ABSTRACT
In August 1633, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, received disturbing reports out of Dublin. The vaults of the most important church in Ireland, Christ Church Cathedral, had been converted into ‘tiplinge roomes for beare, wine and tobacho’. Even on Sundays, these public houses allegedly attracted large numbers of ‘popish recusantes’. Unruly customers disturbed the Protestant congregation, profaned the altar by using it as a bench, apparently to take a nap, or worse. However, the smoke proved an even greater annoyance. If there was ever to be a Gunpowder Plot in Christ Church where the Irish government worshipped, and alcohol and tobacco instead of gunpowder would have to take the blame: ‘Though there is noe danger of blowing up the assembly above their heads, yet there is of poisening them with their fumes’ (National Archives (NA hereafter) UK, State Papers 16/244/72 (SP hereafter)). At first glance, this seems a straightforward case. The Church of Ireland experienced profound upheaval in the 1630s. The Laudian reforms, named after the prolific and highly political archbishop, sparked keen interest in religious purity and church discipline. In Ireland, they were implemented by clergymen like John Bramhall (1593/1594-1663), the man who wrote the aforementioned report. Bramhall, after a successful career in the hierarchy of the Church of England, arrived in Ireland in July 1633 in the company of the newly-appointed Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth and became treasurer of Christ Church in early September (McCafferty, 2007: 28-32; Cunningham, 2007: 23-40). While historians have sometimes mentioned Bramhall’s report in passing, they have never explained the goings on in the vaults of Christ Church shortly before he took office. For instance, Karl S. Bottigheimer, in his famous debate with Nicholas Canny on why the Reformation eventually failed in Ireland, called the public houses that Bramhall had described ‘in all likelihood quite innocuous’ and went on to talk about things he found more important (Bottigheimer, 1985: 201). This chapter will take Bramhall’s letter on its own terms to highlight key developments in seventeenth-century history and write a micro-history that aims to be both local and global (Medick, 1996: passim).1 First, it will show how the Laudian reforms gained a foothold in Ireland, thus providing context for a reappraisal of Bramhall’s report. Second, it will describe Christ Church Cathedral in the 1630s to highlight how Bramhall and others reshaped long-established
economic and social boundaries in Irish society. Third, and in imitation of Sidney W. Mintz’s seminal Sweetness and Power, it uses tobacco as a litmus test to assay English global expansion in the seventeenth century (Mintz, 1985: 7).
