[409]Memorials of London, etc. from the Council Records. Edited by H. T. Riley. Lond. 1867, p. 339 and p. 356.
[410]Walsingham,Hist. Angl.I.319; Adam of Murimuth.
[411]The chroniclers are not agreed as to the chronology of the various 14th century plagues from the first (the Black Death) to the fifth. Some of the enumerations are clearly erroneous. Thus inA Short English Chroniclefrom the Lambeth MS. (ed. Gairdner for the Camden Society, 1880), the plague of 1361 is erroneously called “the threde pestilence,” while the fourth is assigned to 1369 and the fifth to 1377 (for 1375). Otterbourne places thequartain 1374 (for 1375), and thequinta(as others do) in 1391; but in theLife of Richard II., by a monk of Evesham, the pestilence of 1382 is more correctly reckoned the fifth from the Black Death.
[412]Walsingham,Hist. Angl.I.409.Chronicon Angliae, p. 239.
[413]Rot. Parl.IV.806.
[414]Ibid.III.pp. 139 a, 147 a.
[415]Blomefield’sHistory of Norfolk,III.p. 111.
[416]Continuator of Higden,IX.14.
[417]Political Songs and Poems.Rolls series, No. 14,I.p. 252:—
“The rysyng of the comuynes in londe,The pestilens, and the eorthe-quake—Theose three thinges I understonde.”
[418]Walsingham,Hist. Angl.II.109.
[419]Continuator of Higden,IX.21, 27.
[420]Eulogium Historiarum,III.369. Otterbourne, ed. Hearne: “From the nativity of St John Baptist to the feast of St Luke,” 1391.
[421]Continuator of Higden,IX.216.
[422]Ibid.237.
[423]Walsingham,Hist. Angl.II.186.
[424]Blomefield’sHistory of Norfolk,III.113:—“1390. A great mortality increased in Norfolk and in many other counties in England, and it seemed not unlike the season of the great pestilence: it was occasioned by a great want of victuals, that forced many people to eat unwholesome food, and so brought distempers upon them. This dearth began under the sickle, and lasted to the following harvest [1391], but was not so much for want of corn, as money to purchase it, occasioned by the law made in relation to wool, by which wool became dog-cheap; for a stone of chosen and picked wool of the best sort was sold for 3 sh. and some for 22 pence or 2 sh., so that in these times the woollen manufacture was the great support of the nation.” According to Thorold Rogers, these high prices of wool obtained from 1364 to 1380.
[425]Walsingham,II.203. The Continuator of Higden (IX.259) says 12,000. These estimates are, of course, the merest guesses, and extreme exaggerations. The whole population of York would have been under 15,000.
[426]Higden,ibid.
[427]Walsingham,II.213; St Albans Annals of Ric. II. and Hen. IV.
[428]Walsingham,II.276. The Chronicle of William Gregory (Camden Society, ed. Gairdner) enters under the year 1407, a great frost, for twenty-five weeks. It would be of real scientific interest to know the chronology exactly, whether the plague followed or preceded the long cold drought; but the year of the plague is disputable, if any heed be paid to the date of 1406, given by later compilers.
[429]Walsingham,II.297. Otterbourne, under 1411, says plague in Gascony.
[430]Annals of Bermondsey, inAnnales Monast.Rolls ed.III.485.
[431]Rot. Parl.IV.143 a. It is probably under 1420 that the “great plague” at Newcastle, given in so many words in Brand’sHistoryunder 1410, should be placed.
[432]Ibid.148 b.
[433]Histor. Collec. of a Citizen of London, 15th cent.Camden Soc. ed. Gairdner, 1876:
“They dyde faster every dayThenn men myght them in erthe lay.”
[434]History of Agriculture and Prices in England,IV.105.
[435]Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale,I.518; Rogers,IV.233.
[436]Denton. London, 1886, p. 92.
[437]Mackay,The English Poor. London, 1890, p. 40.
[438]W. Cunningham,Growth of English Industry and Commerce. 2nd ed. Camb. 1890, p. 105. He reproduces Denton’s statement that “there was chronic typhoid in the towns.” Denton professes to have found this in Hecker, who had certainly no knowledge of English towns in the 15th century, and is, in general, more entertaining as aphilosophethan trustworthy for erudition.
[439]In 1741, during a prevalence of fever all over England, we hear of bread made of horse-beans, pease, and coarse unsound barley as the chief food of the poor. (Gent. Magaz.letters of 27 Nov. 1741 and 11 Jan. 1742). Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, v. Preface) thinks that the staple food of the English labourer, wheaten bread, had first been changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and oat bread, in the 17th century during the Civil Wars.
[440]Paston Letters.Ed. Gairdner, 1872,II.254: John Wymondham of Fellbrigg to John Paston, 10th Nov. “And forasmuch as there was a child dead at Asteleys, and one other like to be dead in the same place, what time I rode out about my little livelihood, my lady and I both thought pity on my mistress your wife to see her abide there, and desired her to come to my poor house, unto such time as you should be otherwise avised.”
[441]Histor. MSS. Commission,IX.127 b.
[442]Calendar of State Papers.Venetian, vol.I.§ 236.
[443]Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council.Ed. Nicolas,III.p. xlv.
[444]Rot. Parl.IV.420 b.
[445]Arnold’s Chronicle, p. xxxii.
[446]Proc. and Ord. Privy Council,IV.p. lxxx. Sir Harris Nicolas, in this connexion, remarks that Fabyan and all other chroniclers (he had overlooked Arnold) omit to mention pestilence, while they mention much less important things; but he is hardly warranted in his inference that plagues were so common-place as to be left unrecorded. A low level of plague would not be noticed, but a great epidemic certainly would.
[447]Johannes Amundesham (of St Albans),Annales. Rolls ed.II.127.
[448]Rot. Parl.V.31 b.
[449]This is the only plague in the first half of the fifteenth century that Anthony Wood records; but he says, under the year 1500, that “no less than about thirty pests, both great and small, happened in this last century”—i.e. in the University of Oxford. I shall speak of their general effects in another chapter.
[450]Paston Letters.Ed. Gairdner, 1872,I.302-3.
[451]Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles.Ed. Gairdner, for the Camden Society, 1880, from the Lambeth MSS., p. 163.
[452]Sir J. Paston to John Paston, 30 April, 1465. Another letter, of 18th August, has: “For the pestilence is so fervent in Norwych, that they dare no longer abyde there, so God help!” (Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner,II.226), which probably refers to 1465 also. It is not mentioned by Blomefield.
[453]Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale,I.541.
[454]Communicated to me by the Rev. W. Hunt, from a new volume of the Camden Society, edited by A. F. Leach,Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, p. 11.
[455]Tickell,History of Kingston upon Hull, 1798.
[456]Warkworth’s Chronicle.Camden Society, p. 23 (under the year 13 Ed. IV.).
[457]Chronicle of the Greyfriars.Camden Society, No. 53, 1852, p. 22.
[458]Robert Fabyan’sChronicle of England, (editions in 1516 and 1533, and by Ellis, 1808),sub anno.
[459]Grafton’s Chronicle, p. 742.
[460]Brand’sHistory of Newcastle.
[461]Visitations and Memorials, p. 41.
[462]Blomefield.
[463]Paston, 6 Nov. 1479.
[464]Fordoun,Scotichronicon, ed. Hearne, Oxon. 1722, p. 1039.
[465]Scotichronicon, p. 1056: “eadem ... sicut prius jubileo ... in toto regno Scotiae mirabiliter saeviebat.”
[466]Exchequer Rolls of Scotland.Introduction to vol.II.p. xlviii.
[467]Scotichronicon, p. 1141.
[468]Exchequer Rolls of Scotland,III.650.
[469]Ibid.III.310.
[470]Ibid.III.553.
[471]Ibid.III.579.
[472]Scotichronicon, p. 1287 and p. 1298.
[473]Cited by R. Chambers (Domestic Annals of Scotland,I.57) from the Chronicle as printed by Thomas Thomson.
[474]Scotichronicon, p. 1565. Hearne’s edition.
[475]Ferrerius, f. 393, cited inExcheq. Rolls of Scot.VIII.p. lx.
[476]Excheq. Rolls of Scot.VIII.364. Accounts of William, bishop of Orkney, from 5 Aug. 1475 to 3 Aug. 1476: “et decem martis liberatis, de tempore pestis, egrotantibus in Incheskeith.” Another item (£30. 13s.4d.) is for forty-six marts destroyed “propter longam moram” in the lairs at Leith, “anno pestis, videlicet anno ultimo.”
[477]But MS. annals are cited for the date 1361, inThe ancient and present State of the County and City of Cork. By Charles Smith, M.D. 2 vols. Dublin, 1774. 2nd ed.II.p. 23.
[478]Thady Dowling [Elizabethan] “1370. Pestilentia magna in Hibernia, adeo quod propter immensitatem mortalitatis vocabatur ab antiquis tertia,” p. 24.
[479]Dowling, p. 27.
[480]Angl. Hist.Basil. 1555, p. 567.
[481]In Gale,Script. Angl.I.573.
[482]British Museum Addit. MS., No. 27,582.
[483]Materials illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII.Rolls series, No. 60, s. d.
[484]Tractatus contra pestilentiam thenasmonem et dissinteriam[Rouen, 1490]:—“Causae pestilentiae ut alias scripsimus: in quodam opusculo quod composuimus de quadam rabiosa febre pestilentiali, quae in duodecim horis patientes cum calore et sudore continuo interficiebat. Cujus febris adventus incepit sua vexilla extendere in Anglia in civitate Londoniarum decima nova die mensis Septembris 1485, in qua die [planetary signs] posuerunt. Ex qua febre pestilentiali plus quam quindecim millia hominum ab hoc seculo morte repentina, tanquam ex pugnitione divina, recesserunt, multique sine mora per vicos deambulantes absque confessione obierunt.”
[485]MSS. Cotton. Vitellius A. XVI.A Chronicle of England from 1st Henry III. to 1st Hen. VIII.
[486]The Croyland Chronicle (in Gale’sScript. Angl.I.570 and 576) gives the 14th November in one place and the 14th October in another. But it is clear that the latter is the correct date, the letter from the prior of Croyland to Henry VII., announcing the death of the abbot and praying for acongé d’élire, being dated the 14th of October. (Materials illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII.vol.I.s.d. 21 Oct. 1485, Rolls series, No. 60.)
[487]Anthony Wood, I. 462.
[488]The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar(by Robert Ricart, town-clerk of Bristol, 18 Ed. IV.). Camden Society, 1872, p. 46.
[489]The Bristol calendar says: “This yere Hary, Erle of Richmond landed at Milford Haven.... And sone after there was a sodeyn sikenes in all places of Englond called the sweting syknes, whereof moche people dyed.”
[490]The date of 1506 in Hecker is erroneous, having been taken from the very loose entry in Hall’s chronicle (copied by Grafton), which might equally well belong to the year 1507. Bernard André’s date of 1508 is unmistakeable; his annals go on continuously until the death of Henry VII. in April following.
[491]Bernard André’sWorks. Rolls series, No. 10, pp. 126-8.
[492]Hemingway’sHistory of Chester,I.142.
[493]Anthony Wood’sHistory and Antiquities of the Univ. of Oxford.I.665.
[494]Calendared for the Rolls series by Brewer for the greater part of the reign of Henry VIII. (1509-1530), and after him by Gairdner, at present as far as 1538. The facts given in the next few pages may be taken as coming from the Calendar of State Papers, under their respective dates, unless it is otherwise stated in the notes.
[495]This appears to have been a common direction. In a letter of 12 August, 1517, dated from the Fleet Prison by Thomas Leeke to his brother sir John Leeke (Hist. MSS. Commission Reports,X.pt. 4, p. 447), the writer says he has been sore vexed with the sweat and in danger of life: “If any of you have it, pray you to keep well and close about your breasts and your heart for twenty-four hours and then with God’s grace there is no danger in it: there has been a marvellous great death for so short a time.”
[496]In the letter of 12 August from the Fleet Prison, already quoted (Hist. MSS. Reports,l. c.), it is stated that fifteen are dead in the Cardinal’s house, including Mr Cowper, the steward, Talboys, lord of Kyme, young Wastness, and one Grenell. In my lord of Durham’s house, Dr Port and Dr Fysche are dead, with divers others. Of the Court, my lord Clinton, Mr Morgan, steward to the Queen, and one Mat. Jones, of the King’s wardrobe, were buried at Richmond on Friday last, and divers more of the Court are dead.
[497]The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth: “Considering there is, as physicians say, and as we also find, double the peril in the relapse that was in the first sickness,” p. 230. Camelot edition.
[498]Anthony Wood,Hist. and Antiq.,sub anno1517.
[499]Hemingway’sHistory of Chester,I.142.
[500]The letter bears the date of 8 June, which would make the first of the sweat the same as in Tuke’s letter; but Brewer says the date should be the 18th June.
[501]Brewer (Cal. State Papers) reads the letter, “On Tuesday one of the ladies of the chamber, Mlle de Boulan, was infected with the sweat.” But P. Friedmann (Anne Boleyn, Lond. 1884,I.72) says the correct reading is a fille-de-chambre of Mlle de Boulan; and it is known that Anne Boleyn did not take the sweat until some days after.
[502]In theHistory of Corkby C. Smith, M.D. (2nd ed., 1774) there is an entry under 1528: “a malignant disorder called the sweating sickness in Cork,” with a reference to “MS. annals.” It has been generally supposed that the sweat did not enter Ireland or Scotland in any of its five outbreaks.
[503]The German writers have assumed that the sweat was prevalent abroad really in the same summer or autumn as in England, explaining the discrepant dates by the difference in the English calendar. But it was only the months of January and February, and March to the 24th, that were counted in the old year in England; the months of June, July, August, etc. in which the sweat occurred, are the same in the English and foreign calendar-years. In the English chronology of the sweat, those months belong quite clearly to the year 1528; and, in the German, Swiss, and Netherlands chronology of the sweat, just as clearly to the year 1529. The sweat on the Continent was a year later than in England.
[504]Gruner’sScriptores de sudore Anglico superstiteswas reprinted by Häser, with additional citations and notes, in 1847. Hecker (Der Englische Schweiss, 1834) refers to the work by Gruner,Itinerarium sudoris Anglici ex actis designatum, Jena, 1805, which I have been unable to see. The account of the German invasion in the text is accordingly at second-hand.
[505]A boke or counseill against the Sweate, London, 1552.De Ephemera Britannica, London, 1555.
[506]“This yere the swetinge sycknes raignyd in England, and began first in this towne of Shrowsbery the xxii of Marche, and ran through the realme, and began in London the ixth of July.” Quoted from MS. Chronicle, in Owen and Blakeway’sHistory of Shrewsbury, p. 345.
[507]Op. cit.1552, fol. 10. In the Latin work the date at “Salopia” is “17 Kal. May.”
[508]Nichols,Leicestershire,III.891.
[509]Edrichus,In libros aliquot Pauli Æginetae, &c. London, 1588 (not paged).
[510]“Diary of Edward VI.” in Burnet’sHist. of Reformation. Stow (Annales) says it began on the 9th July and was most vehement on the 12th.
[511]Calendar of State Papers.Domestic (under the date).
[512]Machyn’s Diary.Camden Society, No. 42, edited by J. Gough Nichols, p. 7. Machyn was an undertaker, and records deaths and funerals.
[513]Machyn.
[514]Ibid.p. 8.
[515]Letter from London, in Harl. MS. No. 353, f. 107, cited by Nichols in notes to Machyn.
[516]Caius,Boke or Counseill, 1552, ff. 10-11.
[517]The Venetian ambassador (Cal. S. P.Venetian, v. 541) says that the sweat was at an end in London in twenty days. He says, also, that children under ten years were not subject “questo influsso.” The excitement caused by the London epidemic is shown in an entry of money in the corporation records of Canterbury: “1551. To one of the King’s servants that brought word how many were dede in the swett.” (Hist. MSS. Commiss.IX.154 b.)
[518]Edward VI. to Fitzpatrick.
[519]Drake’sEboracum, p. 128.
[520]Nichols, notes to Machyn, giving a reference toGent. Magaz.1825,II.206.
[521]Fuller (ed. Nichols, p. 183) says, under 1551: “Many in Cambridge died of this sweating sickness, patients mending or ending in twenty-four hours.” The death of the two young noblemen was made an occasion for copies of verses by members of the University.
[522]Strype,Memorials,III.chap. 7 (cited in notes to Machyn).
[523]Lysons,Magna Britannia,VI.539.
[524]Calendar of State Papers.Venetian,V.541, under the date of 18 Aug. 1554.
[525]Thomas Cogan, ‘The Haven of Health: chiefly made for the comfort of students, and consequently for all those that have a care of their health, amplified uppon fiue wordes of Hippocrates, written Epid. 6. Labour, Meate, Drinke, Sleepe, Venus.... Hereunto is added a Preseruation from the Pestilence: with a short Censure of the late sicknesse at Oxford.’ London, 1589. New ed. 1596, p. 272.
[526]There is a single reference to a sweat on the Continent in 1551, which may really have been one of those epidemics of typhus (or influenza), with a sweating character, that were observed in 1557-8 and 1580. Brassavolus, writingde morbo Gallico, and illustrating the fact that epidemics were sometimes generated by drought (though mostly by humidity), says that the sweat in England, in former years, came with drought, and that at the time of his writing, the 15th September, 1551, that disease was vexing Flanders,—the season being extremely dry,—and had attacked many thousands. This was first noticed by Häser,Op. cit.III.(1882), p. 332. The reference to Brassavolus is Luisini’sScript. de lue venerea. Lugd. Bat. 1728, f. p. 671.
[527]Increase and Decrease of Diseases.London, 1801, p. 70.
[528]See the references in Gruner, pp. 444, 448.
[529]“The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections,” inBrit. Med. Journ., 4 August, 1883; “The Origin of Yellow Fever,” inNorth American Review, Sept. 1884;Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease, London, 1885, Chapter XIII. “Vicarious Infection.”
[530]Polydore Virgil, p. 553. Philip de Comines says “three large ships and a considerable body of land forces.” (Chroniques du Roy Louis XI. Eng. transl.II.674.)
[531]Mezeray,II.762. He adds: “the Bretons boast of having also lent aid to this prince.” His first expedition was purely with Bretons, but the second was composed mostly if not altogether of Normans.
[532]This point, which is essential to the theory, was originally stated in an article on “Epidemics” in theQuarterly Review, Jan. 1887, and there claimed as original. The writer on “Sweating Sickness” in theEncycl. Brit.has adopted it as a common-place; it is obvious enough when pointed out, but Hecker had not done so.
[533]The above account is summarised from the chapter in Hirsch,Geog. and Histor. Path.Eng. transl.I.88.
[534]Darwin,Naturalist’s Voyage round the World, pp. 435-6.
[535]Bernard André’sAnnales Henrici VII.Rolls series, No. 10, p. 120. Under a date in January, 1508, he writes: “Quo quidem die nuncius ab urbe incredibilia dictu, hoc est de primis verni fructibus temporis floridoque frumento visis, referebat.” Both Fabyan and the anonymous author of MS. Cotton, Vitellius, A. XVI. (Chronicle of England from 1 Hen. III. to 1 Hen. VIII.) give the winter of 1506-7 as “a wonderful [easy] and soft winter without storms or frost,” but fail to remark on the weather of 1507-8.
[536]Wriothesley’s Chronicle.
[537]Fabyan, Stow.
[538]Stow’s Annals. Hecker, in error, makes out this exceptional season to have been the one immediately preceding the sweat in the summer of 1528.
[539]Cal. State Papers, under the date.
[540]Summary in Hirsch,l. c.
[541]Continuator of Fabyan.
[542]Wriothesley,II.139.
[543]Drake’sEboracum, (from the town council records).
[544]Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford,I.651.
[545]At Cambridge, in October, 1578, two deaths from plague in Queens’ College “moved many to depart.”Cal. Cecil MSS.II.under date 13 October.
[546]Anthony Wood, under the respective years.
[547]With reference to a pestilence at Oxford in 1448, Wood says: “occasioned, as ’twas thought, by the overflowing of waters, and the want of a quick passage for them from the ground. Also by the lying of many scholars in one room or dormitory in almost every Hall, which occasioned nasty air and smells, and consequently diseases.”Op. cit.I.596.
[548]Materials Illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII.Rolls ser. 60,II.p. 136.
[549]Chronicle of England, sub anno.
[550]Hist. Angl., p. 609 (Basil, 1546).
[551]Stow,Annales.
[552]In Rymer’sFoederaall these vacancies of bishoprics are entered under the year 1501, beginning with the see of Canterbury (Morton’s) on 9th January, 1501.
[553]Plumpton Correspondence, Camden Soc. No. 4, p. 138: Letter of ? 1499, R. Leventhorpe, of Leventhorpe Hall, Yorkshire, to Sir R. Plumpton: “And sithe I hard say that a servant of yours was decesed of the sicknes, which hath bene to your disease, I am right sorry therefore;” he advises fasting, and trusts “ye sal be no more vexed with that sicknes.” In the next letter (cviii) to Sir R. Plumpton from his son:—“Also, sir, I am very sorry that the death seaseth not at Plompton.”
[554]Hardwicke Papers, London, 1778,I.2 (from Harl. MSS.).
[555]Freeman,Exeter, in “English Towns” series, p. 99.
[556]Annales Henrici VII.Rolls series, p. 88.
[557]The information in the next few pages comes from theCalendar of State Papers, Henry VIII.,Domestic, unless otherwise referred to in the notes.
[558]Chronicle of the Grey Friars, Camden Society, No. liii. 1852, p. 29. Stow puts the mortality under the year 1513.
[559]Letter from the Fleet prison, assigned to 1517.Hist. MSS. Com.X.pt. 4. p. 447.
[560]Phillips,History of Shrewsbury, p. 17.
[561]Privy Purse of Henry VIII., p. 79.
[562]The reference on p. 290 (note 2) to “no parish in London free,” under the date of 25 October, 1517, may imply that bills of mortality had been kept in that epidemic, which was certainly an occasion when Henry VIII. interposed in other ways to check the progress of plague.
[563]Lately purchased for the Egerton Collection. No. 2603, fol. 4.
[564]There was, however, an English translation of a small foreign essay on the plague, of unacknowledged authorship, published at London in 1534 by Thomas Paynel, canon of Merton, a literary hack of the time.
[565]In the Record Office. State Papers, Henry VIII., No. 4633. It has been erroneously calendared by Brewer as a bill of mortality of the sweating sickness in 1528.
[566]The Maire of Bristowe, his Kalendar.Camden Society, 1872, p. 53.
[567]The plague is said to have been in Exeter in 1535 (Freeman,Exeter, in English Towns Series).
[568]There is a copy in the Lambeth Library, No. 432.
[569]Owen and Blakeway,I.311.
[570]Continuator of Fabyan.
[571]Cussan’sHistory of Hertfordshire.
[572]A London Chronicle of Hen. VII. and Hen. VIII.Camden Miscellany, 1859.
[573]Acts of the Privy Council.New series, 1542-1547, p. 136.
[574]Stow’sAnnales.
[575]Cal. Cecil MSS.,I.15.
[576]Guildhall Records (Extracts by Furnivall in Appendix to Vicary’sAnatomy. Early English Text Society).
[577]Brand’sHistory of Newcastle.
[578]Hasted’sHistory of Canterbury, p. 130 (from parish registers).
[579]Anthony Wood,op. cit.II.74. At Banbury probably about the same year. Beesley’sHistory of Banbury(from Brasbridge).
[580]Register of the Privy Council of Scotland,I.5.
[581]Acts of the Privy Council.New series, 1542-1547, 28 April, 1546, p. 397.
[582]Ibid., Nov. 13, 1546, p. 552.
[583]Camden’sBritannia, ed. Gough,I.262.
[584]Ibid.II.265.
[585]Calendar of State Papers.Domestic series, Vol.X.
[586]Notes and Queries, 6th series,III.477.
[587]Nichols,Leicestershire,III.891 (295 deaths from plague &c. 1555-59.)
[588]Ormerod’sCheshire,I.under 1558, with a reference to “Harl. MSS.” The Harleian MSS. relating to Chester fill many pages of the catalogue.
[589]Calendar of State Papers, Eliz.I.p. 122.
[590]Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles.Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1880, pp. 123, 144.
[591]Letter from London to the Earl of Shrewsbury,Hist. MSS. Com.VI.455, a.
[592]Without date, but probably 1564. Watt conjectures 1556, but the book contains references to the fever-epidemic of 1558, and, as above, to the plague of 1563.
[593]Munk,Roll of the College of Physicians,I.pp. 32, 63.
[594]This and other information immediately following are fromCal. State Papers. Foreign series.
[595]Calendar of Cecil MSS., under the dates.
[596]Glover’sHist. of Derbyshire(21 plague deaths in St Michael’s register, May-Aug. 1563).
[597]Nichols; Kelly, inTrans. Hist. Soc.VI.395.
[598]Harwood’sHist. of Lichfield, p. 304.
[599]Hasted’sHist. of Canterbury, p. 130 (parish registers).
[600]Notes and Queries, 2nd series,XI.69.
[601]‘How and whether a Christen man ought to flye the horrible plage of the Pestilence. A sermon out of the Psalme “Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi,” by Andrewe Osiander. Translated out of Hye Almayn into Englishe, 1537.’ Copy in the British Museum. The initials M.C. are taken to be those of Miles Coverdale.
[602]Soranzo to the Senate of Venice.Calendar of State Papers, Venetian,V.541 (18 Aug. 1554).
[603]Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. Domestic.
[604]FromAbstract of several orders relating to the Plague. MS. Addit. (Brit. Museum), No. 4376. Probably the originals of these abstracts are among the Guildhall records. I quote from the most accessible source.
[605]Extracts from the Guildhall Records, by Furnivall, in Appendix to Vicary’sAnatomy of the Body of Man. Early English Text Society.
[606]Cal. State Papers, Venetian,VII.649.
[607]Abstract, &c. in Brit. Mus. MSS., as above.
[608]The following is the case by which he supports the recommendation to kill dogs in plague-time: “Not many years since, I knew a glover in Oxford who with his family, to the number of ten or eleven persons, died of the plague, which was said to be brought into the house by a dogge skinne that his wife bought when the disease was in the Citie” (Poor Man’s Jewel, ChapterVIII.London, 1578).
[609]Transcripts from the MS. Archives, ed. Bayley, 1856.
[610]News-letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury,Hist. MSS. Commis.VI.455.
[611]Machyn’s Diary, ed. J. Gough Nichols. Camden Soc., No. 42, p. 310.
[612]Ibid.p. 396 (note by Nichols); and Guildhall Records, in Furnivall,l. c.
[613]Abstract, &c. as above.
[614]Stow’sMemoranda(Lambeth MS.), Camden Soc., 1880, p. 123.
[615]Abstract, &c. as above.
[616]Stow,ibid.
[617]Record Office.State Papers, Elizabeth, vol.XLVIII., No. 70.
[618]Endorsed “An abstract of such orders as have been heretofore for the preventing and decreasing of the plague in and about London.”
[619]The searchers are mentioned at Shrewsbury as early as 1539 (Phillips).
[620]Survey of London,ed. cit.p. 119.
[621]Holinshed,III.p. 1260.
[622]John Bell,London’s Remembrancer. Lond. 1665.
[623]Liber Albus Londinensis.Rolls series, ed. Riley. The following instances occur in the report of the commissioners of 1343: P. 446: A water-gate “obturatur ratione unius gutturi exeuntis de una latrina,” etc. P. 449: the Ebbegate obstructed by certain persons named, “qui fecerunt in eadem venella latrinas supra dentes, quarum putredo cadit supra capita hominum transeuntium.” Same page: Wendegoslane “obturatur per fimos et garderobas.” Same page: Rethersgate obstructed “per fimos et alia hujusmodi foetida.” Same page: Dowgate. Two householders named “in eisdem aedificiis diversas latrinas fecerunt, pendentes ultra vicum ejusdem venellae; quarum putredines cadunt supra homines per eandem venellam transeuntes.” P. 450: at Queenhithe a “communis latrina.” P. 451: at Saltwharf the way to the river obstructed “pulvere et aliis putredinibus in eadem projiciendis.” P. 452: Lekynggeslane has two latrinae and is impassable owing to want of paving. Same page: Another venel obstructed by the Earl Marshall; three latrinae in it. In a perambulation of the ground outside the walls, 26 Ed.III.(1552), the following encroachments are noted among others: Outside Ludgate, one has erected a shed (camera) 16 ft. × 12¾ ft., and made there “unum profundum puteum et quadratum pro latrina”—a deep well and a latrine-pit together. Also outside Ludgate, William of Wircestre has a house there and two shelters for beasts, and a latrine, and part of the said house is 14 ft. × 7½ ft.
[624]Statutes of the Realm, 17 Ric. II.
[625]Riley,op. cit., p. 614.
[626]Stow’sSurvey.
[627]Art. “Shakespeare,”Encycl. Britan.
[628]Wodderspoon’sMemorials of Ipswich, p. 285, p. 259.
[629]“Now first printed.” Exeter, 1765, p. 181.
[630]Poulett Scrope,op. cit.p. 333.
[631]D. Erasmi Epistolar. lib. XXX.London, 1642, Lib. xxii. Epist. 12 (without date).
[632]Richard of Devizes. Eng. Hist. Soc. p. 60: “Apud Bristolliam nemo est qui non sit vel fuerit saponarius; et omnis Francus saponarios amat ut stercorarios.”
[633]William Harrison’sDescription of England(in Holinshed) gives proof enough that the filthy floors described by Erasmus had no existence two generations later, even among the poorer classes.
[634]The correspondence is inRemembrancia, under the head of “Plague.”
[635]From a memorandum of Lord Burghley’s, dated Hertford Castle, 21 Nov. 1582, it appears that a survey had shown 577 beds available for strangers in one parish of Hertford, and 451 in another, “so that there are lying two a bed above 2000 people.”Cal. State Papers.Domestic series, Elizabeth 1581-90, p. 75.
[636]Stow’sSurvey.
[637]Remembrancia, p. 332.
[638]Remembrancia.
[639]Baddeley,Parish of St Giles, Cripplegate. Lond. 1888.
[640]Ibid., under date August, 1672, p. 193.
[641]Broadsheets in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries. Cited by W. Rendle, F.R.C.S.,Old Southwark and its People. London, 1878, p. 198. Mr Rendle, in one place, seems to imply disapproval of this mode of coffinless burial; but in another (p. 225, note) he says it was “a sort of forecast of Mr Seymour Haden’s wise proposals.” His first thoughts appear to have been the best.
[642]Sermon on Third Sunday in Advent, 1552.
[643]Stow’sMemoranda. Camden Society, N. S.XXVIII., 1880, p. 125.
[644]Stow,Annales, p. 662.
[645]Cal. State Papers.
[646]Cat. Cecil MSS.
[647]On July 15, 1570, the Duke of Norfolk craved his release from the Tower, on account of the great risk to his bodily health and the infection of the pestilence in that part of the city. (Calendar of Cecil MSS.)
[648]Report Hist. MSS. Commis.
[649]Anthony Wood,op. cit.
[650]Remembrancia, p. 38.
[651]Turnor’sHistory of Hertford, pp. 236, 268.
[652]The Loseley Manuscripts, ed. Kempe. London, 1836, p. 280.
[653]Holinshed,III.p. 1240.
[654]Letter to Cecil,Cal. Cecil MSS.,II.106 (under the year 1575).
[655]Corporation records, inNotes and Queries, 6th series,II.524.
[656]Notes and Queries, 6th series,II.390.
[657]Ormerod’sHist. of Cheshire,I.Harl. MS. 2177 (a death from plague, 3 Nov. 1574).
[658]Cal. Cecil MSS.,II.107:—For the week ending 9 September, 1575, in St Margaret’s, 25 deaths (of plague 13), St Martin’s 3 of plague, Savoy, none, St Clement’s 3 (2 of plague).
[659]Cecil to Earl of Lincoln.Ibid.10 September, 1575.
[660]The Maire of Bristowe, is Kalendar.Camden Soc. 1872, p. 59.
[661]Wells corporation MSS.,Hist. MSS. Com.,I.107.
[662]Owen and Blakeway.
[663]Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1591-94, p. 269.
[664]Tickell’sHist. of Kingston upon Hull, 1798.
[665]Records of the Burgh of Kirkcudbright.Hist. MSS. Commiss.,IV.539.
[666]Remembrancia, p. 333 (27 Nov. and 6 Dec. 1582).
[667]By permission of the Marquis of Salisbury. The contents of this small volume have not been included in the published Calendar of the Cecil MSS.
[668]‘A sermon preached at Powles Crosse on Sunday, the third of November, 1577, in the time of the Plague’ by T. W. London, 1578 (February 20).
[669]Strype’s ed. of Stow’sSurvey, Bk.IV.p. 34. Nonsuch was near Epsom.
[670]Remembrancia of the City of London, p. 331.
[671]Calendar of Cecil MSS., PartII.under the dates.
[672]Turnor’sHist. of Hertford, p. 236.
[673]Cal. Cecil MSS.
[674]Blomefield, vol.III.(“Norwich,” under the date).
[675]Ibid.“Yarmouth.”