UK Cigar Scene Magazine October Issue 10 | Page 32

The Worshipful Company of Tobacco
Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders

The livery companies of the City of London have their roots in the ancient trade
associations and guilds of the many trades of the city.
The Company was originally founded in 1619 as a
trade association with authority over the makers
of clay tobacco pipes.
Long before Sir Francis Drake brought the first
recorded cargo of tobacco back to England from
the New World in 1573, British sailors were already
smoking and chewing the leaves – a pleasure they
had acquired from their Spanish and Portuguese
counterparts. What Drake can be credited for
however is discovering a method of curing tobacco
which allowed it to be preserved and made
available to everyone - at a cost.
Hand in hand with the economic expansion of
the Elizabethan “Golden Age”, tobacco rocketed in
popularity. In 1601, with the formation of the East
India Company, a reliable method of trade was
established and exotic imports (such as tobacco)
poured into the country.
When the Scottish King James acceded to the
English throne in 1603, it was clear that smoking
was no passing craze and income from import
taxes was already an important part of the
Exchequer’s revenue.
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Despite publishing his famous pamphlet
Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, the King
never attempted to curtail this lucrative source
of income, and by 1613 there were over 7,000
“tobagies” selling tobacco which, due to its high
cost, was smoked in small quantities in tiny clay
pipes. With the imposition of such high levels
of taxation, smuggling and domestic cultivation
increased significantly.
So it was that in 1619 King James 1 forbade the
growing of tobacco in England, ordered that all
tobacco imports must enter the country only via
London and granted the first Royal Charter to a
group of Westminster-based tobacco-pipe makers,
initially for the supervision of the production of
clay pipes.
In 1619 the first Royal Charter was granted to
a group called the Tobacco-pipe Makers of
Westminster in the County of Middlesex. This
damaged the trade of rival pipe making companies
– particularly those in Bristol - granting this
London syndicate a monopoly over the supply of
pipe clay to all other pipe makers – something that
they exploited with enthusiasm.