From Chapter 3:
It is uncertain when licences were first issued for the sale of tobacco. Probably they were issued in London some time before it was considered necessary to license dealers in other parts of the country. Among the Municipal Records of Exeter is the following note: "358. Whitehall, 31 August 1633. The Lords of the Council to the Chamber. 'Whereas his Ma^tie to prevent the excesse of the use of tobacco, and to set an order to those that regrate and sell or utter it by retayle, who observe noe reasonable rates or prizes [prices], nor take care that it be wholsome for men's bodyes that shall use it,' has caused letters to be sent to the chief Officers of Citties and towns requiring them to certify 'in what places it might be fitt to suffer ye retayleing of tobacco and how many be licenced in each of those places to use trade'; and the City of Exeter having made a return the Lords sent a list of those which are to be licensed, and order that no others be permitted to sell."

From Chapter 5:
Among the many medicinal virtues attributed to tobacco was its supposed value as a preservative from contagion at times of plague. Hearne, the antiquary, writing early in 1721, said that he had been told that in the Great Plague of London of 1665 none of those who kept tobacconists' shops suffered from it, and this belief no doubt enhanced the medical reputation of the weed. I have also seen it stated that during the cholera epidemics of 1831, 1849, and 1866 not one London tobacconist died from that disease; but good authority for the statement seems to be lacking. Hutton, in his "History of Derby," says that when that town was visited by the plague in 1665, that at the "Headless-cross ... the market-people, having their mouths primed with tobacco as a preservative, brought their provisions.... It was observed, that this cruel affliction never attempted the premises of a tobacconist, a tanner or a shoemaker." Whatever ground there may have been for the belief in the prophylactic effect of smoking, there can be no doubt that in the seventeenth century it was firmly held. Howell in one of his "Familiar Letters" dated January 1, 1646, says that the smoke of tobacco is "one of the wholesomest sents that is against all contagious airs, for it overmasters all other smells, as King James they say found true, when being once a hunting, a showr of rain drave him into a Pigsty for shelter, wher he caus'd a pipe full to Be taken of purpose." But here Mr. Howell is certainly drawing the long-bow. One cannot imagine the author of the "Counterblaste" countenancing the use of tobacco under any circumstances.