Earliest Notices of the French Pox in Scotland and England.
The first authentic news of it comes from the Council Register of the borough of Aberdeen under the date 21st April, 1497[830]:—
“The said day, it was statut and ordanit be the alderman and consale for the eschevin of the infirmitey cumm out of Franche and strang partis, that all licht weman be chargit and ordaint to decist fra thar vicis and syne of venerie, and all thair buthis and houssis skalit, and thai to pas and wirk for thar sustentacioun, under the payne of ane key of het yrne one thar chekis, and banysene of the towne.”
The next news of it is also from Scotland, from the minutes of the town council of Edinburgh, wherein is entered a proclamation of James IV., dated 22 September, 1497[831]:—
“It is our Soverane Lords Will and the Command of the Lordis of his Counsale send to the Provest and Baillies within this burt that this Proclamation followand be put till execution for the eschewing of the greit appearand danger of the Infection of his Leiges fra this contagious sickness callit the Grandgor and the greit uther Skayth that may occur to his Leiges and Inhabitans within this burt; that is to say, we charge straitly and commands be the Authority above writtin, that all manner of personis being within the freedom of this burt quilks are infectit, or hes been infectit, uncurit, with this said contagious plage callit the Grandgor, devoyd, red and pass furt of this Town, and compeir upon the sandis of Leith at ten hours before none, and their sall thai have and fynd Botis reddie in the havin ordanit to them be the Officeris of this burt, reddely furneist with victuals, to have thame to the Inche [the island of Inch Keith in the Firth of Forth], and thair to remane quhill God proviyd for thair Health: And that all uther personis the quilks taks upon thame to hale the said contagious infirmitie and taks the cure thairof, that they devoyd and pass with thame, sua that nane of thair personis quhilks taks sic cure upon thame use the samyn cure within this burt in pns nor peirt any manner of way. And wha sa be is foundin infectit and not passand to the Inche, as said is, be Mononday at the Sone ganging to, and in lykways the said personis that takis the sd Cure of sanitie upon thame gif they will use the samyn, thai and ilk ane of thame salle be brynt on the cheik with the marking Irne that thai may be kennit in tym to cum, and thairafter gif any of tham remains, that thai sall be banist but favors[832].”
Sir James Simpson, with his indefatigable research over antiquarian points[833], has brought together evidence of payments from the king’s purse to persons infected with the “Grantgore” at Dalry, Ayrshire, in September, 1497, at Linlithgow on 2nd October, 1497, at Stirling on the 21st February, 1498 (“at the tounne end of Strivelin to the seke folk in the grantgore”), at Glasgow (also “at the tounn end”) on 22nd February, 1498, and again at Linlithgow, 11th April, 1498. He quotes also from a poem of William Dunbar, written soon after 1500, on the conduct of the Queen’s men on Fastern’s e’en, the terms “pockis” and “Spanyie pockis.” From Sir David Lyndsay’s poems, of much later date, and from other references, he makes out that “grandgore” or “glengore” was the usual name in Scotland down to the 17th century. Grandgore means à la grande gorre, which is the same as à la grande mode. This name was given for a time in France to the great disease of the day, but it was soon superseded by vérole. Scotland is the only country where “grandgore” became established as the common name of the pox.
Before leaving the Scots evidence, two other ordinances may be quoted from the town council records of Aberdeen. In a long list of regulations under date the 8th October, 1507, there occur these two[834]:—
“Item, that diligent inquisitioun be takin of all infect personis with this strange seiknes of Nappillis, for the sauetie of the town; and the personis beand infectit therwith be chargit to keip thame in ther howssis and uther places, fra the haile folkis.”
“Item, that nayne infectit folkis with the seiknes of Napillis be haldin at the common fleschouss, or with the fleschouris, baxteris, brousteris, ladinaris, for sauete of the toun, and the personis infectit sall keip thame quyat in thar housis, zhardis, or uther comat placis, quhill thai be haill for the infectioun of the nichtbouris.”
“Sickness of Naples” is a reference to the well-known diffusion of the disease all over Europe by the mercenaries of Charles VIII. of France, dispersing after the Italian war and the occupation of Naples.
For England the first known mention of the pox is several years later than the Scots references, although that proves nothing as to its actual beginning in epidemic form. In the book of the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., there is an entry under the date of March 15, 1503, of a sum of forty shillings paid on behalf of John Pertriche “oon of the sonnes of mad Beale;” which sum appears to have been what the youth cost her majesty for board, clothes, education, and incidental expenses, during the year past. The various items making up the sum of forty shillings are: his diets “for a year ending Christmas last past,” a cloth gown, a fustian coat, shirts, shoes and hose, “item, for his learning, 20d. item for a prymer and saulter 20d. And payed to a surgeon which heled him of the Frenche pox 20s. Sm̅a. 40s.” It will be observed that the surgeon’s bill was as much as all his other expenses for the year together[835].
The London chronicler of the time is alderman Robert Fabyan; but although Fabyan, writing in the first years of the 16th century, uses the word “pockys” to designate an illness of Edward IV. during a military excursion to the Scots Marches in 1463, or long before the epidemic invasion from the south of Europe, he says nothing of that great event itself. There is a record, however, of one significant measure taken in the year 1506, the suppression of the stews on the Bankside in Southwark. These resorts were of ancient date, and for long paid toll to the bishop of Winchester. In 1506 there were eighteen of them in a row along the Surrey side of the river, a little above London Bridge; they were wooden erections, each with a stair down to the water, and each with its river front painted with a sign like a tavern, such as the Boar’s Head, the Cross Keys, the Gun, the Castle, the Crane, the Cardinal’s Hat, the Bell, the Swan, etc. These houses, says Stow, were inhibited in the year 1506, and the doors closed up; but it was not long ere they were set open again, the number being at the same time restricted to twelve[836]. They had been suppressed once before, at the earnest demand of the citizens, in the reign of Henry IV., and it appears from a sermon of Latimer’s that they were again suppressed about the year 1546. Thus Shakespeare had several precedents in London for the situation which he creates in a foreign city, in Measure for Measure.
The next reference that I find to it is an oblique one, by Bernard André in his Annals of Henry VII. On the occasion of mentioning the sweating sickness of 1508, he says the latter disease occurred first in England about four-and-twenty years before, and that it was “followed by a far more detestable malady, to be abhorred as much as leprosy, a wasting pox which still vexes many eminent men” (“multos adhuc vexat egregios alioquin viros tabifica lues[837]”). Bernard André’s association of the pox with the sweating sickness, as of one new disease following another, is in the same manner as the reference to it by Erasmus. In a letter from Basle, in August, 1525, to Schiedlowitz, chancellor of Poland, he discourses upon the sickliness of seasons and the mutations of diseases[838]: Until thirty years ago England was unacquainted with the sweat, nor did that malady go beyond the bounds of the island. In their own experience they had seen mutations:—“nunc pestilentiae, nunc anginae, nunc tusses; sed morbum morbus, velut ansam ansa trahit; nec facilé cedunt ubi semel incubuere.” He then proceeds:
“But if one were to seek among the diseases of the body for that which ought to be awarded the first place, it seems to my judgment that it is due to that evil, of uncertain origin, which has now been for so many years raging with impunity in all countries of the world, but has not yet found a definite name. Most persons call it the French pox (Poscas Galleas), some the Spanish. What sickness has ever traversed every part of Europe, Africa and Asia with equal speed? What clings more tenaciously, what repels more vigorously the art and care of physicians? What passes more easily by contagion to another? What brings more cruel tortures? Vitiligo and lichens are deformities of the skin, but they are curable. This lues, however, is a foul, cruel, contagious disease, dangerous to life, apt to remain in the system and to break out anew not otherwise than the gout.”
Whether it was from some mistaken theory of contagiousness or for other reasons, a fellow of Merton was ordered to leave in 1511 because he had the French pox[839]. In the English history nothing appears above the surface until the beginning of the movement against the papal supremacy and in favour of Reformation. That was a time of public accusations of all kinds, and among the rest of opprobrious references to the pox. In Simon Fish’s Supplication of Beggars[840], which was written in 1524, certain priests are thus hyperbolically spoken of:
“These be they that have made an hundred thousande ydel hores in your realme, which wold have gotten theyr lyvinge honestly in the swete of their faces had not there superfluous riches illected them to uncleane lust and ydelnesse. These be they that corrupte the hole generation of mankynd in your realme, that catch the pockes of one woman and beare it to another, ye some one of them will boste amonge his felowes that he hath medled with an hundreth wymen.”
In the year 1529, there is a more painful and most undignified charge. In the Articles of Arraignment of Wolsey in the House of Peers, the sixth charge is:
“The same Lord Cardinall, knowing himself to have the foul and contagious disease of the great pox, broken out upon him in divers places of his body, came daily to your Grace [the King], rowning in your ear, and blowing upon your most noble Grace with his perilous and infective breath, to the marvellous danger of your Highness, if God of his infinite goodness had not better provided for your Highness. And when he was once healed of them, he made your Grace believe that his disease was an impostume in his head, and of none other thing[841].”
Among the glimpses of contemporary manners in Bullein’s Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence (1564), there is one referring to the pox; Roger, the groom, soliloquizes thus: “her first husband was prentice with James Elles, and of him learned to play at the short-knife and the horn thimble. But these dog-tricks will bring one to the poxe, the gallows, or to the devil[842].” Bullein, in his more systematic handbook to health, promises to treat of the pox fully, but omits to do so. In one place he refers to the wounds of a young man who fell into a deep coal-pit at Newcastle as having been healed “by an auncient practisour called Mighel, a Frencheman, whiche also is cunnynge to helpe his owne countrey disease that now is to commonly knowen here in England, the more to be lamented: But yet dayly increased, whereof I entinde to speake in the place of the Poxe.” But the only other reference is (in the section on the “Use of Sicke Men and Medicine,”) to certain drugs “which have vertue to cleanse scabbes, iche, pox. I saie the pox, as by experience we se there is no better remedy than sweatyng and the drinkyng of guaiacum,” etc[843].
A good instance of the oblique mode of reference to the malady occurs in another dialogue by a surgeon, Thomas Gale[844]. The pupil who is being instructed tables the subject of “the morbus,” which he farther speaks of as “a great scabbe;” whereupon Gale pointedly takes him to task for the affectation of “the morbus;” any disease, he says, is the morbus; what you mean is the morbus Gallicus.
About the same date, 1563, a casual reference is made to the wide prevalence of the pox by John Jones in his Dyall of Agues. In illustration of the fact that various countries originate different forms of pestilence, as the Egyptians the leprosy, the Attics the joint-ache, the Arabians swellings of the throat and flanks, and the English the sweating sickness, he instances farther, “the Neapolitans, or rather the besiegers of Naples, with the pockes, spread hence to far abroad through all the parts of Europe, no kingdom that I have been in free—the more pity[845].”