A History of Food in 100 Recipes. William Sitwell

Raleigh himself is supposed to have planted some in his estate garden at Killulagh in Ireland. Unconvinced by them, he got his gardener to dig them up, whereupon the man discovered large quantities of tubers.

      Yet, again, they were slow to take off. The French turned their nose up at them, convinced they were responsible for leprosy. Scottish Protestants disapproved of them strongly because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. Then when cultivation of potatoes eventually did spread, it seemed more for the benefit of cattle than of people, until the authorities discovered they made good food for the poor. In 1663 a member of the Royal Society, a gent from Somerset, was encouraging the growing of potatoes across the country, but the 1719 edition of The Complete Gardener still completely ignored them, while a sister publication described the potato as inferior to the radish.