The Tobacco Lords were a group of Scottish merchants and slave traders who in the 18th century made enormous fortunes by trading in tobacco. Many became so wealthy that they adopted the lifestyle of aristocrats, lavishing vast sums on great houses and splendid churches. History In 1707, the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England gave Scottish merchants access to the English colonies, especially in North America. Glasgow's position on the River Clyde, where the westerlies hit Europe as well as in other places like Bristol, Nantes, or Bordeaux, may have been an opportunity for its merchants. The French monarchy granted to Glasgow in 1747 a monopoly for the importation of tobacco into French territories. The deepening of the Clyde in 1768 provided a further advantage, because Glasgow ships were built specifically for the Atlantic crossing and were generally bigger than those of other ports. The tobacco trade was part of broader trade that linked exports of consumer and manufactured goods from Europe with the North American and Caribbean colonies. Operated on plantation economies fueled by slave labour, these colonies supplied products that found a ready market in Europe. The triangle involved merchants carrying manufactured goods from Europe to West Africa to sell or exchange for slaves which they transported on to America and the Caribbean. On the third leg back to Europe they carried tobacco, rum, cotton, sugar and the like. From 1710, Glasgow became the centre of an economic boom which lasted nearly fifty years. The Tobacco Lords personified this boom and were the nouveau riche of the mid-eighteenth century. Arguably the most successful of these merchants was John Glassford, who entered the tobacco trade in 1750 and had soon acquired a fleet of vessels and many tobacco stores across New England. Celebrated in his lifetime, Glassford was the most extensive ship owner of his generation in Scotland, and one of the four merchants who laid the foundation of the commercial greatness of Glasgow through the tobacco trade. Tobias Smollett wrote of a meeting with Glassford in 1771: Palaces and churches Glasgow merchants made such fortunes that they adopted the style of aristocrats in their superior manner and in their lavish homes and churches. The merchants' Calvinist background made sure, however, that display was always of rich but sober materials – black silk clothes, (though startlingly set off by scarlet cloaks), black three-cornered hats, silver- (or even gold-)