobacco trade. Tobacco was first brought to England by John Hawkins in 1565 and successfully cultivated by John Rolfe in 1516-17. By the 1630s, tobacco was the leading crop produced in the Virginia Colony. King James, having reputedly gotten sick the first time he smoked it and being theologically opposed to Christians defiling themselves by engaging in customs (like smoking) practiced by barbarians (like the American Indians), remarked in Counterblaste that "Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye--hateful to the nose--harmful to the brain--dangerous to the lungs--and, in the black stinking fumes therof, nearest resembling the horrid Stygian fumes of the pit that is bottomless." He also remarked that after autopsies of smokers their "inward parts. . . were infected with an oily kind of soot" and that if he ever had the devil to dinner, he'd offer him a pipe. Many disagreed with him though and extolled the benefits of tobacco especially for medicinal use. European doctors of the time claimed that it could help to cure toothache, falling fingernails, worms, halitosis, lockjaw, and cancer. James soon became more amenable to tobacco as well when he realized he could tax it, which he did by over 2,000%. In all, A Counterblaste to Tobacco does show that people were far from unified about the effects, good or ill, of smoking, a debate which still continues today. Nonetheless, tobacco was a valuable commodity that helped to build up the Virginia colony and helped to alleviate James I's mounting debts, albeit unsuccessfully. The publication of the book also helps to show this paradox of James I's character. He was prescient in understanding the harm of tobacco yet happy to profit from its revenues. A trait which was not lost on Parliament and helped to lead to the continuing disillusionment of people over the supposed divine right of monarchs.

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