In the former volume of this history I have dealt with the various epidemics of “hot ague,” “new disease” or the like down to the epidemic of 1657-59. It will be convenient to go over some of that ground again, with a view to distinguish, if possible, the catarrhal types from the aguish, and to illustrate the use of the word ague as applied to a universal epidemic. Two of the epidemic seasons in the 16th century, 1510 and 1539, are too vaguely recorded for our purpose; but I shall review briefly the seasons from 1557-58 onwards.
It is known from the general historians that there were two seasons of fever all over England in 1557 and 1558, of which the latter was the more deadly, the type according to Stow, being “quartan agues.” In letters of the time the epidemic of 1557 is variously named: thus Margaret, Countess of Bedford, writes on 9 August from London to Sir W. Cecil that she “trusts the sickness that reigns here will not come to the camp [near St Quentin, where Francis, Earl of Bedford was].... As for the ague, I fear not my son.” On the 18th of the same month, Sir Nicholas Bacon writes from Bedford to Cecil: “Your god-daughter, thanks be to God, is somewhat amended, her fits being more easy, but not delivered of any. It is a double tertian that holds her, and her nurse had a single, but it is gone clearly;” to which letter Lady Bacon adds a postscript about “little Nan, trusting for all this shrewd fever, to see her.” On 21 September, it appears that the sickness had reached the English camp near St Quentin, for the Earl of Bedford writes: “Our general is sick of an ague, our pay very slack, and people grudge for want.” As late as the 25th October the Countess of Bedford writes from London to Cecil that she “would not have him come yet without great occasions, as there reigns such sickness at London[540].”
Next year, 1558, the epidemic sickness returned in the summer and autumn, in a worse form than before. Stow calls it “quartan agues,” which destroyed many old people and especially priests, so that a great number of parishes were unserved. Harrison, a canon of Windsor, says that a third part of the people did taste the general sickness. On the 6th September, sickness affected more than half the people in Southampton, Portsmouth, and the Isle of Wight. From the 20th October to the end of the year, no fewer than seven of the London aldermen died, a number hardly equalled in the first sweating sickness of 1485, and the queen (Mary) died of the lingering effects of an ague, which was doubtless the reigning sickness. On 17th October, the English commissioners being at Dunkirk to negotiate the surrender of Calais, one of them, Sir William Pickering, fell “very sore sick of this new burning ague: he has had four sore fits, and is brought very low, and in danger of his life if they continue as they have done.” That year Dr Owen published A Meet Diet for the New Ague, and himself died of it in London on the 18th of October[541].
Fuller quaintly describes the ague of 1558 as “a dainty-mouthed disease, which, passing by poor people, fed generally on principal persons of greatest wealth and estate[542].” Roger Ascham wrote in 1562 to John Sturmius that, for four years past, or since 1558, “he was afflicted with continual agues, that no sooner had one left him but another presently followed; and that the state of his health was so impaired and broke by them that an hectic fever seized his whole body; and the physicians promised him some ease, but no solid remedy[543].” Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary of the end of the 17th century, found in the register of the parish of Rodwell, next to Leeds, a remarkable proof of the fatality of these agues, which fully bears out the general statements of Stow and Harrison. In 1557 the deaths in the register rose from 20 to 76, and in 1558, which the historians elsewhere say was the most fatal year, they rose to 124[544]. This was as severe as the sweating sickness of 1551, for example in the adjoining parish of Swillington, or in the parish of Ulverston, in Lancashire[545].
The English names of the epidemic sickness in the summers and autumns of 1557 and 1558 are all in the class of agues—“this new burning ague,” “a strange fever,” “divers strange and new sicknesses taking men and women in their heads, as strange agues and fevers,” “quartan agues.” One medical writer, Dr John Jones, says in a certain place that “quartans were reigning everywhere,” and in another place, still referring to 1558, that he himself had the sickness near Southampton, that it was attended by a great sweat, and that it was the same disease as the sweating sickness of 1551. There were certainly two seasons of these agues, 1557 and 1558, the latter being the worst; and it is probable from Short’s abstracts of a few parish registers in town and country that there was a third season of them in 1559. The year 1557 has been made an influenza year, perhaps because the Italian writers have emphasized catarrhal symptoms here or there in the epidemic of that year; while both the years 1557 and 1558 have been received into the chronology of epidemic or pandemic agues or malarial fevers[546]. There are perhaps a dozen English references in letters and chronicles to the sicknesses of those years, either to particular cases or to a general prevalence, but they do not enable us to distinguish a catarrhal type in 1557 from the aguish type which they assert for both 1557 and 1558.
Four years after, another very characteristic influenza was prevalent in Edinburgh.
Randolph writes from Edinburgh to Cecil in the end of November, 1562: “Maye it please your Honer, immediately upon the Quene’s (Mary’s) arivall here, she fell acquainted with a new disease that is common in this towne, called here the newe acqayntance, which passed also throughe her whole courte, neither sparinge lordes, ladies nor damoysells, not so much as ether Frenche or English. It ys a plague in their heades that have yt, and a sorenes in their stomackes, with a great coughe, that remayneth with some longer, with others shorter tyme, as yt findeth apte bodies for the nature of the disease. The queen kept her bed six days. There was no appearance of danger, nor manie that die of the disease, excepte some olde folkes. My lord of Murraye is now presently in it, the lord of Lidingeton hathe had it, and I am ashamed to say that I have byne free of it, seinge it seketh acquayntance at all men’s handes[547].”
It is not improbable that the interval between 1558 and 1562 may have been occupied with milder revivals of the original great epidemic, the one at Edinburgh counting in the series.
It appears from a Brabant almanack for the year 1561 that a sudden catarrhal epidemic was quite on the cards in those years: the astronomer foretells for the month of September, 1561: “Coughs innumerable, which shall show such power of contagion as to leave few persons unaffected, especially towards the end of the month[548].” There is an actual record from more than one country (Italy, Barcelona, as well as Edinburgh) of such universal catarrhs and coughs a year later than the one foretold. The Italian writers assign the universal catarrhs and coughs to the autumn of 1562, the Barcelona writer to the winter solstice of that year, and the letter from Edinburgh to “the laste of November.”
The next undoubted influenza, that of 1580, was compared abroad to the English sweat: