Who brought tobacco and potatoes to England? Detailed answer

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Who brought tobacco and potatoes to England? Detailed answer

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Who brought tobacco and potatoes to England?

Not at all what you think. Walter Reilly - poet, courtier, discoverer and scholar - is a typical example of how popular myths themselves are attracted to attractive personalities. His current fame rests almost entirely on things he didn't do.

The first report of an Englishman smoking came from Bristol and concerned a sailor who was seen "puffing smoke from his nostrils". He blew smoke in 1556, four years before Reilly was born.

Reilly never personally visited Virginia or any other parts of North America. The first tobacco was sent to France by the ambassador of this country at the Portuguese court, Jean Nico, from whose name the word "nicotine" comes. This happened in 1560, and it is from France, and not from the New World, that tobacco enters England.

Reilly was a heavy smoker and probably only helped to popularize the habit of tobacco after he himself adopted it from Sir Francis Drake.

The term "smoking" (English smoking) is a neologism of the end of the XNUMXth century; until then, in England they used to say "drinking smoke".

Potatoes became known in Spain by the middle of the XNUMXth century, and apparently came to the British Isles through Europe rather than directly from America. Being a member of the nightshade family, the plant was considered poisonous (which its upper parts actually are). When Reilly planted the first potato in his garden in Ireland, neighbors threatened to burn down his house.

Little by little, the potatoes took root. In the middle of the XNUMXth century, the surgeon William Salmon claimed that the potato cured tuberculosis, rabies, and also "strengthens the seed and provokes lust, causing fertility in both sexes."

As for the cloak spread out in front of the queen right on the puddle, this legend arose after Reilly's death thanks to Thomas Fuller, an English historian, theologian and biographer. And it owes its world fame to Sir Walter Scott and his novel "Kenilworth" (1821), dedicated to the times of Queen Elizabeth.

Raleigh's surname was written differently, but apparently pronounced as "Ro-lai". And the name was probably pronounced "Water".

Fifteen years Reilly spent on death row, awaiting execution and along the way working on his grandiose idea - a five-volume work "History of the World". However, he never advanced beyond 1300 BC. e.

After the execution, Reilly's head was embalmed and given to his wife. The widow carried it everywhere with her in a velvet bag until her own death twenty-nine years later, after which the head of the most romantic pirate of the Elizabethan era returned to Reilly's tomb, located in the church of St. Margaret in Westminster.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

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