“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].”