Sir Walter Scotts - Pontefract Priory

The base tobacco for this snuff is Black Cavendish blended with flue cured Burley, Zimbabwe and Bright Leaf Virginia, sauced with a syrup made by simmering liquorice roots in Muscovado sugar and cased with an extract of liquorice roots suspended in alcohol for six months.

Decoctions of the liquorice shrub Glycyrrhiza glabra, had been the universal cure-all for pulmonary complaints since antiquity. It was first brought to Britain in the early 12th century by Spanish monks from the Cluniac monastery in Sahagun visiting their brethren at the newly founded priory at Ponterfract. The plants thrived and were soon established in the herb garths of other monastic houses in Yorkshire.

The origin of the sweet loved by children dates from the 1700's, when George Dunhill, an apothecary in Pontefract, added sugar to a decoction of liquorice root to create a form of cough lozenge. In rural Yorkshire and Lancashire, liquorice is always referred to as "Spanish".