The Sweating Sickness in England

by Francis Cornelius Webb

The French ambassador’s third letter bears date the 21st, and from it we shall make our last extracts in reference to this visitation. He says: “As to the danger which is in this country, it begins to diminish hereabouts, but increases in parts where it had not been. In Kent it is rife at this moment.” * * “The day that I had it at M. de Canterbury’s (the archbishop), eighteen died of it in four hours; scarcely any escaped that day but myself, and I am not yet stout. The king has removed further than he was, and hopes that he shall not have the complaint. Still he keeps upon his guard, confesses every day, receives the sacrament on all holidays; and likewise the queen, who is with him. M. the legate does the same. The notaries have a fine time of it here: I believe there have been made a hundred thousand wills off hand, because those who died all went mad the instant the disorder became severe. The astrologers say this will turn to the Plague, but I think they rave.”

The epidemic spread throughout the country, and in consequence of it the circuits of assize were adjourned. Ireland also now unquestionably felt its influence. In Cork it was very fatal; and in Dublin, in the month of August, the archbishop and many of the citizens fell victims. It continued in some parts of England until the autumn; for Magnus, writing to Wolsey from Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, on the 7th of October, says that in consequence of the “pestiferous and ragious swete,” the Duke of Richmond has remained until now in a private place, with few attendants.

We must apologize to our readers for these lengthy details; but it is in descending to particulars we frequently can obtain that vivid impression of bygone events, which a mere general statement so often fails to convey.

In the following year, 1529, the sweating fever appeared at Hamburg, and spread throughout Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. It is not within the limits of a historical paper, which is confined to an account of the sweating sickness in England, to trace the march of the pestilence. This has been most ably performed by Hecker. Wherever it appeared it was accompanied, as usual, by dread, death, and desolation. We cannot, however, agree with the German professor in his view of the production of the epidemic. We are inclined to avow ourselves contagionists, in a modified sense of the word. It is beyond doubt that the disease did not appear at Hamburg until, on the 25th of July, a ship arrived from England, commanded by a Captain Hermann Evers, on board which, several cases of sweating sickness had occurred. On the night of their landing four persons were attacked and died. It is true that the conflagration no longer spread widely in England, but it had not died out in the earlier part of the preceding winter, and we cannot but believe that its flickering embers still existed. Sporadic cases doubtless occurred, and even isolated outbreaks of the disease. At least, we have strong proof of one such taking place at Chester, in 1550, a year before the last great epidemic.[C] Hecker seems to think that the passengers on board Captain Evers’s ship, acquired the sweat in the fogs of the German Ocean. But other ships must have been exposed to the same influence, and this was an isolated case. When, we would inquire, did a similar epidemic commence among the colliers of the Tyne, or the fishers of the Forth? The argument that he adduces from the fact that no sooner did report of the disease reach a place, than cases immediately occurred; and that, therefore, it spread more rapidly than by contagion, is the same advanced by our old friend, Brian Tuke, who says—“For when an hole man hath comen from London, and shewed of the swet, the same nygt al the toun, where the knowlege was, fal of it, and thus it spredeth yet as the fame roneth.” What better proof of the intervention of human intercourse can we have than is given in this sentence? The solution of the problem lies in the “whole man who came from London.” Evidently the rumour and the reality flew along the same conducting wire.

Yet we would not insist too much on what after all must be matter of opinion. When we find the medical world of our own day so divided on the subjects of the spread of cholera and yellow fever, the facts of which appeal to their immediate observation, how can we hope to draw conclusions with certainty from the scant records of 300 years ago—at the best, but a faint glimmer to direct us through the darkness which surrounds the past? That an outbreak of the sweat occurred at Chester in the year 1550, is affirmed by all the local historians. The year seems fixed by the fact that the mayor, Edmund Gee, died of it. We have examined several lists of the mayors and sheriffs, both manuscript and printed; and they each place his mayoralty and death in the year 1550. The Chester Chronicles in the Harleian Collection, state that in the morning he left the pentice (a local court) in good health, and that he died before night. Forty persons are said to have been carried off in twenty-four hours. Of course we cannot positively declare that there has been no confusion of dates here; we only lay before our readers the unanimous testimony of the Chester authorities.[D]

We have now arrived at the fifth and last act of the tragedy. The final irruption of the sweating sickness commenced at Shrewsbury, in the year 1551, the fifth of the short but eventful reign of Edward VI. Caius and Stow name the 15th of April as the day of its first appearance, but a manuscript chronicle of the town dates its commencement from the 22nd of March. Local tradition yet points to the White Horse Shut, Frankwell, as the focus from which the malady spread. Hecker, without sufficient ground, places the amount of mortality at 960. But Caius, whom he follows, merely states that in one city (unâ civitate) that number died. We are inclined to doubt, with the authors of the History of Shrewsbury, whether, as has been generally affirmed, Caius was present in that town at all. When he says, “Ipse dum hæc tragedia agebatur, præsens spectator interfui,” he only states that he was an eye-witness of the dreary spectacle; and there are reasons which render it more probable that he observed it in London than at Shrewsbury. However this may be, we have his testimony that it spread from its place of origin to Ludlow, Presteign, and other places in Wales, thence to Westchester, Coventry, Drenfoorde (?), and the south, before it came to London, which it reached on the 7th of July, three months after its first appearance. He gives a most vivid description of the consternation, horror, and desolation that reigned. Business was at an end; citizens fled to the country; peasants thronged the towns; many sought an asylum in foreign lands. The shrieks of women, rushing half naked from their habitations, mingled with the groans of the dying, and the deep clang of the funeral bell, booming through the misty air from every tower and steeple, deafened the ear, and struck terror to the heart of the passer. The epidemic was at its height in the capital from the 9th to the 19th of July, and it lingered until the 30th. In this time, at the lowest computation, nearly a thousand people perished. The exact number is somewhat differently stated, Stow says 960 died, of whom 800 in the first week. Caius (English treatise) reports that 761 died from the 9th to the 16th, besides those on the 7th and 8th, of whom no register was kept, and 142 from the 16th to the 30th. Machyn, a citizen resident in London, says that 872 were certified by the chancellor to have perished from the 8th to the 19th; whilst, in a manuscript in the Harleian Collection, we are told that 938 persons were carried off between the 7th and 20th. These numbers render it probable that when Caius, in his Latin treatise, written some time after, speaks of 960 dying in one city, his statement refers to the metropolis. One testimony, however, places the mortality much higher. Christopher Froschover, in a letter, dated London, August the 12th, affirms that 2,000 had died in the city, and 200 at Cambridge. The short space of time occupied by the pestilence, with the awfully abrupt seizure, and speedy termination of the fatal cases, rendered the destruction so appalling. It was the “sudden death,” with battle and murder equally dreaded.

Again the palace was attacked. A celebrated lawyer, Sir Thomas Speke, was seized there, and had only time to reach his house in Chancery Lane, before he breathed his last. There were some dancing in the Court at nine o’clock, who were dead at eleven, says a sermon of the period. There died in London, writes Machyn, “mony marchants and grett ryche men and women, and yonge men.” Howes, in his continuation of Stow, relates that “seven honest householders did sup together, and before eight of the clock the next morning six of them were dead.” The young king fled to Hampton Court, whence he addressed a letter to the bishops, inciting them to persuade the people to prayer, and to see God better served. There are several references to the malady in the preaching of Bradford and Hooper: the latter made it the subject of a pastoral charge and homily.

We are unable to trace the pestilence from town to town, but sufficient data have been collected to shew how widely the destructive principle was disseminated. In June we find it at Loughborough, in Leicestershire. In the parish register is the curious entry: “1551, June. The swat, called New acquaintance, alias Stoupe knave and know thy master, began on the 24th of this month.” It was in July that the disease appeared at Cambridge. Pursuing their studies in the University, were the young Duke of Suffolk, and his brother, Charles Brandon, equally distinguished for ability, worth, and learning. Alarmed by the outbreak, they hastened, with a few attendants, to Kingston, five miles distant. Here their chosen friend and companion, Charles Stanley, was seized, and expired in ten hours. In sorrow and consternation the brothers fled to the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Bugden, in Huntingdon, where they were joined, late at night, by their mother. Scarcely had she embraced them, when the Duke was attacked by the fatal symptoms, and in five hours, despite the endeavours of physicians, ceased to breathe. Within half an hour the younger brother, who slept in a distant part of the palace, was also a corpse. Their deaths created universal sorrow, the more, perhaps, that, through the influence of their mother, they were known to be attached to the principles of the Reformation. Our account is extracted from the very rare and interesting black-letter tract by Sir Thomas Wilson.

Late in July the pestilence was at Gloucester, whence Bishop Hooper, in a letter, dated August 1st, writes: “After I had begun this letter, my wife, and five others of my chaplains and domestics, were attacked by a new kind of sweating sickness, and were in great danger for twenty-four hours. I myself have but recently recovered from the same. The infection of this disease is in England most severe.” At Bristol the mortality was great. It lasted from Easter to Michaelmas, and several hundreds are said to have been carried off every week. Small towns and villages equally felt the influence. The parish register of Uffculme, in Devonshire, records that of thirty-eight deaths occurring, in 1551, twenty-seven were in the first eleven days of August, and sixteen of them in three days. These persons are said to have died of the “hote sickness or stup gallant.” (This latter name is evidently derived from the Trousse Galant of the French, a disease which had been epidemic in France in 1528, and afterwards, and which, we would suggest, was allied to the worst form of scarlatina.)[E]