From Chapter 4: So far Markham: but according to another account, when Rupert told him that there would be no battle, the Duke betook himself to his coach, "lit his pipe, and making himself very comfortable, fell asleep." The original authority, however, for the whole story is to be found in a paper of notes by Clarendon on the affairs of the North, preserved among his MSS. In this paper Clarendon writes: "The marq. asked the prince what he would do? His highness answered, 'Wee will charge them to-morrow morninge.' My lord asked him whether he were sure the enimy would not fall on them sooner? He answered, 'No'; and the marquisse thereupon going to his coach hard by, and callinge for a pype
of tobacco, before he could take it the enimy charged, and instantly all the prince's horse were routed."
From Chapter Chapter 8: Cowper then goes on to attack tobacco in lines which show how unpopular
smoking at that date was with ladies, and which have since often been quoted by anti-tobacconists with grateful appreciation:
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours;
Thou art indeed the drug a gardener wants,
To poison vermin that infest his plants,
But are we so to wit and beauty blind,
As to despise the glory of our kind,
And show the softest minds and fairest forms
As little mercy as the grubs and worms?
Notwithstanding this "satiric wipe," it is not likely that Cowper would have had much sympathy with John Wesley, who, in his detestation of what had been his father's solace at Epworth, forbade his preachers either to smoke or to take snuff.