The infection was suspected by many, says the same eyewitness, to have arisen either from the fetid and pestilent air of thieves brought forth from prison, of whom two or three died in chains a few days before (quorum duo vel tres sunt ante paucos dies in vinculis mortui), or from the devilishly contrived and obviously papistical spirits called forth “e Lovaniensi barathro,” and let loose upon the court secretly and most wickedly.
The latter explanation arose out of the heated feelings of the time against papist plotters, and has no farther interest. But the statement that two or three of the prisoners had died in chains a few days before has a great interest, as showing the kind of treatment to which they had been subjected while awaiting the gaol delivery. A strange confirmation of the truth of the statement came to light many years after. When John Howard visited the Oxford gaol in 1779, in the course of his humane labours on behalf of the prisoners, he was told by the gaoler that, some years before, wanting to build a little hovel and digging up stones for the purpose from the ruins of the court, which was formerly in the Castle, he found under them a complete skeleton with light chains on the legs, the links very small. “These,” says Howard, “were probably the bones of a malefactor who died in court of the distemper at the Black Assize[787].”
Next to the Merton register’s account, we may take that of Thomas Cogan, a graduate in medicine of Oxford, sometime fellow of Oriel, but probably removed to Manchester previous to 1577. Wherever Cogan got his information, he acknowledges no source of the following in his Haven of Health, 1589:
“What kind of disease this should be which was first at Cambridge [in 1522] and after at Oxford, it is very hard to define, neither hath any man (that I know) written of that matter. Yet my judgment is, be it spoken without offence of the learned physicians, that the disease was Febris ardens, a burning fever. For as much as the signes of a burning ague did manifestly appear in this disease, which after Hollerius be these: Extreame heate of the body, vehement thirst, loathing of meate, tossing to and fro, and unquietnesse, dryness of the tongue rough and blacke, griping of the belly, cholerick laske, cruell ake of the head, no sound sleepe, or no sleepe at all, raving and phrensie, the end whereof, to life or death, is bleeding at the nose, great vomitting, sweate or laske. And this kind of sicknesse is one of those rods, and the most common rod, wherewith it pleaseth God to brake his people for sin.... And this disease indeed, as it is God’s messenger, and sometimes God’s poaste, because it commeth poaste haste, and calleth us quickly away, so it is commonly the Pursuivant of the pestilence and goeth before it.... And certainly after that sodaine bane at Oxford, the same yeare, and a yeare or two following, the same kind of ague raged in a manner over all England, and tooke away very many of the strongest sort, and in their lustiest age, and for the most part, men and not women nor children, culling them out here and there, even as you should chuse the best sheepe out of a flocke. And certaine remedy was none to be found.... And they that took a moderate sweate at the beginning of their sickness and did rid their stomachs well by vomit sped much better. Yet thanks be to God hitherto no great plague hath ensued upon it.”
Besides these medical particulars, he gives certain dates and numbers. It began, he says, on the 6th of July, from which date to the 12th of August next ensuing there died of the same sickness five hundred and ten persons, all men and no women: the chiefest of which were the two judges, Sir Robert Ball, lord chief baron, and maister Sergeant Baram, maister Doile the high sheriff, five of the justices, four councillors at law and an attorney. The rest were jurors and such as repaired thither.
An account not unlike Cogan’s is given by Stow in his Annales (p. 681);
“The 4, 5 and 6 dayes of July were the assizes holden at Oxford, where was arraigned and condemned one Rowland Jenkes for his seditious toung, at which time there arose amidst the people such a dampe, that almost all were smothered, very few escaped that were not taken at that instant: the Jurors died presently. Shortly after died Sir Robert Bell, lord chief baron, Sir Robert de Olie, Sir William Babington, maister Weneman, maister de Olie, high sheriff, maister Davers, maister Harcurt, maister Kirle, maister Phereplace, maister Greenwood, maister Foster, maister Nash, sergeaunt Baram, maister Stevens, and there died in Oxford 300 persons, and sickned there but died in other places 200 and odde, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August, after which died not one of that sicknesse, for one of them infected not another, nor any one woman or child died thereof.”
Stow’s account differs from that of the Merton College register in several important particulars. The latter is explicit that the sickness appeared among the scholars and townsmen of Oxford on the 15th, 16th and 17th of July, or after an interval of ten days or more, and that the deaths amongst those who had come to Oxford on Assize business did not occur in Oxford but on their return home. On the other hand, Stow makes out the Oxford people to have been smothered by the damp which arose in the court itself: “very few escaped that were not taken ill at that instant;” next come the deaths of the jurors, and “shortly after” those of the judges and other high officials, whose names are given by Stow more fully than by anyone. His total of deaths, the same as Cogan’s, is 300 in Oxford and 200 and odd of persons who had left Oxford, and his dates, “from the 6th of July to the 12th of August,” are also the same as Cogan’s.
Wood’s account is for the most part taken from the Merton register and in part from the very different version in Stow’s Annals; but he has the following new matter: “Above 600 sickened in one night, as a physician that now lived in Oxford attesteth, and the day after, the infectious air being carried into the next villages, sickened there an hundred more[788].” That, of course, is very unlike the Merton College account, which is explicit that no one caught the fever who had not been in the court. The Oxford physician whose authority is given for the six hundred cases in Oxford in one night, and the extension next day to villages around, is Dr George Ethredge, or Ethryg, a physician and learned Greek scholar living in Oxford at the time and keeping a boarding-house, called George Hall, for the sons of Catholic gentlemen. In 1588 he published a small volume of comments upon some books of Paulus Aegineta, which is the authority given by Wood[789]. On discovering the passage, one finds that it was not 600 in one night, but “sexaginta” or 60, and that the occasion on which more than sixty were taken ill at once in a single night at Oxford, and nearly a hundred next day in the adjacent villages, “whither the infected air had by chance been borne,” was not that of the gaol-fever in 1577 but of the sweating sickness in 1551. An extension in the atmosphere to the villages around is just what would have happened in the sweating sickness, a disease in that as in other respects closely analogous to influenza. Ethredge says that, on the particular occasion, “hardly any of the Oxford people died”—a statement which should of itself have prevented Wood’s mistake, even if the reference to the same disease having “at the same time” cut off the two sons of the duke of Suffolk “at Cambridge” (therefore a less healthy place than Oxford where hardly any died) had not quite clearly pointed to the sudor Britannicus, which is actually named in the context (“sic enim vocant”)[790].
Although, in the passage quoted, it is the sweating sickness at Oxford in 1551 that Ethredge refers to, he does also refer to the gaol fever of 1577 in another passage which has hitherto escaped notice.