Walter Long

Sir Walter Long (1560 or 1565? – October 1610) was an English knight and landowner, born in Wiltshire, the son of Sir Robert Long and his wife Barbara Carne. Public service He was elected knight of the shire (MP) for Wiltshire in 1593. In 1601 Long was appointed High Sheriff of Wiltshire and in 1602 Deputy Lieutenant of Wiltshire under Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford. The two Sir Walters Long was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, (Raleigh's brother Carew had married Long's mother-in-law, widow of the first Sir John Thynne of Longleat), and according to historian John Aubrey, Long was the first in the country to introduce the fashion of smoking tobacco, his friend Raleigh being the first to bring it to England. Long's home of South Wraxall Manor is one of the houses in England where legend says tobacco was first smoked by the two Sir Walters, although the same legend has been told of other locations. Aubrey also alludes to Sir Walter Long's ostentatious lifestyle, saying he kept a trumpeter, and on at least one occasion, he rode to Marlborough with thirty servants and retainers.