After the disastrous prevalence of plague in England in the reign of Edward IV., culminating in the great epidemic of 1479 in London and elsewhere, we do not hear of the disease again in London until 1487, two years after the first sweat; in that year, on the 14th April, a king’s writ from Norwich postponed the business of the Common Pleas and King’s Bench until Trinity term, on account of the pestilence in London, Westminster and neighbouring places[548]. The next reference is to the great epidemic of 1499-1500, in London and apparently also in the country. Fabyan, who was then an alderman and likely to know, puts the deaths in London at twenty thousand[549]; Polydore Virgil says thirty thousand[550]; and others say thirty thousand deaths from plague and other diseases together[551]. The smaller total is the more likely to be nearest the mark. There is reason to think that the population of London a generation later was little over 60,000; and it will appear in the sequel that a fourth or a fifth part of the inhabitants was as much as the severest plagues cut off, although it is entirely credible that the Black Death itself had cut off one half.
The enormous mortality in 1499-1500 has left few traces in the records of the City or of the State. Five great prelates died during the plague-year, some of them certainly from it: Morton of Canterbury (a very old man), Langton of Winchester (before he could be transferred to Canterbury), Rotheram of York, Alcock of Ely and Jane of Norwich[552]. Like some of the later plagues in London it lasted through the winter. It was at Oxford in the same years, and casual references in two of the Plumpton letters lead one to infer that it may have been in remote parts of the country also[553].
The infection was still active as late as October, 1501, at Gravesend, and it made some difference to the reception of the young princess Catharine of Arragon, who had come over for her marriage with Prince Arthur, and became famous in history as the wife of his brother Henry VIII. The following are Henry VII.’s instructions, dated October, 1501:—
“My lord Steward shall shew or cause to be shewed to the said Princess, that the King’s Grace, tenderly considering her great and long pain and travel upon the sea, would full gladly that she landed and lodged for the night at Gravesend; but forasmuch as the plague was there of late, and that is not yet clean purged thereof, the King would not that she should be put in any such adventure or danger, and therefore his Grace hath commanded the bark to be prepared and arrayed for her lodging[554].”
In 1503 there was plague at Oxford, as we have seen, and at Exeter, where two mayors died of it in quick succession, and two bailiffs[555]. The infection was certainly in London in 1504 or 1505 (perhaps in both, and possibly at its low endemic level in the other years from 1501): for Bernard André mentions casually that he had been absent from the City on account of it[556].
In 1509, the first year of Henry VIII., there was a severe outbreak of plague in the garrison of Calais, as well as “great plague” in divers parts of England[557]. In 1511, Erasmus writes from Cambridge on 17th August, 5th October and 16th October, making reference to the plague in London; and on the 27th October, 8th November, and 28th November, Ammonio answers him that the plague has not entirely disappeared, and again that it is abated, but a famine is feared, and lastly that the plague is entirely gone. On the 26th of July the Venetian ambassador had written that the queen-widow (mother of Edward V.) had died of plague and that the king, Henry VIII., was anxious.
On the 1st November, 1512, Erasmus, on a visit to London, was so afraid of the plague that he did not enter his own lodging, and missed a meeting with Colet. The next year, 1513, was a severe plague-year according to many testimonies. In the diary of the Venetian envoy from August to 3rd September it is stated that deaths from plague are occurring constantly; two of his servants sickened on the 22nd August, but did not recognize the disease; on the 25th they rose from bed, went to a tavern to drink a certain beverage called “ale,” and died the same day: their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the sea (? Thames). On the 17th September he writes to Venice that it is perilous to remain in London; the deaths were said to be 200 in a day, there was no business doing, all the Venetian merchants in London had taken houses in the country; the plague is also in the English fleet. In October the deaths are reported by the envoy at 300 to 400 a day; he has gone into the country. On the 6th November and 6th December he writes that plague was still doing much damage. On the 3rd December the rumour of a great prevalence of plague in England had reached Rome. On the 28th November Erasmus writes from Cambridge that he does not intend to come to London before Christmas on account of plague and robbers; and on the 21st December he writes again: “I am shut up in the midst of pestilence and hemmed in with robbers.”
One year is very like another, but it will be desirable to continue the narrative a little longer so as to remove any suspicion of constructing history beyond the facts. In February, 1514, Erasmus writes that he had been disgusted with London, deeming it unsafe to stay there owing to plague. In going in procession to St Paul’s on the 21st May the king preferred to be on horseback, for one reason “to avoid contact with the crowd by reason of the plague;” he had lately recovered from some vaguely reported “fever” at Richmond. On the 1st July Convocation was adjourned on account of the epidemic and the heat.
Next year, 1515, Erasmus writes from London on the 20th April that he is in much trouble; the plague had broken out and it looked as if it would rage everywhere. On the 23rd April Wolsey sends advice to the earl of Shrewsbury in the country (? Wingfield) to “get him into clean air and divide his household,” owing to contagious plague among his servants; on the 28th the earl received from London one pound of manus Christi,—the same remedy that Henry VIII. sent to Wolsey for the sweat—with coral, and half-a-pound of powder preservative. On the same date “they begin to die in London in divers places suddenly of fearful sickness.” One of the incidents of the plague of 1515 which has fixed the attention of chroniclers was the death of twenty-seven of the nuns in a convent at the Minories outside Aldgate[558]. Next year, on 14th May (1516), the sickness was so extreme in Lord Shrewsbury’s house at Wingfield that he has put away all his horse-keepers and turned his horses out to grass. In London, on the 21st May, the Venetian ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he would not be allowed to see Wolsey until the 30th June, when forty days would have passed since the plague in his house.
The next summer, 1517, was the season of the third sweat. It was hardly over when plague began in London in September. On the 21st the Venetian envoy speaks of having had to avoid “the plague and the sweating sickness;” on the 26th he writes that the plague is making some progress and he has left London to avoid it. On the 15th October the king was at Windsor “in fear of the great plague.” One writes on 25 Oct., “As far as I can hear, there is no parish in London free[559].” On the 16th November the envoy begs the seignory of Venice to send someone to replace him as he thinks it high time to escape from “sedition, sweat and plague.” On the 3rd December the king and the cardinal were still absent from London on account of the plague; on the 22nd their absence was causing general discontent, the plague being somewhat abated. It was not until March, 1518, that the court approached London; on the 15th the Venetian envoy rode out to Richmond to see the king, and found him in some trouble, as three of his pages had died “of the plague.” The court withdrew again to Berkshire, and on the 6th April it was decided by the king’s privy council at Abingdon that London was still infected and must be avoided, the queen (Catharine of Arragon) having declared the day before that she had perfect knowledge of the sickness being in London, and that she feared for the king, although she was no prophet. On the 7th April the report of four or five deaths at Nottingham (“as appears by a bill enclosed”) was made the ground of postponing a projected visit of the king to the north. The spring was unusually warm, which made the risk of sickness to be judged greater. It is clear that public business was suffering by the prolonged absence of the court from London, and that the existence of infection was being denied. On the 28th April Master More certified from Oxford to the king at Woodstock that three children were dead of the sickness, but none others; he had accordingly charged the mayor and the commissary in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes and bear white rods, according as your grace devised for Londoners;” this was approved by the king’s council, and the question was discussed whether the fair in the Austin Friars of Oxford a fortnight later should not be prohibited, as the resort of people “may make Oxford as dangerous as London, next term” (the law courts sat at Oxford in Trinity term). However, the interests of traders had to be kept in view also. On 28th June, 1518, Pace writes from the court at Woodstock to Wolsey that “all are free from sickness here, but many die of it within four or five miles, as Mr Controller is informed.” On the 11th July he writes again from Woodstock that two persons are dead of the sickness, and more infected, one of them a servant to a yeoman of the king’s guard; to-morrow the king and queen lodge at Ewelme, and stop not by the way, as the place appointed for their lodging is infected. On the 14th July he writes to Wolsey from Wallingford that the king moves to-morrow to Bisham “as it is time: for they do die in these parts in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” The uncertainty as to what these diseases may have been will appear from the next letter, on the 18th July, from Sir Thomas More: “We have daily advertisements here, other of some sweating or the great sickness from places very near unto us; and as for surfeits and drunkenness we have enough at home.” The king had also heard that one of my lady Princess’s servants was sick of “a hot ague” at Enfield. On the 22nd July, the Venetian ambassador writes from Lambeth asking to be recalled: two of his servants had died of the plague, and he himself had the sweating sickness twice in one week. The pope’s legate, Campeggio, made a state entry into London about the first of August, but the king and Wolsey were not there to receive him, ostensibly for fear of infection. The king was now at Greenwich, and we hear no more of the fear of infection for a time. In the end of March, 1519, deaths from plague occurred on board one of the Venetian galleys at Southampton. On the 4th August, 1520, the king (at Windsor) has heard that the great sickness is still prevalent at Abingdon and other villages towards Woodstock, and has changed his route (“gystes”) accordingly; on 8th August, sickness is reported at Woodstock. The same year some kind of sickness was very disastrous in Ireland.