From Chapter 2:
smoking was soon as common in the country as in London. On Wednesday, April 16, 1621, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons, Sir William Stroud, who seems to have been a worthy disciple of that tobacco-hater, King James I, moved that he "would have tobacco banished wholly out of the kingdom, and that it may not be brought in from any part, nor used amongst us"; and Sir Grey Palmes said "that if tobacco be not banished, it will overthrow 100,000 men in England, for now it is so common that he hath seen ploughmen take it as they are at plough." Perhaps this terrible picture of a ploughman smoking as he followed his lonely furrow did not impress the House so much as Sir Grey evidently thought it would; at all events, tobacco was not banished.

From Chapter 8:
Another famous parson, the Rev. John Newton, was a smoker, and so was Cowper's other clerical friend, that learned and able Dissenter, the Rev. William Bull, whose whole mien and bearing were so dignified that on two occasions he was mistaken for a bishop. Cowper appreciated snuff, but did not care for smoking, and when he wrote to Unwin, describing his new-made friend in terms of admiration, he concluded—"Such a man is Mr. Bull. But—he smokes tobacco. Nothing is perfection 'Nihil est ab omni parte beatum.'" Bull, however, was not excessive in his smoking, for his daily allowance was but three pipes. In his garden at Newport Pagnell, Bull showed Cowper a nook in which he had placed a bench, where he said he found it very refreshing to smoke his pipe and meditate. "Here he sits," wrote Cowper, "with his back against one brick wall, and his nose against another, which must, you know, be very refreshing, and greatly assist meditation."