From Chapter 1:
"'It requires no effort of the fancy to picture these three men [Shakespeare, Bacon and Raleigh] as lounging in a window of Durham House, puffing the new Indian weed from silver bowls, discussing the highest themes in poetry and science, while gazing on the flower-beds and the river, the darting barges of dame and cavalier, and the distant pavilions of Paris garden and the Globe.'" This is a pure "effort of the fancy" so far as Bacon and Shakespeare are concerned. Shakespeare's absolute silence about tobacco forbids us to assume that he smoked; but of Raleigh the picture may be true enough. The house had, as Aubrey tells us, "a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is as pleasant perhaps as any in the world"; and it would be strange indeed if the owner of the noble house did not often smoke a contemplative pipe in the window of that pleasant turret.

From Chapter 8:
Parr is said on one occasion to have called for a pipe after taking a meal at a coaching-inn called the "Bush" at Bristol, when the waiter told him that smoking was not allowed at the Bush. Parr persisted, but the authorities at the inn were firm in their refusal to allow anything so vulgar as smoking on their premises, whereupon Parr is said to have exclaimed: "Why, man, I've smoked in the dining-room of every nobleman in England. The Duchess of Devonshire said I could smoke in every room in her house but her dressing-room, and here, in this dirty public-house of Bristol you forbid smoking! Amazing! Bring me my bill." The learned doctor exaggerated no doubt as regards the facilities given him for smoking; for it was his overbearing way not to ask for leave to smoke, but to smoke wherever he went, whether invited to do so or not; but the story shows the prejudice against smoking which was found in many places as a result of the attitude of the fashionable world towards tobacco.