Part 3

We are unable to trace the pestilence from town to town, but sufficient data have been collected to shew how widely the destructive principle was disseminated. In June we find it at Loughborough, in Leicestershire. In the parish register is the curious entry: “1551, June. The swat, called New acquaintance, alias Stoupe knave and know thy master, began on the 24th of this month.” It was in July that the disease appeared at Cambridge. Pursuing their studies in the University, were the young Duke of Suffolk, and his brother, Charles Brandon, equally distinguished for ability, worth, and learning. Alarmed by the outbreak, they hastened, with a few attendants, to Kingston, five miles distant. Here their chosen friend and companion, Charles Stanley, was seized, and expired in ten hours. In sorrow and consternation the brothers fled to the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Bugden, in Huntingdon, where they were joined, late at night, by their mother. Scarcely had she embraced them, when the Duke was attacked by the fatal symptoms, and in five hours, despite the endeavours of physicians, ceased to breathe. Within half an hour the younger brother, who slept in a distant part of the palace, was also a corpse. Their deaths created universal sorrow, the more, perhaps, that, through the influence of their mother, they were known to be attached to the principles of the Reformation. Our account is extracted from the very rare and interesting black-letter tract by Sir Thomas Wilson.

Late in July the pestilence was at Gloucester, whence Bishop Hooper, in a letter, dated August 1st, writes: “After I had begun this letter, my wife, and five others of my chaplains and domestics, were attacked by a new kind of sweating sickness, and were in great danger for twenty-four hours. I myself have but recently recovered from the same. The infection of this disease is in England most severe.” At Bristol the mortality was great. It lasted from Easter to Michaelmas, and several hundreds are said to have been carried off every week. Small towns and villages equally felt the influence. The parish register of Uffculme, in Devonshire, records that of thirty-eight deaths occurring, in 1551, twenty-seven were in the first eleven days of August, and sixteen of them in three days. These persons are said to have died of the “hote sickness or stup gallant.” (This latter name is evidently derived from the Trousse Galant of the French, a disease which had been epidemic in France in 1528, and afterwards, and which, we would suggest, was allied to the worst form of scarlatina.)

Whilst the south thus suffered, the north could offer no asylum. In York and Hull the pestilence was severely felt. It ravaged Lancashire; one parish register gives us the dates and number of deaths. In Ulverstone parish there were five buried on the 17th, two on the 18th, four on the 19th, eleven on the 20th, six on the 21st, six on the 22nd, two on the 23rd, and three on the 24th of August. On the 7th of that month we find it in the neighbourhood of Leeds. Whitaker quotes that “on the 7th of August, 1551, the sweating sickness was so vehement in Liversage, that Sir John Neville was departed from Liversage Hall to his house at Hunslet, for fear thereof. It speedily despatched such as were infected; for one William Rayner, the same day he died, had been abroad with his hawk.”

The disease did not disappear till the end of September. Several of the most distinguished men of the age fell its victims, as we learn in a letter from Roger Ascham to Sir William Cecil. In Catholic countries the sad fate of England was held a judgment on her departure from the Romish faith. At home it roused that spirit of piety and benevolence, which is never wanting in the Anglo-Saxon race in the time of suffering and distress. The religious fervour of the period burned higher in the gale; and, no doubt, amid the terrors of the sweating sickness, many acquired that trust in Providence and fearlessness of death, which were in the ensuing religious troubles to be so severely tried. On the other hand, amongst the masses, as Grafton drily observes, “As the disease ceased, so the devotion quickly decayed.”

From this time the Sudor Britannicus has never reappeared in its epidemic form. In one or two instances, we have seen isolated notices of death occurring from sweating sickness. But we have no means of judging the nature of the disease referred to under that name, or of determining the credibility of the statement. One thing is certain: no large district of our island has ever been ravaged by its indigenous pestilence, since the memorable year in which the destroying angel alighted on the sedgy banks of the gentle Severn.

FOOTNOTES:

HECKER’S Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Translated by B. G. BABINGTON, M.D. Sydenham Society Edition. London: 1844.

JOHN CAIUS, M.D. A Boke or Counseill against the Sweat. London: 1552.

JOHN CAIUS. De Ephemerâ Britannicâ. Reprint. London: 1721.

State Papers published by Royal Commission. 1830.

HALL. Vnion of the two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke. 1548.

GRAFTON’S Chronicle. 1569.

STOW’S Chronicle, by Howes. London: 1611.

FABIAN’S Chronicle. London: 1559.

HOLLINSHED’S Chronicle. London: 1587.

Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London. Edited by J. G. NICHOLS. Camden Society. 1852.

Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen of London. Edited by J. G. NICHOLS. Camden Society. 1848.

OWEN and BLAKEWAY’S History of Shrewsbury. London: 1825.

Collection of English Topographical Histories. Various.

Sir H. ELLIS. Original Letters. London: 1824.

Letters of the Kings of England. By J. O. HALLIWELL, F.S.A. London: 1848.

Harleian Manuscripts.

Cottonian Manuscripts. Titus, b. xi.

Lord BACON’S History of Henry VII. Op. b. iii. London: 1740.

ANTHONY à WOOD. History and Antiquities of University, Oxon. 1674.

Publications of the Parker Society. 1846-53.

In 1491 and 92, a sweating plague is said to have prevailed in Ireland; according to the Annals of the Four Masters, its attack was of twenty-four hours duration. Ware says, but we know not on what authority, that it was brought out of England. (See Census of Ireland for the year 1851.)

A remarkable notice of the occurrence of the sweat in the town of Galway, in the year 1543, is given by Mr. Hardiman in his local history. The fact was obtained from “Town Annals”, no longer accessible. We can only class it, as an isolated outbreak, with that of Chester in 1550. (Census of Ireland, 1851.)