  Aarhus, bishop of, his book on plague, 209, plague, 235, 303, 362, 365-6, 367, 368, 369, 370, 502, 503, 504, 563, a disease akin to pellagra, 108, 110, 37, 43, Footnotes: [1] The references to the Justinian plague by contemporary and later historians have been collected, together with partly irrelevant matter about portents and earthquakes, by Val. Seibel, Die grosse Pest zur Zeit Justinian’s I. Dillingen, 1857. The author, a layman, throws no light upon its origin. [2] Beda, Hist. Eccles. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 243: “qui ubi Romam pervenit, cujus sedi apostolicae tempore illo Vitalianus praeerat, postquam itineris sui causam praefato papae apostolico patefecit, non multo post et ipse et omnes pene, qui cum eo advenerant, socii, pestilentia superveniente, deleti sunt.” [3] Flores Histor. by Roger of Wendover. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. I. 180. [4] Ibid. I. 228. [5] Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., F.A.S. Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D. London, 1831. ‘An Enquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox etc.’ p. 108. [6] Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O’Donovan, Dublin, 1851, I. 183. “A.D. 543. There was an extraordinary universal plague through the world, which swept away the noblest third part of the human race.” p. 187. “A.D. 548. Of the mortality which was called Cron Chonaill—and that was the first Buide Chonaill [flava ictericia],—these saints died,” several names following. The entries of that plague are under different years in the various original Annals. [7] “Eodem anno dominicae incarnationis sexcentesimo sexagesimo quarto, facta erat eclipsis solis die tertio mensis Maii, hora circiter decima diei; quo etiam anno subita pestilentiae lues, depopulatis prius australibus Brittaniae plagis, Nordanhymbrorum quoque provinciam corripiens, atque acerba clade diutius longe lateque desaeviens, magnam hominum multitudinem stravit. Qua plaga praefatus Domini sacerdos Tuda raptus est de mundo, et in monasterio, quod dicitur Paegnalaech, honorifice sepultus. Haec autem plaga Hiberniam quoque insulam pari clade premebat. Erant ibidem eo tempore multi nobilium simul et mediocrium de gente Anglorum, qui tempore Finani et Colmani episcoporum, relicta insula patria, vel divinae lectionis, vel continentioris vitae gratia, illo secesserant.... Erant inter hos duo juvenes magnae indolis, de nobilibus Anglorum, Aedilhun et Ecgberct,” etc. Beda’s Hist. Eccles. ed. Stevenson. Engl. Hist. Soc. I. p. 231. [8] Ibid. p. 240. [9] Annals of the Four Masters, I. 275. [10] Thorpe, in his edition of Florence of Worcester, for the Eng. Hist. Society, I. 25. [11] The first of Beda’s incidents of the Barking monastery relates to a miraculous sign in the heavens showing where the cemetery was to be. It begins: “Cum tempestas saepe dictae cladis, late cuncta depopulans, etiam partem monasterii hujus illam qua viri tenebantur, invasisset, et passim quotidie raperentur ad Dominum.” [12] “Erat in eodem monasterio [Barking] puer trium circiter, non amplius annorum, Æsica nomine, qui propter infantilem adhuc aetatem in virginum Deo dedicatarum solebat cella nutriri, ibique medicari. Hic praefata pestilentia tactus ubi ad extrema pervenit clamavit tertio unam de consecratis Christo virginibus, proprio eam nomine quasi praesentem alloquens ‘Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd’; et sic terminans temporalem vitam intravit aeternam. At virgo illa, quam moriens vocabat, ipso quo vocata est die de hac luce subtracta, et ilium qui se vocavit ad regnum coeleste secuta est.” Beda, p. 265. Then follows the story of a nun dying of the pestilence in the same monastery. [13] Beda, Lib. IV. cap. 14. In addition to the instances in the text, which I have collected from Beda’s Ecclesiastical History, I find two mentioned by Willan in his “Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox,” (Miscell. Works, London, 1821, pp. 109, 110): “About the year 672, St Cedda, Bishop of the East Saxons, being on a visitation to the monastery of Lestingham, was infected with a contagious distemper, and died on the seventh day. Thirty monks, who came to visit the tomb of their bishop, were likewise infected, and most of them died” (Vita S. Ceddae, VII. Jan. p. 375. Cf. Beda, IV. 3). Again: “In the course of the year 685, the disease re-appeared at Lindisfarne, (Holy Island), St Cuthbert’s abbacy, and in 686 spread through the adjoining district, where it particularly affected children” (Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 33). Willan’s erudition has been used in support of a most improbable hypothesis, that the pestilence of those years, in monasteries and elsewhere, was smallpox. [14] Historia Abbatum Gyrvensium, auctore anonymo, §§ 13 and 14. (App. to vol. II. of Beda’s works. Eng. Hist. Society’s edition, p. 323.) § 13. Qui dum transmarinis moraretur in locis [Benedict] ecce subita pestilentiae procella Brittaniam corripiens lata nece vastavit, in qua plurimi de utroque ejus monasterio, et ipse venerabilis ac Deo dilectus abbas Eosterwini raptus est ad Dominum, quarto ex quo abbas esse coeperat anno. § 14. Porro in monasterio cui Ceolfridus praeerat omnes qui legere, vel praedicare, vel antiphonas ac responsoria dicere possent ablati sunt excepto ipso abbate et uno puerulo, qui ab ipso nutritus et eruditus. In the Article “Baeda,” Dict. Nat. Biog., the Rev. W. Hunt points out that the boy referred to in the above passage would have been Beda himself. [15] The history of the name pestis flava ictericia is given by O’Donovan in a note to the passage in the Annals of the Four Masters, I. 275: “Icteritia vel aurigo, id est abundantia flavae bilis, per corpus effusae, hominemque pallidum reddentis,” is the explanation of P. O’S. Beare. The earliest mention of “yellow plague” appears to have been in an ancient life of St Gerald of Mayo, in Colgan’s Acta Sanctorum, at the calendar date of 13th March. [16] Polychronicon, Rolls edition, V. 250. [17] The Story of England, Rolls series, ed. Furnivall, II. 569. [18] Rolls series, ed. Thorpe, I. 136, 137 (Transl. II. 60). Also in Gervase of Canterbury, Rolls series, ed. Stubbs, II. 348. [19] Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, Rolls ed. 1886, p. 397. [20] According to an inquisition of 2 Edward III., the abbey of Croyland contained in 1328, forty-one monks, besides fifteen “corrodiarii” and thirty-six servitors. Chronicle of Croyland in Gale, I. 482. [21] Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38, ed. Stubbs, Epist. CCLXXII. p. 254, and Introduction, p. lxvii. [22] William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 481. [23] Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 112. [24] Roger of Wendover, III. 72. [25] In the Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, who died in 1200, or eight years before the Papal Interdict, there is a clear reference to difficulties thrown by the priests in the way of burial, especially for the poor, and perhaps in a time of epidemic sickness such as the years 1194-6. See Vita S. Hugonis Lincolnensis, Rolls series, No. 37, pp. 228-233. [26] Eadmer, l. c. [27] Polychronicon, Rolls ed. VII. 90. [28] Gesta Pontificum, Rolls ed. p. 171. Another narrator of the story of St Elphege and the Danes is Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls ed. p. 179); he says nothing of the pestilence, but describes the sack of Canterbury. Eadmer also (Historia Novorum in Anglia, Rolls ser. 81, p. 4) omits the pestilence. [29] Quoted by Higden, Polychronicon, Rolls ed. II. 18. This may have been one of Henry of Huntingdon’s poems which were extant in Leland’s time, but are now lost. [30] Polychronicon, II. 166. [31] Marchand, Étude sur quelques ÉpidÉmies et endÉmies du moyen Âge (ThÈse), Paris, 1873, p. 49, with a reference to Fuchs, “Das heilige Feuer im Mittelalter” in Hecker’s Annalen, vol. 28, p. 1, which journal I have been unable to consult. [32] Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hiberniae, in Rolls edition of his works, No. 21, vol. V. [33] “Itinerarium Walliae” and “Descriptio Kambriae,” Opera, vol. VI. [34] Polychronicon, I. 410. [35] William of Newburgh, sub anno 1157, I. 107. [36] Europe during the Middle Ages, chap. IX. [37] I have used for this purpose Merewether and Stephens’ History of Boroughs, 3 vols. 1835. [38] Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Starcraft of Early England. Edited by Cockayne for the Rolls Series, 3 vols. 1864-66. [39] It is illustrative of the confusion which arises from careless copying by later compilers of history that Roger of Wendover, in his Flores Historiarum (Eng. Hist. Society’s edition I. 159), takes Beda’s Sussex reference to famine and makes it do duty, under the year 665, for the great general plague of 664, having apparently overlooked Beda’s entirely distinct account of the latter. [40] Hist. Eccles. § 290:—“Siquidem tribus annis ante adventum ejus in provinciam, nulla illis in locis pluvia ceciderat, unde et fames acerbissima plebem invadens inopia nece prostravit. Denique ferunt quia saepe quadraginta simul aut quinquaginta homines inedia macerati procederent ad praecipitium aliquod sive ripam maris, et junctis misere manibus pariter omnes aut ruina perituri, aut fluctibus absorbendi deciderent. Verum ipso die, quo baptisma fidei gens suscepit illa, descendit pluvia serena sed copiosa, refloruit terra, rediit viridantibus arvis annus laetus et frugifer.” [41] Green Short History of the English People, p. 39: “The very fields lay waste, and the land was scourged by famine and plague.” I have missed this reference to plague in the original authorities. A passage in Higden’s Polychronicon (V. 258) may relate to that period, although it is referred to the mythical time of Vortigern. [42] Stow, in enumerating the instances of public charity in his Survey of London, ascribes the melting of the church plate to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester in the reign of King Edgar, about the year 963. [43] The murrain was a flux, anglicÉ “scitha” (Roger of Howden) or “schitta” (Bromton). [44] Simeon of Durham, in Rolls series, II. 188. As to fugitives, see Chr. Evesham, p. 91. [45] Gesta Pontif. Angl. p. 208. [46] Simeon of Durham, “On the Miracles of St Cuthbert,” Works, II. 338-40. [47] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmesbury adds “a mortality of men.” [48] William of Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. Eng. Hist. Soc. II. 452. [49] Malmesbury’s construction is repeated by Henry of Huntingdon, Rolls ed. p. 209. Florence of Worcester merely says: “primo febribus, deinde fame.” [50] Henry of Huntingdon, p. 232. [51] Annals of Winchester, sub anno 1096. [52] “Septimo anno propter tributa quae rex in Normannia positus edixerat, agricultura defecit; qua fatiscente fames e vestigio; ea quoque invalescente mortalitas hominum subsecuta, adeo crebra ut deesset morituris cura, mortuis sepultura.” Gest. Reg. II. 506. Copied in the Annals of Margan, Rolls ed. II. 506. [53] RÂs MÂlÂ, by A. Kinloch Forbes, 2nd ed. p. 543. [54] Ibid. [55] Thomas Whyte, “Report on the disease which prevailed in Kattywar in 1819-20.” Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay, I. (1838), p. 169. See also Gilder, ibid. p. 192; Frederick Forbes ibid. II. 1, and Thesis on Plague, Edin. 1840. [56] In 1110 the tax was for the dower of the king’s daughter on her marriage. That also was parallel with a feudal right in Gujerat: “When a chief has to portion a daughter, or to incur other similar necessary expense, he has the right of imposing a levy upon the cultivators to meet it.” A. Kinloch Forbes, RÂs MÂlÂ, 2nd ed. p. 546. Refusal to plough, temp. Henry I. is stated by Pearson, I. 442. [57] Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. p. 442; H. of Huntingdon; Annals of Margan; Roger of Howden. [58] Also in the Annals of Osney: “Mortalitas maxima hominum in Anglia.” [59] “Attenuata est Anglia, ut ex regno florentissimo infelicissimum videretur.” William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 39. [60] Henry of Huntingdon, sub anno 1138. [61] Gesta Stephani, Rolls series, No. 82, vol. III. p. 99. The author is conjectured to have been a foreigner in the service of the bishop of Winchester, brother of the king. “Affluit ergo fames; consumpta carne gementes [63] William of Newburgh, sub anno 1149. [64] Stow’s Survey of London, Popular ed. (1890) p. 116. [65] “Recentium esus carnium et haustus aquae, tam insolitus quam incognitus, plures de regis exercitu panis inedia laborantes, fluxu ventris afflixit in Hybernia.” Radulphus de Diceto, Imagines Historiar. I. 350. [66] Benedict of Peterborough, I. 104, and, in identical terms, in Roger of Howden. [67] The speaker is represented as a Jew in France. It is significant that the massacre of the Jews at Lynn in 1190 is stated by William of Newburgh to have been instigated by the foreign traders. [68] Ricardus Divisiensis. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 60. [69] Description of London, prefixed to Fitzstephen’s Life of Becket. Reproduced in Stow’s Survey of London. [70] Petri Blesensis omnia opera, ed. Giles, Epist. CLI. The number of churches may seem large for the population; but it should be kept in mind that these city parish churches were mere chapels or oratories, like the side-chapels of a great church. Indeed, at Yarmouth, they were actually built along the sides of the single great parish church; whereas, at Norwich, there were sixty of them standing each in its own small parish area, the Cathedral, as well as the other conventual churches, being the greater places of worship. Lincoln is said to have had 49 of these small churches, and York 40. An example of them remains in St Peter’s at Cambridge. [71] William of Newburgh, p. 431. [72] Ibid. [73] “His quoque nostris diebus, ingruente famis inedia, et maxima pauperum turba quotidie ad januam jacente, de communi patrum consilio, ad caritatis explendae sufficientiam, propter bladum in Angliam navis Bristollum missa est.” Itiner. Walliae, Rolls ed. VI. 68. The itinerary of Bishop Baldwin, which the author follows, was in 1188; but the “his quoque nostris diebus” clearly refers to a later date, which may have been the year after, or may have been the more severe famine of 1195-7 or of 1203. [74] Histor. Rer. Angl., Rolls series, No. 82, vol. I. pp. 460, 484. [75] Ralph of Coggeshall, sub anno. [76] “Variis infirmitatibus homines per Angliam vexantur et quamplures moriuntur,” Annals of Margan, Rolls series, No. 36. [77] Roger of Wendover, Fl. Hist. Rolls ed. [78] Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, Rolls series, No. 57, ed. Luard, vol. V. [79] Rishanger in Chron. Monast. S. Albani, Rolls series, No. 28. [80] John Trokelowe, ibid. [81] Wendover, II. 162, 171, 190, 205. [82] Wendover, III. 95, 98. [83] “Qui ex avaritia inopiam semper habent suspectam.” [84] Alboldslea, or Abbotsley, was the parish of which the famous Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, was rector (perhaps non-resident) down to 1231, or to within three years of the date of the above anecdote. The existing church is of great age, and may well have been the actual edifice in which the scene was enacted. [85] Wendover, III. 96. [86] Ibid. III. 19, 27. [87] Wendover, III. 381. [88] William of Newburgh, sub anno 1196. [89] On the other hand John Stow seems to have acquired, from some unstated source, an extraordinary prejudice against him. [90] Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj. ed. Luard, V. 663, 675. [91] Annals of Tewkesbury in Annales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 36. [92] Chronica Majora, IV. 647; Stow, Survey of London. [93] Chron. Maj. IV. 654. [94] Chr. Maj. V. 660. Other details occur here and there to the end of the chronicle. [95] This is the number given by Matthew Paris. It suggests a larger population in the capital than we might have been disposed to credit. The same writer says that London was so full of people when the parliament was sitting the year before (1257) that the city could hardly hold them all in her ample bosom. The Annals of Tewkesbury put the whole mortality from famine and fever in London in 1258 at 20,000. But the whole population did not probably exceed 40,000. [96] The year 1274 was the beginning of so exceptional a murrain of sheep that it deserves mention here, although murrains do not come within the scope of the work. It is recorded by more than one contemporary. Rishanger (p. 84) says: “In that year a disastrous plague of sheep seized upon England, so that the sheep-folds were everywhere emptied through the spreading of it. It lasted for twenty-eight years following, so that no farm of the whole kingdom was without the infliction of that misery. Many attributed the cause of this disease, which the inhabitants had not been acquainted with before, to a certain rich man of the Frankish nation, who settled in Northumberland, having brought with him a certain sheep of Spanish breed, the size of a small two year old ox, which was ailing and contaminated all the flocks of England by handing on its disease to them.” Under the year following, 1275, he enters it again, using the term “scabies.” Thorold Rogers (Hist. of Agric. and Prices, I. 31) has found “scab” of sheep often mentioned in the bailiffs’ accounts from about 1288; it is assumed to have become permanent from the item of tar occurring regularly in the accounts; but tar was used ordinarily for marking. It may have been sheep-pox, which Fitzherbert, in his Book of Husbandry (edition of 1598), describes under the name of “the Poxe,” giving a clear account of the way to deal with it by isolation. For murrains in general, the reader may consult Fleming’s Animal Plagues, 2 vols. 1871—1884, a work which is mostly compiled (with meagre acknowledgment for “bibliography” only) from the truly learned work of Heusinger, Recherches de Pathologie ComparÉe, Cassel, 1844. Fleming has used only the “piÈces justificatives,” and has not carried the history beyond the point where Heusinger left it. [97] Continuation of Wm. of Newburgh, Rolls series No. 82, vol. II. p. 560: “Facta est magna fames per universam Angliam et maxime partibus occidentalibus. In Hibernia vero tres pestes invaluerunt, sc. mortalitas, fames, et gladius: per guerram mortalem praevalentibus Hybernicis et Anglicis succumbentibus. Qui vero gladium et famem evadere potuerunt, peste mortalitatis praeventi sunt, ita ut vivi mortuis sepeliendis vix sufficere valerent.” [98] See also the continuation of the chronicle of Florence of Worcester, Bohn’s series, p. 405. [99] Rishanger’s annals, 1259-1305, and Trokelowe’s, 1307-1323, are printed in the volumes of Chronica Monast. S. Albani, No. 28 of the Rolls series. [100] Furnivall’s ed. Rolls series, No. 87, vol. II. 569, 573. [101] Chronicle of William Gregory, Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876. [102] Annales Londonienses, Rolls series, No. 76, ed. Stubbs. Introduction, p. lxxvi. [103] Ibid. (Annales Paulini), p. 238. [104] Ibid. p. 304. [105] Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38, II. Introduction by Stubbs, p. xxxii. [106] Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38, II. Introduction by Stubbs, p. cxix. [107] Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 156. [108] He might have been, and probably was, the prototype of the physician Nathan Ben Israel, in the 35th Chapter of Ivanhoe. [109] Adam de Marisco to Grosseteste, Mon. Francisc. ed. Brewer, I. 113. [110] I have not succeeded in finding this in the author’s writings, and quote it at second hand. [111] Quoted, without date, by Marchand, Étude historique et nosographique sur quelques ÉpidÉmies et endÉmies du moyen Âge. Paris, 1873. [112] I give this account of the obvious characters of spurred rye from a recent observation of a growing crop of it. [113] One of the greatest epidemics was in Westphalia and the Cologne district in 1596 and 1597. It fell to be described by two learned writers, Sennert and Horst, of whose accounts a summary is given by Short, Air, weather, seasons, etc. I. 275-285. [114] Translated into the Philosophical Transactions, No. 130, vol. XII. p. 758 (14 Dec. 1676) from the Journal des SÇavans. [115] Studien Über den Ergotismus, Marburg, 1856. [116] Simeon of Durham and Roger of Howden have the following, under the year 1048: “Mortalitas hominum et animalium multas occupavit Angliae provincias, et ignis aereus, vulgo dictus sylvaticus, in Deorbensi provincia et quibusdam aliis provinciis, villas et segetes multas ustulavit.” [117] “Je crois qu’ils ont voulu indiquer l’ignis sacer ou de St Antoine, qui dans ces annÉes et surtout 1044 sÉvit en France.” Recherches de Pathologie ComparÉe, vol. II. p. cxlviii. [118] On the other hand, Short, in his General Chronological History of the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors etc. (2 vols. London, 1749) says that the epidemic of 1110 consisted of “especially an epidemic erysipelas, whereof many died, the parts being black and shrivelled up;” and that in 1128, “St Anthony’s fire was fatal to many in England.” He gives no authority in either case. But the one error is run to earth in a French entry of 1109, “membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus” (Sig. Gembl. auctar. p. 274, Migne); the other, most likely, in the ignis around Chartres, 1128 (Stephen of Caen, Bouquet, xii. 780). Perhaps this is the best place to express a general opinion on the work by Short, which is the only book of the kind in English previous to my own. It is everywhere uncritical and credulous, and often grossly inaccurate in dates, sometimes repeating the same epidemic under different years. It appears to have been compiled, for the earlier part, at least, from foreign sources, such as a Chronicle of Magdeburg, and to a large extent from a work by Colle de Belluno (fl. 1631). Many of the facts about English epidemics are given almost as in the original chronicles, but without reference to them. English experience of sickness is lost in the general chronology of epidemics for all Europe, and is dealt with in a purely verbalist manner. So far as this volume extends (1667) I have found Short’s book of no use, except now and then in calling my attention to something that I had overlooked. His other work, New Observations on City, Town and County Bills of Mortality (London, 1750) shows the author to much greater advantage, and I have used his statistical tables for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [119] The facts were communicated to the Royal Society by Charlton Wollaston, M.D., F.R.S., then resident in Suffolk, and by the Rev. James Bones. They were referred by Dr G. Baker to Tissot of Lausanne, who replied that they corresponded to typical gangrenous ergotism. See Phil. Trans. vol. LII. pt. 2 (1762) p. 523, p. 526, p. 529; and vol. LX. (1768) p. 106. [120] An erroneous statement as to an epidemic of gangrenous ergotism, or of Kriebelkrankheit, in England in 1676, has somehow come to be current in German books. It has a place in the latest chronological table of ergotism epidemics, that of Hirsch in his Handbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie, vol. II. 1883 (Engl. Transl. II. p. 206), the reference being to Birch, Philos. Transact. This reference to ergotism in England in 1676 is given also in Th. O. Heusinger’s table (1856), where it appears in the form of “Schnurrer, nach Birch.” On turning to Schnurrer’s Chronik der Seuchen (II. 210), the reference is found to be, “Birch, Phil. Trans. vols. XI. and XII.”; and coming at length to the Philosophical Transactions, it appears that vols. X., XI. and XII. are bound up together, that vol. XII. (1676) p. 758, contains an extract from the Journal des SÇavans about ergot of rye in certain parts of France, and that there is nothing about ergotism in England in either vol. XI. or vol. XII. So far as concerns Dr Birch, he was secretary to the Royal Society in the next century. [121] Knighton, De Eventibus Angliae in Twysden, col. 2580: “In aestate scilicet anno Gratiae 1340 accidit quaedam execrabilis et enormis infirmitas in Anglia quasi communis, et praecipue in comitatu Leicestriae adeo quod durante passione homines emiserunt vocem latrabilem ac si esset latratus canum; et fuit quasi intolerabilis poena durante passione: ex inde fuit magna pestilentia hominum.” [122] Phil. Trans. XXIII. p. 1174 (June 26, 1702). [123] Op. cit. I. pt. 2, p. 366. [124] Phil. Trans. XXII. (1700-1701), p. 799, a Letter in Latin from Joh. Freind dated Christ Church, Oxford, 31 March. [125] The earliest religious hysterias of Sweden fall in the years 1668 to 1673, which do not correspond to years of ergotism in that country, although there was ergotism in France in 1670 and in Westphalia in 1672. The later Swedish psychopathies have been in 1841-2, 1854, 1858, and 1866-68, some of which years do correspond closely to periods of ergotism in Sweden. [126] “Moriebantur etiam plures morbo litargiae, multis infortunia prophetantes; mulieres insuper decessere multae per fluxum, et erat communis pestis bestiarum.” Walsingham, Hist. Angl., sub anno; and in identical terms in the Chronicon Angliae a Monacho Sancti Albani. [127] “Magna et formidabilis pestilentia extemplo subsecuta est Cantabrigiae, qua homines subito, prout dicebatur, sospites, invasi mentis phrenesi moriebantur, sine viatico sive sensu.” Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 186. Under the same year, 1389, the continuator of Higden’s Polychronicon (IX. 216) says that the king being in the south and “seeing some of his prostrated by sudden death, hastened to Windsor.” [128] For example in the Sloane MS. 2420 (the treatise by Constantinus Africanus of Salerno), there are chapters “De Litargia,” “De Stupore Mentis,” and “De Phrenesi.” [129] Th. O. Heusinger, Studien Über den Ergotismus, Marburg, 1856, p. 35: “Es werden freilich in den Beschreibungen einiger frÜheren Epidemieen Öfter typhÖse Erscheinungen erwÄhnt; die Beschreiber behaupten aber auch dann meist die ContagiositÄt der Krankheit, und es liegt die Vermuthung nahe, dass die Krankheit dann eigentlich ein Typhus war, bei dem die Erscheinungen des Ergotismus ebenso constant vorkommen, wie sie sonst in vereinzelteren FÄllen dem Typhus sich beigesellen” (cf. ‘Dorf Gossfelden,’ in Appendix). [130] History of Agriculture and Prices, I. 27. [131] “Sed in fructibus arborum suspicio multa fuit, eo quod per nebulas foetentes, exhalationes, aerisque varias corruptiones, ipsi fructus, puta poma, pyra, et hujusmodi sunt infecta; quorum esu multi mortales hoc anno [1383] vel pestem letalem vel graves morbos et infirmitates incurrerunt.” Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 109. The continuator of Higden records under the same year, in one place a “great pestilence in Kent which destroyed many, and spared no age or sex” (IX. 27), and on another page (IX. 21) a great epidemic in Norfolk, which attacked only the youth of either sex between the ages of seven and twenty-two! [132] Walsingham, II. 203; Stow’s Survey of London, p. 133. [133] The spelling, and a few whole words, have been altered from Skeat’s text, so as to make the meaning clear. [134] Simpson, Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. 1842, vol. LVII. p. 136. [135] Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls ed. p. 156) describes the death of Hubert on 13 July, 1205, but does not mention the name of his physician. [136] Gilberti Anglici Compendium Medicinae, ed. Michael de Capella. Lugduni, 1512, Lib. VII. cap. “De Lepra,” pp. 337-345. [137] Bernardi Gordonii Lilium Medicinae. Lugd. 1551, p. 88. [138] Compend. Med. Ed. cit. p. 344. [139] Lilium Medicinae. Lugd. 1551, p. 89. [140] Ibid. p. 89. [141] For fuller reference, see p. 103. [142] Philos. Trans. of Royal Society, XXXI. 58: “Now in a true leprosy we never meet with the mention of any disorder in those parts, which, if there be not, must absolutely secure the person from having that disease communicated to him by coition with leprous women; but it proves there was a disease among them which was not the leprosy, although it went by that name; and that this could be no other than venereal because it was infectious.” He then quotes from Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomew Glanvile, De proprietatibus rerum, passages which he thinks relate to syphilis, although they are obviously the distinctive signs of lepra taken almost verbatim from Gilbertus Anglicus. He implies that the later so-called leper-houses of London were really founded for syphilis when it became epidemic. In the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor, mention is made of three leper-houses, the Loke, Hackenay and St Giles beyond Holborn Bars, as if these were all that existed in the year 1452. But in the reign of Henry VIII. there were six of them besides St Giles’s,—Knightsbridge, Hammersmith, Highgate, Kingsland, the Lock, and Mile End; and these, says Beckett, were used for the treatment of the French pox, which became exceedingly common after 1494-6. [143] Martin, Histoire de France, VII. 283. [144] One of Gascoigne’s references was copied by Beckett (Phil. Trans. XXXI. 47), beginning: “Novi enim ego, Magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet indignus, sacrae theologiae doctor, qui haec scripsi et collegi, diversos viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex putrefactione membrorum suorum et corporis sui, quae corruptio et putrefactio causata fuit, ut ipsi dixerunt, per exercitium copulae carnalis cum mulieribus. Magnus enim dux in Anglia, scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum genitalium et corporis sui, causata per frequentationem mulierum. Magnus enim fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae divulgabatur,” etc. In the Loci e Libro Veritatum, printed by Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), the following consequences are mentioned: “Plures viri per actum libidinosum luxuriae habuerunt membra sua corrupta et penitus destructa, non solum virgam sed genitalia: et alii habuerunt membra sua per luxuriam corrupta ita quod cogebantur, propter poenam, caput virgae abscindere. Item homo Oxoniae scholaris, Morland nomine, mortuus fuit Oxoniae ex corruptione causata per actum luxuriae.” p. 136. [145] A most excellent and compendious method of curing woundes in the head and in other partes of the body; translated into English by John Read, Chirurgeon; with the exact cure of the Caruncle, treatise of the Fistulae in the fundament, out of Joh. Ardern, etc. London, 1588. [146] MS. Harl. 2378:—No. 86 is: “Take lynsed or lynyn clothe and brene it & do ye pouder in a clout, and bynd it to ye sore pintel.” Also, “Take linsed and stamp it and a lytel oyle of olyf and a lytl milk of a cow of a color, and fry them togeder in a panne, and ley it about ye pyntel in a clout.” No. 87 is “for bolnyng of pyntel.” No. 88 is “For ye kank’ on a manys pyntel.” On p. 103 is another “For ye bolnyng of a manys yerde.... Bind it alle abouten ye yerde, and it salle suage.” On folio 19: “For ye nebbe yt semeth leprous ... iii dayes it shall be hole.” “For ye kanker” might have meant cancer or chancre. The prescriptions in Moulton’s This is the Myrour or Glasse of Helth (? 1540) correspond closely with these in the above Harleian MS. The printed book gives one (cap. 63), “For a man that is Lepre, and it lake in his legges and go upwarde.” There is also a prescription for “morphewe.” [147] Nicolas Massa, in Luisini. [148] Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus. App. vol. II. p. 499. [149] L. c. V. 679, “Episcopus Herefordensis polipo percutitur.—Episcopus Herefordensis turpissimo morbo videlicet morphea, Deo percutiente, merito deformatur, qui totum regnum Angliae proditiose dampnificavit;” and again V. 622. [150] Compend. Med. Ed. cit. p. 170. [151] Lilium Med. Ed. cit. p. 108. [152] Brassac, Art. “Elephantiasis” (p. 465) in Dict. Encycl. des Sciences MÉdicales. [153] Rosa Anglica. Papiae, 1492. [154] That Baldwin IV.’s disease excited interest in him is clear from the reference of William of Newburgh, who calls him (p. 242) “princeps Christianus lepram corporis animi virtute exornans.” [155] Chronicon de Lanercost (Bannatyne Club, p. 259): “Dominus autem Robertus de Brus, quia factus fuerat leprosus, illa vice [anno 1327] cum eis Angliam non intravit.” The rubric on folio 228 of the MS. has “leprosus moritur.” [156] The original account is by Gascoigne, Loci etc. ed. Rogers, Oxon. p. 228. [157] “Item matrimonium inter dominum regem et quandam nobilem mulierem nequiter impedivit, dum clanculo significavit eidem mulieri et suo generi, quod rex strabo et fatuus nequamque fuerat, et speciem leprae habere, fallaxque fuerat et perjurus, imbellis plusquam mulier, in suos tantum sacvientem, et prorsus inutilem complexibus alicujus ingenuae mulieris asserendo.” Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., Rolls ed., III. 618-19. [158] Chronicon Angliae in Twysden, col. 2600. [159] Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, edited by E. Maunde Thompson. Oxford, 1889, p. 100. [160] Professor Robertson Smith has kindly written for me the following note: “The later Jews were given to shorten proper names; and in the Talmud we find the shortening La‘zar (with a guttural, which the Greeks could not pronounce, between the a and the z), for Eliezer or Eleazar. ???a??? is simply La‘zar with a Greek ending, and occurs, as a man’s name, not only in the New Testament but in Josephus (B. Jud. V. 13, 7). This was quite understood by early readers of the Gospels; the Syriac New Testament, translated from the Greek, restores the lost guttural, and uses the Syriac form, as employed in 1 Macc. viii. 17 to render the Greek ’????a???. Moreover the Latin and Greek onomastica explain Lazarus as meaning ‘adjutus,’ which shows that they took it from (Hebrew) ‘to help’—the second element in the compound Eliezer. The etymology ‘adjutus’ (or the like) ‘helped by God,’ would no doubt powerfully assist in the choice of the designation lazars (for lepers). Suicer, in his Thesaurus, quotes a sermon of Theophanes, where it is suggested that every poor man who needs help from those who have means might be called a Lazarus.” Hirsch (Geog. and Hist. Path. II. 3) says that the Arabic word for the falling sickness comes from the same root (meaning “thrown to the ground”) as the Hebrew word “sÂraat,” which is the term translated “leprosy” in Leviticus xiii. and xiv. In Isaiah liii. 4, the Vulgate has “et nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum,” where the English Bible has “yet we did esteem him stricken.” [161] Roger of Howden. Edited by Stubbs. Rolls series, No. 51, vol. I. p. 110. Aelred, the chief collector of the miraculous cures by Edward the Confessor, appears to have omitted this one. [162] Ailredi Abbatis Rievallensis Genealogia Regum Anglorum. In Twysden’s Decem Scriptores, col. 368. “Cum, inquit [David], adolescens in curia regia [Anglica] servirem, nocte quadam in hospicio meo cum sociis meis nescio quid agens, ad thalamum reginae ab ipsa vocatus accessi. Et ecce domus plena leprosis, et regina in medio stans, deposito pallio, lintheo se precinxit, et posita in pelvi aqua, coepit lavare pedes eorum, et extergere, extersosque utrisque constringere manibus et devotissime osculari. Cui ego: ‘Quid agis,’ inquam, ‘O domina mea? Certe si rex sciret ista, nunquam dignaretur os tuum, leprosorum pedum tabe pollutum, suis labiis osculari.’ Et illa surridens ait: ‘Pedes,’ inquit, ‘Regis aeterni quis nescit labiis regis morituri esse praeferendos? Ecce, ego idcirco vocavi te, frater carissime, ut exemplo mei talia discas operari. Sumpta proinde pelvi, fac quod me facere intueris.’ Ad hanc vocem vehementer expavi, et nullo modo id me pati posse respondi. Necdum enim sciebam Dominum, nec revelatus fuerat mihi Spiritus ejus. Illa igitur coeptis insistente, ego—mea culpa—ridens ad socios remeavi.” [163] Vita S. Hugonis Lincolnensis. Rolls series, 39, p. 163-4. [164] The bishop left by his will 100 marks to be distributed “per domos leprosorum” in his diocese and a like sum “per domos hospitales,” and three marks each to the leper-houses at Selwood and outside Bath and Ilchester. Hist. MSS. Commiss. X. pt. 3, p. 186. [165] Monumenta Franciscana. Rolls series, No. 4. Introd. by Brewer, p. xxiv. [166] William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum, Rolls ed., p. 72. [167] In 1574 it was found providing indoor relief for fifteen brethren and fifteen sisters, and outdoor relief for as many more. [168] Roger of Wendover. Rolls ed. II. 265. [169] In the MS. of Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 26 in the Parker Collection, p. 220. The late Rev. S. S. Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who most liberally had a fac-simile of the drawing made for me, would date it a little before 1250. (Rolls edition, by Luard, II. 144.) [170] Rotuli Chartarum, 1199-1216. Charter of confirmation, 1204 (5 Joh.) p. 117 b. [171] In the Valor Ecclesiasticus of Henry VIII. its revenue is put at £100. [172] The commanderies of the Knights of St Lazarus were numerous in every province of France. For an enumeration of them see Les Lepreux et les Chevaliers de Saint Lazare de Jerusalem et de Notre Dame et de Mont Carmel. Par Eugene Vignat, Orleans, 1884, pp. 315-364. [173] Joannis Sarisburiensis Opera omnia, ed. Giles 1, 141 (letter to Josselin, bishop of Salisbury). [174] “Vix seu raro inveniuntur tot leprosi volentes vitam ducere observantiis obligatam ad dictum hospitale concurrentes.” Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, Rolls ed. II. 484. [175] Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj. V. 452. [176] Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, II. 401. [177] “The sisters of St James’s were bound by no vows, and at this period [1344] were not all, or even any of them, lepers; and in consequence a place in the hospital was much sought after by needy dependents of the Court.” Report on MSS. of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in Hist. MSS. Commission Reports, IX. p. 87. [178] Dugdale’s History of Warwickshire, p. 197. [179] On Nov. 24, 1200, king John signed at Lincoln letters of simple protection to the leprosi of St Bartholomew’s, Oxford (Rot. Chart. 1199-1216, p. 99). [180] Rotuli Hundredorum, II. 359-60. The famous Stourbridge Fair originally grew out of a right of market-toll granted in aid of the leper-hospital. [181] The decrees of the Third Lateran Council are given by several historians of the time, among others by William of Newburgh, pp. 206-223. [182] Roger of Howden, Rolls edition, II. 265. [183] William of Newburgh, Rolls edition, p. 437. [184] See the various charters and memorials in Surtees’ History of Durham. [185] Two of the larger houses for lepers not mentioned in the text were St Nicholas’s at Carlisle and the hospital at Bolton in Northumberland, each with thirteen beds. [186] By collecting every reference to lepers or lazar-houses in Tanner’s Notitia Monastica or in Dugdale’s Monasticon Sir J. Y. Simpson has made out a table of some hundred leper-houses in Britain (Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. 1841 and 1842). Simpson’s table has been added to by Miss Lambert in the Nineteenth Century, Aug.-Sept. 1884, by the Rev. H. P. Wright (Leprosy etc. 1885), who says at the end of his long list: “There were hundreds more,” and by Mr R. C. Hope (The Leper in England, Scarborough, 1891), whose list runs to 172. Perhaps the most remarkable development of that verbalist handling of the matter has been reserved for a recent medical writer, who has constructed, from the conventional list of leper-hospitals, a map of the geographical distribution of leprosy in medieval Britain. (British Medical Journal, March 1, 1890, p. 466.) [187] The Lock was doubtless the house of the “Leprosi apud Bermondsey” who are designated in the Royal Charter of 1 Hen. IV. (1399) as recipients, along with the leprosi of Westminster (St James’s), of “five or six thousand pounds.” (Rotuli Chartarum, 1 Hen. IV.) [188] Beckett, Phil. Trans., vol. 31, p. 60. [189] Stow, Survey of London, ed. of 1890, p. 437. [190] Beckett, l. c. The Knightsbridge house was earlier. See next note. [191] Survey of London, pop. ed. p. 436. Bequests to lepers occur in various wills of London citizens, in Dr Sharpe’s Calendar of Wills, vol. II. Lond. 1890. In a will dated 21 April, 1349, the bequest is to “the poor lazars without Southwerkebarre and at Hakeney” (p. 3). On 1 July, 1371, another bequeaths money to “the three colleges of lepers near London, viz. at le loke, at St Giles de Holbourne, and at Hakeney” (p. 147). On 7 April, 1396, bequests are made to “the lepers at le loke near Seynt Georges barre, of St Giles without Holbournebarre, and le meselcotes de Haconey” (p. 341). The “lazar house at Knyghtbrigge” appears, for the first time, in a will dated 21 Feb. 1485, along with “the sick people in the lazercotes next about London” (p. 589). [192] Accounts of the Lord High-Treasurer of Scotland. Rolls series I. 1473-1498, pp. 337, 356, 361, 378, 386. [193] These are all the so-called “medieval leper-hospitals” collected by Belcher (Dubl. Quart. Journ. of Med. Sc. 1868, August, p. 36) chiefly from Archdall’s Monasticon Hibernicum. He points out that the very early references to leprosy in the Annals of the Four Masters included various kinds of cutaneous maladies. [194] Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis. Rolls series, 1886, p. 157. The chronicler has nothing farther to say as to the cause of the leprosy, than the opinion of “a certain philosopher,” that whatever turns us from health to the vices of disease acts by the weight of too much blood, by superfluous heat, by humours exuding in excess, or by the spirits flowing with unwonted laxity through silent passages. [195] Eadmer, Vita S. Anselmi, Rolls edit., p. 355. [196] Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, Rolls edit. II. Appendix C. p. 503. [197] Brassac, Art. “ÉlÉphantiasis,” in Dict. Encycl. des Sc. MÉd. p. 475, says: “Il y avait aussi des vagabonds et des paresseux qui, sans nulle crainte de la contagion, et dÉsireux de vivre sans rien faire, simulaient la lÈpre pour Être admis aux lÉproseries. On y trouvait encore des personnes qui s’imposaient une rÉclusion perpÉtuelle pour vivre avec les lÉpreux et faire leur salut par une vie de soumission aux rÈgles de l’Église.” [198] The ordinance is translated in full from the City archives by H. T. Riley, London in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, pp. 230-231. The following is the preamble of it:— “Edward, by the grace of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have been given to understand that many persons, as well of the city aforesaid as others coming to the said city, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do publicly dwell among the other citizens and sound persons, and there continually abide and do not hesitate to communicate with them, as well in public places as in private; and that some of them, endeavouring to contaminate others with that abominable blemish (that so, to their own wretched solace, they may have the more fellows in suffering,) as well in the way of mutual communications, and by the contagion of their polluted breath, as by carnal intercourse with women in stews and other secret places, detestably frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are sound, both male and female, to the great injury of the people dwelling in the city aforesaid, and the manifest peril of other persons to the same city resorting:—We” etc. [199] Riley, p. 384. [200] Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence. Early Eng. Text Soc. [201] Riley, p. 365. [202] Rymer’s Foedera, v. pt. 2, p. 166. [203] Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, 11. Praef. p. 32. [204] The expression “leprosa Sodomorum” occurs in a Latin poem from a medieval MS. found in Switzerland. The verses are printed in full by Hensler, Geschichte der Lustseuche, p. 307. [205] These and other particulars relating to lepers in Scotland are given in Simpson’s Antiquarian Notices of Leprosy in Scotland and England (Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. Oct. 1841, Jan. and April 1842), a series of excellent papers which have been for many years the source of most that has been written of medieval leprosy in this country. [206] Letter to Barrington, 8 January, 1778. [207] These numbers seem to stand for the contents of the larders in all the various manors of De Spenser. [208] Mr Jonathan Hutchinson has been adding, year after year, to the evidence that semi-putrid fish, eaten in that state by preference or of necessity, is the chief cause of modern leprosy, and he has successfully met many of the apparent exceptions. Norway has had leprosy in some provinces for centuries; and it is significant that William of Malmesbury, referring to those who went on the first Crusade, says: “Scotus familiaritatem pulicum reliquit, Noricus cruditatem piscium.” (Gesta Regum, Eng. Hist. Soc. II. 533.) [209] In his section De preservatione a lepra (p. 345) Gilbert advises to avoid, among other things, all salted fish and meat, and dried bacon. [210] Acts of Robert III. in the Regiam Majestatem, p. 414 (quoted by Simpson, Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ. vol. 57, p. 416). [211] Dr Gilbert Skene, of Aberdeen, and afterwards of Edinburgh, in his book on the plague (1568), has an incidental remark about “evil and corrupt meats” which may be taken in a literal sense: “As we see dailie the pure man subject to sic calamitie nor the potent, quha are constrynit be povertie to eit evill and corrupte meittis, and diseis is contractit, heir of us callit pandemiall.” (Bannatyne Club edition, p. 6.) [212] Higden’s Polychronicon. Edited for the Rolls series by Babington and Lumby, vol. VIII. [213] The Annals of Ireland. By Friar John Clyn, of the Convent of Friars Minor, Kilkenny, and Thady Dowling, Chancellor of Leighlin. Edited from the MSS. etc. by R. Butler, Dean of Clonmacnois. Dublin, 1849 (Irish ArchÆological Society). The last entry by Clyn himself appears to be the words “magna karistia” etc., under 1349. There is added “Videtur quod author hic obiit;” and then two entries of pestilence made in 1375 in another hand. [214] Henricus de Knighton, Chronicon Angliae, in Twysden’s Decem Script. Angl. col. 2598 et seq. An edition of Knighton’s Chronicle, by Lumby, is in progress for the Rolls series. [215] Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker. Edited by E. Maunde Thompson, Oxford, 1889. [216] Robertus de Avesbury, Historia de Mirabilibus Gestis Regis Ed. III., Oxon. 1720. Also in the Rolls series. Edited by E. Maunde Thompson. [217] Eulogium Historiarum. Rolls series, No. 9. Edited by Haydon, III. 213. [218] Itineraria Symonis Simeonis et Willelmi de Worcestre. Edited by Nasmith from the MSS. in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Cantab. 1778, p. 113: “parum ante nativitatem Domini intravit villam Bodminiae, ubi mortui fuerunt circa mille quingentos per estimacionem.” [219] Histor. MSS. Commission, vi. 475. [220] Wilkins, Concilia II. 745: “Contagium pestilentiae moderni temporis undique se dilatans etc.” [221] Rymer’s Foedera, V. 655:—“Quia tamen subita plaga Pestilentiae Mortalis in loco praedicto et aliis partibus circumvicinis adeo indies invalescit, quod de securo accessu Hominum ad locum illum formidatur admodum hiis diebus.” [222] Ibid.—“Et quia dicta Pestilentia Mortalis in dicto loco Westmonasteriensi ac in civitate Londoniae, ac alis locis circumvicinis, gravius solito invalescit (quod dolenter referimus) per quod accessus Magnatum et aliorum nostrorum Fidelium ad dictum locum nimis periculosus foret,” &c. This second prorogation was sine die. [223] Calendar of Wills (Husting Court, London), ed. Sharpe, Lond. 1889, I. 506-624. [224] Clyn. But his account for Kilkenny, where he lived, makes the epidemic either earlier or later there than at Dublin: “Ista pestilencia apud Kilkenniam in XLa invaluit; nam VIto die Marcii viii fratres predicatores infra diem Natalem obierunt,” the Lent referred to being either that of 1349 or of 1350. The difficulty about assigning the landing of the infection near Dublin in the beginning of August to the year 1348 is that the English importation had only then taken place. But of course Ireland may have got it direct from abroad. [225] Op. cit. p. 98: “Torserunt illos apostemata e diversis partibus corporis subito irrumpencia, tam dura et sicca quod ab illis decisis vix liquor emanavit; a quibus multi per incisionem aut per longam pacienciam evaserunt. Alii habuerunt pustulos parvos nigros per totam corporis cutem conspersos, a quibus paucissimi, immo vix aliquis, vitÆ et sanitati resilierunt.” [226] “Nam multi ex anthrace et ex apostematibus, et pustulis quae creverunt in tibiis et sub asellis, alii ex passione capitis, et quasi in frenesim versi, alii spuendo sanguinem, moriebantur,” p. 36. [227] A Treatise faithfully and plainely declaring the way of preventing, preserving from and curing that most fearfull I and contagious disease called the Plague. With the Pestilential Feaver and other the fearful symptomes and accidents incident thereto. By John Woodall, surgeon to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, &c. London, 1639. [228] Robertus de Avesbury, Rolls ed., p. 177. [229] Eulogium Historiarum. Rolls ser. No. 9, III. 213. [230] Rymer’s Foedera, V. 668. [231] “Pro quorum defectu [referring to the fugitive villeins] mulieres et parvuli invise missi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra fuganda.” Eulogium. Rolls ed. III. 214. [232] Nichols, History Of Leicestershire, I. 534. [233] Nichols, l. c. [234] For a series of years the burials in the St Martin’s register are as follow:
[235] History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford. Ed. Gutch I. 449. He says also: “The school doors were shut, colleges and halls relinquished, and none scarce left to keep possession or make up a competent number to bury the dead.” The rest of his account of the Black Death is copied from Le Baker’s Chronicle of Osney. [236] Itinerarium, l. c. [237] Stow’s Survey. “Portsoken Ward.” [238] “Lying without the walls on the north part of the city between the land of the abbot of Westminster and the prior of St John of Jerusalem.” French Chronicle of London (p. 56), as quoted by Stubbs, in preface (p. lxxxi) to Annales Londonienses, Rolls series, No. 76. [239] Robertus de Avesbury, Historia Edwardi III. Rolls ed. p. 407. “Quotidie multos vita privavit, et in tantum excrevit quod a festo Purificationis usque post Pascha, in novo tunc facto cimiterio juxta Smithfeld plus quam cc corpora defunctorum, praeter corpora quae in aliis cimiteriis civitatis ejusdem sepeliebantur, quasi diebus singulis sepulta fuerunt.... In festo Pentecostes cessavit Londoniis.” [240] Stow’s Memoranda. Camden Soc., 1880. [241] Camden’s Britannia, ed. Gough, II. 9. [242] Rickman, Abstract of the Population Returns of 1831. London, 1832. Introduction, p. 11. [243] Stow’s Survey, p. 392. [244] The population of London is stated on good authority, that of its archdeacon, in a letter to Pope Innocent III. (Petri Blessensis Opera omnia, ed. Giles, vol. II. p. 85), to have been 40,000 about the years 1190-1200, a period of great expansion or activity. By the usual reckoning of the poll-tax in 1377 the population would have been 44,770; and in the year 1349 it was probably not far from those numbers. This matter comes up again in the next chapter. [245] Memorials of London in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, edited from the Archives of the City, A.D. 1246-1419, by H. T. Riley. Lond. 1868, p. 219. [246] Ibid., pp. 239-40. [247] Blomefield, History of Norfolk, III. 93. [248] Peter of Blois, who as archdeacon of London was in a position to know, gives in his letter to the pope the number of parish churches in the City at 120. [249] Popham, “Subsidy Roll of 51 Edward III.,” in ArchÆologia, VII. (1785) p. 337. [250] Itineraria, et cet. ed. Nasmith, Cantab. 1778, p. 344. See also Weever, Funeral Monuments, p. 862, according to whom the record of the great mortality was on a chronological table hanging up in the church. [251] Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum. Rolls ed. II. 370. Abbot Michael, he says, “tactus est communi incommodo inter primos de suis monachis qui illo letali morbo percussi sunt.” [252] Th. Stubbs’ Chronicle of York in Twysden, col. 1732. [253] Chronicon Monasterii de Melsa, Rolls ed. III. 36. [254] Rymer’s Foedera. [255] Lowth, Life of William of Wykeham, p. 93, with a ref. to Regist. Edyngdon, pt. 1. fol. 49. [256] Bentham, Hist. of Ely. [257] Clyn. [258] Jessopp, “The Black Death in East Anglia” in Nineteenth Century, April 1885, p. 602. The sources of these interesting particulars are not given. [259] Peck’s Antiquarian Annals of Stamford, Bk. XI. p. 47. [260] Hist. MSS. Commission’s Reports, IX. p. 127: “Hi quatuor tantum moriebantur de pestilencia.” The reporter on the MSS. of the Dean and Chapter conjectures that the monastery may have owed its comparative immunity to the fact that it was supplied with water brought by closed pipes from the hills on the north-east of the city. [261] Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum. [262] Knighton. [263] History of Norfolk, III. 94. [264] Owen and Blakeway, History of Shrewsbury, I. 166:—“The average number of institutions to benefices on vacancies by death in the archdeaconry of Salop, for ten years before 1349, and ten years after, is one and a half per annum, or fifteen in the whole; in that year alone the number of institutions on vacancies by death is twenty-nine, besides other institutions the cause of whose vacancies is not specified and therefore may also have been the same.” [265] F. Seebohm, “The Black Death and its Place in English History,” Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1 and 15, 1865:—“In the library of the Dean and Chapter, at York Minster, are voluminous MSS., known by the name of Torr’s MSS., which contain the clergy list of every parish in the diocese of York, and which, in by far the greater number of instances, state not only the date of each vacancy, but whether it was caused by death, resignation or otherwise of the incumbent.” L. c. p. 150. [266] Jessopp, “The Black Death in East Anglia,” Nineteenth Century, April 1885, pp. 600-602. This author remarks that the evidence from manor court rolls and from the Institution Books of the clergy “has hardly received any attention hitherto, its very existence being entirely overlooked, nay, not even suspected.” [267] G. Poulett Scrope, M.P., F.R.S., The Manor and Barony of Castle Combe. London, 1852, p. 168. [268] The court rolls of the Manor of Snitterton, Norfolk, in the British Museum. Professor Maitland has lately edited some of the earliest rolls of manor courts for the Selden Society. [269] G. Poulett Scrope, op. cit. pp. 151-2. [270] F. Seebohm, The English Village Community, London, 1882. The Manor Court Rolls of Winslow, upon which Mr Seebohm bases his work, are in the library of the University of Cambridge. [271] Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. “The Black Death in East Anglia,” Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1884. [272] Under the heading “The Black Death in Lancashire,” Mr A. G. Little has printed, with remarks, in the English Historical Review, July, 1890, p. 524, the data submitted to a jury of eighteen who had been empannelled to settle a dispute between the archdeacon of Richmond and Adam de Kirkham, dean of Amounderness, touching the account rendered by the dean, as proctor for the archdeacon, of fees received for instituting to vacant livings, for probates of wills, and for administration of the goods of intestates. The dean’s account to the archdeacon is said to run “from the Feast of the Nativity of our Lady [8 September] in the year of our Lord 1349 unto the eleventh day of January next following;” but it may not imply, and almost certainly does not, that the vacancies in benefices, the probates and the letters of administration, or the corresponding deaths of individuals, fell between those dates. The archdeacon alleges what fees Adam de Kirkham had received, but had not accounted for, and the jury find what Adam did actually receive. Nine benefices of one kind or another are mentioned as vacant, three of them twice. The numbers said to have died in the several parishes, with the number of wills and of intestate estates, I have extracted from the data and tabulated as follows:
Of the alleged 300 who died in Preston parish, leaving wills, five married couples are named, the probate fees being respectively ½ marc, 6 sh., 40 d., 4 sh., and 40 d. The archdeacon’s whole claim for the 300 was 20 marcs, which the jury reduced to 10 pounds. Of the alleged 200 intestates in the same parish, two married couples, one woman, and “Jakke o Þe hil” are named. In the parish of Garstang, the executors of 6 deceased are named, whose probate fees in all amounted to 16 sh. 10 d., the whole claim of the archdeacon for 400 deceased leaving wills being £10, and the award of the jury 40 sh. In the parish of Kirkham, on a claim of 20 marcs for probate fees not accounted for, “the jury say that he received £4;” on a claim of £10 for quittance, the jury say 20 sh. This was a parish in which 3000 are said to have died, the number of wills being not stated. The numbers had obviously been put in for a forensic purpose, and are, of course, not even approximately correct for the actual mortality, or the actual number of wills proved, or of letters of administration granted. The awards of the jury amounted in all to £48. 10s. See also Eng. Hist. Review, Jan. 1891. [273] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, I. 296-7. [274] Cussan’s Hertfordshire, vol. I. Hundred of Odsey, p. 37. [275] Sat. Rev. 16 Jan. 1886, p. 82. [276] Jessopp, l. c. April 1885, p. 611-12. [277] The priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, lost the following live stock in the murrain of 1349: oxen, 757, cows and calves, 511, sheep, 4585. (Hist. MSS. Commission, V. 444.) [278] The author of the Eulogium, who wrote not later than 1367, and is for his own period an authority like Knighton, gives the following prices: wheat, 12 pence a quarter, barley 9 pence, beans 8 pence; a good horse 16 shillings (used to be 40 sh.), a large ox 40 pence, a good cow 2 sh. or 18 pence. Of the scarcity of servants he says: “Pro quorum defectu mulieres et parvuli invise missi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra fuganda.” [279] “The English Manor;” two articles in the Saturday Review, 9th and 16th Jan. 1886, p. 82 [by Professor Sir Frederick Pollock], the sources of information being as yet unpublished. He says: “The prospect of better terms brought in new tenants.” [280] Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 1875, II. 434. HÖniger, dealing with the German evidence of the Black Death, concludes that the great mortality was almost without significance for the political course of affairs; that the great loss of life was unable to check the revival of trade and industry which had already begun or to retard the splendid development of the German free towns; that the low state of morals belonged to the period and was no worse after the epidemic than before; that no new impulse was given or point of view brought out, unless, perhaps, the idea of sanitary regulation; and that the scarcity of labour was merely an incident to be taken advantage of in the struggle against the existing order which was already going on. (Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland. Berlin, 1882, p. 133.) [281] Richter, Geschichte der Medicin in Russland, I. 215. [282] Histoire des Huns, V. 223-4. [283] Ib. p. 226, note. [284] Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1832. Engl. Transl. by Babington, Lond. 1833. This well-known work presents the more picturesque aspects of the Black Death in various countries, without thoroughness for any. England has a large space in the book; but the author has not gone for his information farther than the chapter on the Black Death in Barnes’s Life of Edward III. [285] Printed in HÄser’s Archiv fÜr die gesammte Medicin, 1842, II. pp. 26-59; and reprinted in his Geschichte der Med. u. epid. Krankheiten, III. 157, 3d ed., Jena, 1882. [286] Geschichte der Medicin, Bd. III. “Epidemische Krankheiten.” Jena, 1882, p. 139. He gives point to this phrase by an account of the local plagues of recent times in Gujerat and Kumaon. [287] His essay is one of the Escurial MSS., and has been printed, with a German translation, by M. H. MÜller, in the Sitzungsberichte der MÜnchener Akad. der Wissensch. 1863. [288] Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah in 4 vols., for the SociÉtÉ Asiatique, Paris, 1853, I. 227-9, and IV. 309. [289] See Sir Henry Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither (2 vols. Hakluyt Society) and his edition of The Book of Marco Polo, for numerous particulars of the overland trade to China by the northern parallels, in the 14th century. [290] The stages, distances, expenses, &c. from Tana to Peking are given in Pegolotti’s mercantile handbook (written about 1340), in Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. II. [291] C. A. Gordon, M.D. in Reports of Med. Officers to the Imperial Maritime Customs of China, London, 1884. [292] Gaubil, Histoire de Gentchiscan, Paris, 1739. [293] The Famine in China, London, 1878—a translation of a Chinese appeal for charity, with illustrations. [294] Parliamentary Papers, 1878, China, No. 4. [295] In Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither (Hakluyt Society), I. 156. [296] Etienne Pariset, Causes de la Peste. Paris, 1837. [297] Volney, Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. Paris, 1792. [298] Cornelius de Pauw, Philosophical Reflections on the Egyptians and Chinese, Engl. Transl. Lond. 1795, 2 vols. [299] It is noteworthy that Herodotus represents the question of disposal of the dead as having been raised by the Egyptians: they decided in favour of embalming and rock entombment, as against cremation or burial, the reason given for the preference being that fire was “a savage beast,” in the one case, while in the other case, the devouring beast was the worm. Bk. III. § 16. [300] Curiously enough it was among the Christians of Egypt that the controversy as to the corruptibles and the incorruptibles raged most furiously. See Gibbon. [301] Clot Bey, Peste en Egypte. Paris, 1840. [302] Benoit de Maillet, Description de l’Egypte. Paris, 1735, p. 281. See also Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, III. 456, 465. [303] Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 2 vols. New York, 1867, I. 33, 198, 213. [304] T. T. Cooper, Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce, Lond. 1871, p. 23, 33. [305] This is one of the remarks in Dr Gilbert Skene’s treatise on the Plague, Edinburgh, 1568 (reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840):—Among the causes are “deid cariounis unbureit, in speciale of mankynd, quhilkis be similitude of nature is maist nocent to man, as everie brutall is maist infectand and pestilentiall to thair awin kynd,” p. 6. [306] A. von Kremer, “Ueber die grossen Seuchen des Orients nach arabischen Quellen.” Sitzungsber. der Wien. Akad., Philos.-histor. Classe, Bd. 96 (1880), p. 69. [307] Ch. M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols. Cambridge, 1888. [308] Communicated to Herr von Kremer (l. c.) by Nury Effendi, who visited Assir, and wrote a report preserved in MS. in the Archives at Constantinople. [309] “Report regarding Mahamurree in Kumaon and Garhwal in 1851-52.” By F. Pearson and Mookerjee. Agra, 1852 (Extracts in Ind. Annals of Med. Sc., I. 358). Also extracts (Ib.) from Renny’s Report, 1851. [310] Planck, Ninth Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, N. W. Prov. Allahabad, 1877, pp. 40-95. (Extracts, p. 39, of Papers relating to the Plague, Parl. Papers, 1879.) [311] Baber, in Parliamentary Papers, 1878, “China.” No. 6. Rocher (Province Chinoise de Yun-nan) quoted, without the reference, in Med. Reports of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, No. 15, 1878, Shanghai, p. 25. [312] J. H. Lowry, Med. Rep. Chinese Mar. Customs, No. 24, 1882, p. 27. [313] D. J. Macgowan, Ib. 1882. Report for Wenchow. [314] Thomas Whyte, “Report on the Disease which prevailed in Kattywar, etc. in 1819-20.” Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay, I. 155. Bombay, 1838. [315] I have curtailed the evidence from Gujerat; it will be found at large in the following writers: Gilder, Bombay Med. Trans. I. 193; McAdam, ib. 183; F. Forbes, ib. II. "I, and Thesis on Plague, Edin. 1840; Glen, Quart. Journ. Cal. Med. Soc. I. 433; Ranken, Report on Pali Plague, Calcutta, 1838; and Whyte, as above. [316] L. Arnaud, Peste de Benghazi, Constantinople, 1875; Essai sur la Peste, Paris, 1888; Une Mission pour la Peste, Paris, 1888. [317] T. Farquhar, M.D., “Typhus Fever in the Eusofzai,” Ind. Annals of Med. Sc. II. 504; R. Lyell, M.D., “Fever of the Yusufzai Valley,” Ib. II. p. 16. [318] Surgeon-General J. Murray, M.D., at Epidemiological Society, 11 May, 1878. Med. Times and Gaz. I. 1878, p. 597. [319] Alex. Rittmann, Chronik der Pest. BrÜnn, 1879. [320] Thomas Lodge, Treatise of the Plague, Lond. 1603, chap. III. Skene, in his Edinburgh essay on plague in 1568, gives as a sign of impending plague the moles and “serpents” leaving their holes: “As when the moudewart and serpent leavis the eird, beand molestit be the vapore contenit within the bowells of the samin.” He adds what agrees still farther with modern experience in Yun-nan: “If the domesticall fowls become pestilential, it is ane signe of maist dangerous pest to follow.” (Bannatyne Club ed. p. 9). [321] The writer of the article “Peste” in the Dict. Encycl. des Sc. Med., Dr MahÉ, inclines on the whole to the view that the poison of plague is somehow related to cadaveric products: “Parmi ces accusations d’insalubritÉ publique, il en est une qui repose sur un objectif plus positif en apparance” viz. the “miasme des cadavres.” [322] Sir Tobie Matthews’ Letters. Lond. 1660, p. 110. [323] Epist. de rebus familiar. Lib. viii. epist. 7. The citation of these contemporary illustrations of the Black Death was begun in the last century by Sprengel (BeitrÄge, &c., p. 37). [324] Foedera, III. 184; it was renewed on 30th June for a year longer. [325] Avesbury. [326] Foedera, III. 192. [327] Ib. 193. [328] Ib. 200, 201. [329] Le Baker’s Chronicle of Osney. Avesbury. [330] Foedera, III. 221. [331] Avesbury, Rolls ed. 425. [332] Blomefield (Hist. of Norfolk, III.) says that the writ to Norwich in 1355 was for 120 men-at-arms to be sent to Portsmouth by Sunday in mid-Lent. [333] Avesbury, pp. 427-8. [334] Ib. p. 425. [335] Ib. p. 461. [336] Avesbury, p. 431. [337] Thorold Rogers, Hist. of Agric. and Prices, I. 367, “according to an account quoted by Misselden in his Circle of Commerce.” The sack of wool contained 52 cloves of 7 lbs. each, or 364 lbs. It appears from a statute of 5 Ric. II. that 240 wool-fells were equivalent, for duty, to one sack of wool. In Rogers’ tables, the wool-fell is usually priced at about the value of 1½ lbs. of wool, which was at the same time about the average clip of a sheep. The present average clip would be at least four times as much. The colonial bale of wool is of the same weight as the medieval sack, but would represent 40 to 60 fleeces, instead of about 240. At the smallest of the estimates in the text, the wool of 7,680,000 sheep would have been exported in a year. Avesbury’s estimate would mean an annual export to foreign countries of the clip of about 24,000,000 sheep. The average price of a sack of wool just before the Black Death was about £4 in money of the time; the period immediately following the plague was one of low prices; but from 1364 to 1380, the price was uniformly high. [338] Foedera, III. 186. [339] Ib. III. 191. [340] Jessopp (l. c.) giving a general reference to the Foedera, and probably having the Sandwich letter in view, says there was “mad, unreasoning, insensate panic among well-to-do classes—the trader and the moneyed man, the bourgeoisie of the towns,” and “a stampede,” (presumably to foreign parts). But the mortality was all over by 1st December, 1349; and the exodus, whatever motive it may have had, was almost certainly deliberate. [341] Foedera, III. 198. [342] The last clause of the ordinance implies that not only the labourers but also the employers of labour were taking the natural advantage of the situation. There appears to be some particular evidence of this for Bristol (Rev. W. Hunt, Bristol, p. 77): the masters in various crafts and trades were so reduced in numbers that the survivors could charge what they pleased. Thus, the attempt to coerce labourers and skilled workmen was a one-sided affair; although, in practice, it related mostly to farm-labour, where the one-sidedness did not appear. [343] Foedera, III. 210. [344] Rot. Parl. II. 225. [345] This was the first parliamentary Statute of Labourers (25 Ed. III. cap 2). The king’s ordinance of 18th June, 1350 (re-issued for Suffolk and Lindsey on 18th Nov.), is usually reckoned the first Statute of Labourers, and is invariably assigned to the 23rd year of Edward III., being so entered in the Statutes of the Realm. It is clear, however, from the text of the ordinance in the Foedera that it belongs to the 24th of Edward III., its exact date being 18th June, 1350. Longman, in his History of the Life and Times of Edward III., correctly states in one place (I. 309) that the ordinance of 18th June, 1350, was “the first step,” but on the very next page, after stating that the ordinance failed, he proceeds, according to the usual chronology of 23 Ed. III. and 25 Ed. III., to say that “therefore, two years afterwards,” the statute of 25 Ed. III. was made in Parliament. The interval was only some eight months. [346] Rot. Parl. II. 234. [347] Knighton, in Twysden’s Decem Scriptores, l. c. [348] Seebohm, The English Village Community. Chapter I. [349] The Statute of Labourers was re-enacted with increased stringency six years after (31 Ed. III.), and again in 1360 and 1368. All the labour statutes were confirmed in the 12th year of Richard II. (cap. 34). Legislative attempts of the same kind continued to be made as late as the 5th of Elizabeth (1562-3), with particular reference to sturdy beggars. See copious extracts from the Statutes in Sir George Nicholls’s History of the English Poor Law, vol. I. Lond. 1854. “An Act for regulating Journeymen Tailors” was made in 7 Geo. I. (cap. 13). [350] “There is no trace of the villenage described in Glanville and Bracton, among the tenants of a manor 500 years ago. All customary services were commutable for money payments; all villein tenants were secure in the possession of their lands; and the only distinction between socage and villein occupation lay in the liberation of the former from certain degrading incidents which affected the latter.” Thorold Rogers, “Effects of the Black Death, &c.” Fort. Rev. III. (1865) p. 196. [351] Seebohm, The English Village Community. Lond. 1882. Chapter I. [352] Seebohm, p. 31. Such attempts by landowners, to go back to personal service from their villein tenants, appear to have become more systematic in the generation following, and to have been a cause of the Peasants’ Rebellion in 1381. See v. Oschenkowski, England’s wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, Jena, 1879, confirming the opinion of Thorold Rogers. [353] Smith, Lives of the Berkeleys, p. 128: “in 24 Edward III.” (Cited by Denton, England in the 15th Century.) [354] Morant, Hist. of Essex. [355] Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History. Engl. transl. London, 1852, II., p. 53. [356] Eulogium Historiarum. Rolls ed. III. 230. [357] Loci e Libro Veritatum, ed. Rogers. Oxon. 1880, p. 202; and, from Gascoigne’s MS., in Anthony Wood, Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, Ed. Gutch, I. 451: “What I shall farther observe is that before it began there were but few complaints among the people, and few pleas; as also few Legists in England, and very few at Oxford.” [358] Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, sub anno 1361. [359] Owen and Blakeway, op. cit. I. 165. [360] Clarkson’s History of Richmond. Richmond, 1821 (authority not quoted). [361] Hailstone, History of Bottisham and the Priory of Anglesey. Camb. 1873. (Transact. Camb. Antiq. Soc. 8vo. series, vol. XIV.) [362] Cited by Jessopp, l. c. [363] See p. 141. [364] Clutterbuck, History of Hertfordshire. [365] Seebohm, for the Manor of Winslow, op. cit., p. 34. [366] Thorold Rogers, Fort. Rev. III. (1865), p. 196. In his History of Agriculture and Prices, IV., the same learned and sagacious student of English developments thus sums up the agrarian consequences of the Black Death:—“The indirect effects of this great event were even more remarkable. The great landowner ceases to carry on agriculture with his own capital, and farmers’ rents of a fixed and almost invariable amount take the place of the lord’s cultivation by bailiffs. Attempts were made for varying periods of time to continue the old system, especially by corporations. It is possible that the system of stock and land leasing, which became very general after the change commenced, may have been suggested by the hope that the old state of things might be restored.... In the end all the great landowners conformed to the inevitable change, and let their land on short leases, and as a rule at low and almost fixed rents, to capitalist farmers.” [367] Thorold Rogers, op. cit., I. 376. [368] Rot. Parl., II. 260. a. [369] Seebohm, l. c. Fort. Rev., II. (1865), p. 157. [370] Blomefield, III. sub anno. [371] Blomefield, III. sub anno. [372] Camden’s Britannia. Gough’s ed. II. 9. [373] Hist. MSS. Commission, VI. 299. Register of Ely Priory, in Lord Leconfield’s MSS. [374] Seebohm, “The Black Death and its Place in English History.” Fort. Rev. II. (1865), p. 278. [375] These and other labour-statutes are collected in A History of the English Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholls, 2 vols. London, 1854, I. 37-77. [376] G. Poulett Scrope, op. cit. [377] From 1416 to 1424, three different persons were fined at the manor court for keeping a common brothel in their houses. Forestalling of butter, cheese and eggs, on the way to market, came before the court in 1418. [378] At the manor court in 1417, Thomas Selwin, a butcher, was convicted of throwing offal and other offensive matters into the common street and of making his dung-heap there, to the common hurt; also the said Thomas Selwin “tarde et de novo erexit unam latrinam foetidam in shopa sua ad commune nocumentum. Ideo ipse in misericordia.” The next entry of nuisances, so far as extracts are given, is as late as 1590—various offences in the street and churchyard, and the glover washing his skins in the stream or otherwise befouling the water running by his house. [379] Cited in Owen and Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury, II. 524: “per advenas qui in dicta villa post ultimam pestilenciam de novo sunt inhabitati ... at regimen dictae ville ad se attrahere ... machinantes.” By the “ultima pestilencia” could hardly have been meant the pestis secunda of 1361, the year of the patent, as the learned antiquaries suppose. [380] Rotul. Parl. IV. 60. 7. The petition of Chesterton, near Cambridge: “And also they seiden that there was made gret waste in the same Manor of Chesterton of Housing, that is to say of Halles and of Chambers, and of other houses of office, that were necessary in the same Manor, and none housinge left standing therein, but gif it were a Shepcote or a Berne or a Swynsty and a few houses byside to putte in bestes.” [381] “After the cessation of the Black Plague a greater fecundity in women was everywhere remarkable—a grand phenomenon which, from its occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the direction of general organic life. Marriages were almost without exception prolific,” etc. [382] Eulogium Historiarum, III. 213. [383] Fasciculi Zizan. Rolls series, No. 5, ed. Shirley, p. 263: “Dimitto alias rationes palpabiles: quod exhinc regnum nostrum sensibiliter depauperetur pecunia; quod, praetextu subtractionis hujus thesauri, qui expenderetur in Anglia, decrescit populus;” etc. [384] Political Songs and Poems, Ed. II.-Ric. II. Rolls series, No. 14, ed. T. Wright, I. 2. 53. [385] The only monograph that I know is Peinlich’s Pest in Steiermark, 2 Bde. Graz, 1877-78. From 1349 to 1716, seventy years are marked in the annals of Styria as plague-years. Corradi gives the plague-years in Italy in his Annali. [386] Guy de Chauliac for Avignon, in HÄser, III. 176. Other foreign references in the same work. [387] Political Songs and Poems. Ed. II.-Ric. II. Rolls series, No. 14, ed. T. Wright, I. 173, 190, &c. [388] Ibid. I. 229, from a MS. in the library of Cambridge University. [389] The spelling has been modernized, a few old words changed, and the division into verses omitted. [390] Chronicon Angliae, by a monk of St Albans. Rolls ed. [391] Harleian MS. No. 1568, “Chronicle of England to A.D. 1419.” (Printed with additions at the St Albans press about 1484.) [392] Skeat, whose great edition of ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman,’ has been brought out by the Early English Text Society, thinks that the ironical reference (Passus XIII. 248) to the pope sending a salve for the pestilence applies particularly to the “Fourth Pestilence” of 1375 and 1376, which was the pestis tertia of some chronicles. [393] Flux and fever from famine are alone mentioned in the poems of John of Bridlington, which cover the period from the Black Death to the reign of Richard II. [394] Egerton MS. No. 2572, Sloane MS. 443 (“xiv. cent.”), as well as several copies of the 15th century. [395] Lansdowne MS. 285, fol. 220. [396] Mr Warner identifies him with the person who invented “Sir John Mandeville” and the travels of Sir John. See an article in the Quarterly Review, April, 1891. [397] Sloane MS. (British Museum) No. 2276, fol. 191-199. [398] ‘A passing gode lityll boke necessarye and behouefull azenst the Pestilence.’ British Museum, case 31, e. 13, 4to, twelve leaves. The MS. begins as follows: “Here begynneth a lytell boke necessary and behouefull azens the pestylence.” [399] Dibdin (Antiq. Typogr. II. 19) assigns the printing to Machlinia, and reproduces a page as a sample of his common type. Bliss (Reliquiae Hearnianae, II. 117) says that this sample page does not correspond with that of the British Museum copy. He adds that there is a fragment of the printed book in the library of St Peter’s College, Cambridge, “pasted within the wooden covers of the binding of an edition (1499) of Discipuli Sermones.” [400] In the earliest printed Latin texts of this work (Antwerp, 1485? Leipzig, 1495? and versified in Albertus Magnus, ‘De Virtute Herbarum,’ 1500?) he is named Kamitus, bishop of Arusia, a city in the realm of Denmark. In the copy of the English version in the British Museum, someone has called him Ramicius, having written on a leaf, “Ramicius Episcopus Arusiensis civitatis Daciae Regimen contra pestem,” with the date 1698. The name of Kamitus, being judged improbable on the face of it, has been changed in the catalogue of the British Museum library into Canutus. But there was no Canutus among the bishops of Aarhus, nor a Kamitus, nor a Ramicius. The two bishops that appear to suit best are Olaus, or Olaf, who was bishop from 1371 to 1388, and Ulricus or Udalricus, or Olric Stycka, who succeeded in 1425 and held the see until 1449. Curiously enough, the latter, when he went to Rome in 1425 to represent Eric, king of Pomerania in a suit with the dukes of Sleswig, figures throughout the records of the suit as “Olaus, episcopus Arosiensis,” although Olaus, bishop of Arusia, belonged to a former generation. It is, of course, the merest guessing; but I am inclined to think that the author of the essay on plague was either bishop Olaus, of 1371-1388, or bishop Udalricus, of 1425-1449, a man of character and ability, who also went by the name of Olaus; and that in any case the manuscript version of the essay in the English tongue is more likely to have been of the early part of the fifteenth century than of the fourteenth. The above facts are collected from various parts of Langbeck’s Script. Rer. Dan.: the “Series Episcoporum Arhusiorum” is in vol. VII. p. 212. Nothing is there said of any bishop of Aarhus having written a book, or having been a physician at Montpellier. [401] These words (“the impressions”) are contracted in the printed book, exactly as in the manuscript. I have modernised the spelling for the most part. [402] “When a man feeleth himself infect, as soon as he may, let him be let blood plenteously till he swoon: then stop the vein. For a little letting of blood moveth or stirreth venom.... Let him blood on the side of the body where the swelling appeareth. Therefore if a swelling appear under the right arm, let blood in the middle of the same arm, in the vein called mediana. If it appear under the left arm, let him blood in midst of the same, or in the vein of the liver which is about the little finger. And if it be about the share, let him blood about the heel upon the same side. If the swelling be in the neck, let him blood in the vein called cephalica, about the thumb in the hand of the same side; or in the vein the which is called mediana of the same arm, or in the hand of the same side about the little finger. And, overmore, if the swelling appear about the ear, let him blood in the vein called cephalica of the same side, or in the vein which is between the long finger and the thumb, lest many venomous things go into the brain.” If the swelling is in the shoulders, bleed from the mediana: if on the back from pedica magna, and so on. [403] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. I. 309. Adam of Murimuth, Engl. Hist. Soc. [404] The Stratford bread-carts are explained in Stow’s Survey of London (“Lime Street Ward”). In the famines of 1512 and 1527, they were besieged on the way by hungry citizens and had to be guarded. The same phrase of bread being “gesen” or scarce, occurs in a letter of 4 September, 1535, from Thomas Broke to Cromwell, secretary of State: “never knew good bread so geason in London at this time of the year; it is so musty, and of so evil wheat, that it is rather poisonous than nourishing; what was sold for a halfpenny, when you were here, is now a penny.” (Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. vol. IX. § 274.) [405] Thorold Rogers. A Short English Chronicle, Camden Soc. 1880:—“45 Edward III. This yere was called the grete dere yere, and that same yere was a quarter of whete at iiii nobles.” [406] Wilkins, Concilia, III. 74: “De orando pro cessatione pestilentiae,” dated Slyndon, 10 Cal. Aug. A.D. MCCCLXVIII. [407] Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, vol. II. [408] Otterbourne (ed. Hearne, p. 133) says that the pestis tertia was in 1368, and that it lasted two years. Nicolas (Chronol. of History, p. 389) gives from a Lansdowne MS. (no. 863, fol. 107) of the time of Charles I., the duration of the pestis tertia as 2 July—29 Sept., 1369, which should probably read “2 July, 1368—29 Sept. 1369.” [409] Memorials of London, etc. from the Council Records. Edited by H. T. Riley. Lond. 1867, p. 339 and p. 356. [410] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. I. 319; Adam of Murimuth. [411] The chroniclers are not agreed as to the chronology of the various 14th century plagues from the first (the Black Death) to the fifth. Some of the enumerations are clearly erroneous. Thus in A Short English Chronicle from the Lambeth MS. (ed. Gairdner for the Camden Society, 1880), the plague of 1361 is erroneously called “the threde pestilence,” while the fourth is assigned to 1369 and the fifth to 1377 (for 1375). Otterbourne places the quarta in 1374 (for 1375), and the quinta (as others do) in 1391; but in the Life of Richard II., by a monk of Evesham, the pestilence of 1382 is more correctly reckoned the fifth from the Black Death. [412] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. I. 409. Chronicon Angliae, p. 239. [413] Rot. Parl. IV. 806. [414] Ibid. III. pp. 139 a, 147 a. [415] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, III. p. 111. [416] Continuator of Higden, IX. 14. [417] Political Songs and Poems. Rolls series, No. 14, I. p. 252:— “The rysyng of the comuynes in londe, [418] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 109. [419] Continuator of Higden, IX. 21, 27. [420] Eulogium Historiarum, III. 369. Otterbourne, ed. Hearne: “From the nativity of St John Baptist to the feast of St Luke,” 1391. [421] Continuator of Higden, IX. 216. [422] Ibid. 237. [423] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 186. [424] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, III. 113:—“1390. A great mortality increased in Norfolk and in many other counties in England, and it seemed not unlike the season of the great pestilence: it was occasioned by a great want of victuals, that forced many people to eat unwholesome food, and so brought distempers upon them. This dearth began under the sickle, and lasted to the following harvest [1391], but was not so much for want of corn, as money to purchase it, occasioned by the law made in relation to wool, by which wool became dog-cheap; for a stone of chosen and picked wool of the best sort was sold for 3 sh. and some for 22 pence or 2 sh., so that in these times the woollen manufacture was the great support of the nation.” According to Thorold Rogers, these high prices of wool obtained from 1364 to 1380. [425] Walsingham, II. 203. The Continuator of Higden (IX. 259) says 12,000. These estimates are, of course, the merest guesses, and extreme exaggerations. The whole population of York would have been under 15,000. [426] Higden, ibid. [427] Walsingham, II. 213; St Albans Annals of Ric. II. and Hen. IV. [428] Walsingham, II. 276. The Chronicle of William Gregory (Camden Society, ed. Gairdner) enters under the year 1407, a great frost, for twenty-five weeks. It would be of real scientific interest to know the chronology exactly, whether the plague followed or preceded the long cold drought; but the year of the plague is disputable, if any heed be paid to the date of 1406, given by later compilers. [429] Walsingham, II. 297. Otterbourne, under 1411, says plague in Gascony. [430] Annals of Bermondsey, in Annales Monast. Rolls ed. III. 485. [431] Rot. Parl. IV. 143 a. It is probably under 1420 that the “great plague” at Newcastle, given in so many words in Brand’s History under 1410, should be placed. [432] Ibid. 148 b. [433] Histor. Collec. of a Citizen of London, 15th cent. Camden Soc. ed. Gairdner, 1876: “They dyde faster every day [434] History of Agriculture and Prices in England, IV. 105. [435] Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale, I. 518; Rogers, IV. 233. [436] Denton. London, 1886, p. 92. [437] Mackay, The English Poor. London, 1890, p. 40. [438] W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce. 2nd ed. Camb. 1890, p. 105. He reproduces Denton’s statement that “there was chronic typhoid in the towns.” Denton professes to have found this in Hecker, who had certainly no knowledge of English towns in the 15th century, and is, in general, more entertaining as a philosophe than trustworthy for erudition. [439] In 1741, during a prevalence of fever all over England, we hear of bread made of horse-beans, pease, and coarse unsound barley as the chief food of the poor. (Gent. Magaz. letters of 27 Nov. 1741 and 11 Jan. 1742). Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, v. Preface) thinks that the staple food of the English labourer, wheaten bread, had first been changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and oat bread, in the 17th century during the Civil Wars. [440] Paston Letters. Ed. Gairdner, 1872, II. 254: John Wymondham of Fellbrigg to John Paston, 10th Nov. “And forasmuch as there was a child dead at Asteleys, and one other like to be dead in the same place, what time I rode out about my little livelihood, my lady and I both thought pity on my mistress your wife to see her abide there, and desired her to come to my poor house, unto such time as you should be otherwise avised.” [441] Histor. MSS. Commission, IX. 127 b. [442] Calendar of State Papers. Venetian, vol. I. § 236. [443] Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council. Ed. Nicolas, III. p. xlv. [444] Rot. Parl. IV. 420 b. [445] Arnold’s Chronicle, p. xxxii. [446] Proc. and Ord. Privy Council, IV. p. lxxx. Sir Harris Nicolas, in this connexion, remarks that Fabyan and all other chroniclers (he had overlooked Arnold) omit to mention pestilence, while they mention much less important things; but he is hardly warranted in his inference that plagues were so common-place as to be left unrecorded. A low level of plague would not be noticed, but a great epidemic certainly would. [447] Johannes Amundesham (of St Albans), Annales. Rolls ed. II. 127. [448] Rot. Parl. V. 31 b. [449] This is the only plague in the first half of the fifteenth century that Anthony Wood records; but he says, under the year 1500, that “no less than about thirty pests, both great and small, happened in this last century”—i.e. in the University of Oxford. I shall speak of their general effects in another chapter. [450] Paston Letters. Ed. Gairdner, 1872, I. 302-3. [451] Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. Ed. Gairdner, for the Camden Society, 1880, from the Lambeth MSS., p. 163. [452] Sir J. Paston to John Paston, 30 April, 1465. Another letter, of 18th August, has: “For the pestilence is so fervent in Norwych, that they dare no longer abyde there, so God help!” (Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, II. 226), which probably refers to 1465 also. It is not mentioned by Blomefield. [453] Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale, I. 541. [454] Communicated to me by the Rev. W. Hunt, from a new volume of the Camden Society, edited by A. F. Leach, Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, p. 11. [455] Tickell, History of Kingston upon Hull, 1798. [456] Warkworth’s Chronicle. Camden Society, p. 23 (under the year 13 Ed. IV.). [457] Chronicle of the Greyfriars. Camden Society, No. 53, 1852, p. 22. [458] Robert Fabyan’s Chronicle of England, (editions in 1516 and 1533, and by Ellis, 1808), sub anno. [459] Grafton’s Chronicle, p. 742. [460] Brand’s History of Newcastle. [461] Visitations and Memorials, p. 41. [462] Blomefield. [463] Paston, 6 Nov. 1479. [464] Fordoun, Scotichronicon, ed. Hearne, Oxon. 1722, p. 1039. [465] Scotichronicon, p. 1056: “eadem ... sicut prius jubileo ... in toto regno Scotiae mirabiliter saeviebat.” [466] Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. Introduction to vol. II. p. xlviii. [467] Scotichronicon, p. 1141. [468] Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, III. 650. [469] Ibid. III. 310. [470] Ibid. III. 553. [471] Ibid. III. 579. [472] Scotichronicon, p. 1287 and p. 1298. [473] Cited by R. Chambers (Domestic Annals of Scotland, I. 57) from the Chronicle as printed by Thomas Thomson. [474] Scotichronicon, p. 1565. Hearne’s edition. [475] Ferrerius, f. 393, cited in Excheq. Rolls of Scot. VIII. p. lx. [476] Excheq. Rolls of Scot. VIII. 364. Accounts of William, bishop of Orkney, from 5 Aug. 1475 to 3 Aug. 1476: “et decem martis liberatis, de tempore pestis, egrotantibus in Incheskeith.” Another item (£30. 13s. 4d.) is for forty-six marts destroyed “propter longam moram” in the lairs at Leith, “anno pestis, videlicet anno ultimo.” [477] But MS. annals are cited for the date 1361, in The ancient and present State of the County and City of Cork. By Charles Smith, M.D. 2 vols. Dublin, 1774. 2nd ed. II. p. 23. [478] Thady Dowling [Elizabethan] “1370. Pestilentia magna in Hibernia, adeo quod propter immensitatem mortalitatis vocabatur ab antiquis tertia,” p. 24. [479] Dowling, p. 27. [480] Angl. Hist. Basil. 1555, p. 567. [481] In Gale, Script. Angl. I. 573. [482] British Museum Addit. MS., No. 27,582. [483] Materials illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII. Rolls series, No. 60, s. d. [484] Tractatus contra pestilentiam thenasmonem et dissinteriam [Rouen, 1490]:—“Causae pestilentiae ut alias scripsimus: in quodam opusculo quod composuimus de quadam rabiosa febre pestilentiali, quae in duodecim horis patientes cum calore et sudore continuo interficiebat. Cujus febris adventus incepit sua vexilla extendere in Anglia in civitate Londoniarum decima nova die mensis Septembris 1485, in qua die [planetary signs] posuerunt. Ex qua febre pestilentiali plus quam quindecim millia hominum ab hoc seculo morte repentina, tanquam ex pugnitione divina, recesserunt, multique sine mora per vicos deambulantes absque confessione obierunt.” [485] MSS. Cotton. Vitellius A. XVI. A Chronicle of England from 1st Henry III. to 1st Hen. VIII. [486] The Croyland Chronicle (in Gale’s Script. Angl. I. 570 and 576) gives the 14th November in one place and the 14th October in another. But it is clear that the latter is the correct date, the letter from the prior of Croyland to Henry VII., announcing the death of the abbot and praying for a congÉ d’Élire, being dated the 14th of October. (Materials illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII. vol. I. s.d. 21 Oct. 1485, Rolls series, No. 60.) [487] Anthony Wood, I. 462. [488] The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar (by Robert Ricart, town-clerk of Bristol, 18 Ed. IV.). Camden Society, 1872, p. 46. [489] The Bristol calendar says: “This yere Hary, Erle of Richmond landed at Milford Haven.... And sone after there was a sodeyn sikenes in all places of Englond called the sweting syknes, whereof moche people dyed.” [490] The date of 1506 in Hecker is erroneous, having been taken from the very loose entry in Hall’s chronicle (copied by Grafton), which might equally well belong to the year 1507. Bernard AndrÉ’s date of 1508 is unmistakeable; his annals go on continuously until the death of Henry VII. in April following. [491] Bernard AndrÉ’s Works. Rolls series, No. 10, pp. 126-8. [492] Hemingway’s History of Chester, I. 142. [493] Anthony Wood’s History and Antiquities of the Univ. of Oxford. I. 665. [494] Calendared for the Rolls series by Brewer for the greater part of the reign of Henry VIII. (1509-1530), and after him by Gairdner, at present as far as 1538. The facts given in the next few pages may be taken as coming from the Calendar of State Papers, under their respective dates, unless it is otherwise stated in the notes. [495] This appears to have been a common direction. In a letter of 12 August, 1517, dated from the Fleet Prison by Thomas Leeke to his brother sir John Leeke (Hist. MSS. Commission Reports, X. pt. 4, p. 447), the writer says he has been sore vexed with the sweat and in danger of life: “If any of you have it, pray you to keep well and close about your breasts and your heart for twenty-four hours and then with God’s grace there is no danger in it: there has been a marvellous great death for so short a time.” [496] In the letter of 12 August from the Fleet Prison, already quoted (Hist. MSS. Reports, l. c.), it is stated that fifteen are dead in the Cardinal’s house, including Mr Cowper, the steward, Talboys, lord of Kyme, young Wastness, and one Grenell. In my lord of Durham’s house, Dr Port and Dr Fysche are dead, with divers others. Of the Court, my lord Clinton, Mr Morgan, steward to the Queen, and one Mat. Jones, of the King’s wardrobe, were buried at Richmond on Friday last, and divers more of the Court are dead. [497] The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth: “Considering there is, as physicians say, and as we also find, double the peril in the relapse that was in the first sickness,” p. 230. Camelot edition. [498] Anthony Wood, Hist. and Antiq., sub anno 1517. [499] Hemingway’s History of Chester, I. 142. [500] The letter bears the date of 8 June, which would make the first of the sweat the same as in Tuke’s letter; but Brewer says the date should be the 18th June. [501] Brewer (Cal. State Papers) reads the letter, “On Tuesday one of the ladies of the chamber, Mlle de Boulan, was infected with the sweat.” But P. Friedmann (Anne Boleyn, Lond. 1884, I. 72) says the correct reading is a fille-de-chambre of Mlle de Boulan; and it is known that Anne Boleyn did not take the sweat until some days after. [502] In the History of Cork by C. Smith, M.D. (2nd ed., 1774) there is an entry under 1528: “a malignant disorder called the sweating sickness in Cork,” with a reference to “MS. annals.” It has been generally supposed that the sweat did not enter Ireland or Scotland in any of its five outbreaks. [503] The German writers have assumed that the sweat was prevalent abroad really in the same summer or autumn as in England, explaining the discrepant dates by the difference in the English calendar. But it was only the months of January and February, and March to the 24th, that were counted in the old year in England; the months of June, July, August, etc. in which the sweat occurred, are the same in the English and foreign calendar-years. In the English chronology of the sweat, those months belong quite clearly to the year 1528; and, in the German, Swiss, and Netherlands chronology of the sweat, just as clearly to the year 1529. The sweat on the Continent was a year later than in England. [504] Gruner’s Scriptores de sudore Anglico superstites was reprinted by HÄser, with additional citations and notes, in 1847. Hecker (Der Englische Schweiss, 1834) refers to the work by Gruner, Itinerarium sudoris Anglici ex actis designatum, Jena, 1805, which I have been unable to see. The account of the German invasion in the text is accordingly at second-hand. [505] A boke or counseill against the Sweate, London, 1552. De Ephemera Britannica, London, 1555. [506] “This yere the swetinge sycknes raignyd in England, and began first in this towne of Shrowsbery the xxii of Marche, and ran through the realme, and began in London the ixth of July.” Quoted from MS. Chronicle, in Owen and Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury, p. 345. [507] Op. cit. 1552, fol. 10. In the Latin work the date at “Salopia” is “17 Kal. May.” [508] Nichols, Leicestershire, III. 891. [509] Edrichus, In libros aliquot Pauli Æginetae, &c. London, 1588 (not paged). [510] “Diary of Edward VI.” in Burnet’s Hist. of Reformation. Stow (Annales) says it began on the 9th July and was most vehement on the 12th. [511] Calendar of State Papers. Domestic (under the date). [512] Machyn’s Diary. Camden Society, No. 42, edited by J. Gough Nichols, p. 7. Machyn was an undertaker, and records deaths and funerals. [513] Machyn. [514] Ibid. p. 8. [515] Letter from London, in Harl. MS. No. 353, f. 107, cited by Nichols in notes to Machyn. [516] Caius, Boke or Counseill, 1552, ff. 10-11. [517] The Venetian ambassador (Cal. S. P. Venetian, v. 541) says that the sweat was at an end in London in twenty days. He says, also, that children under ten years were not subject “questo influsso.” The excitement caused by the London epidemic is shown in an entry of money in the corporation records of Canterbury: “1551. To one of the King’s servants that brought word how many were dede in the swett.” (Hist. MSS. Commiss. IX. 154 b.) [518] Edward VI. to Fitzpatrick. [519] Drake’s Eboracum, p. 128. [520] Nichols, notes to Machyn, giving a reference to Gent. Magaz. 1825, II. 206. [521] Fuller (ed. Nichols, p. 183) says, under 1551: “Many in Cambridge died of this sweating sickness, patients mending or ending in twenty-four hours.” The death of the two young noblemen was made an occasion for copies of verses by members of the University. [522] Strype, Memorials, III. chap. 7 (cited in notes to Machyn). [523] Lysons, Magna Britannia, VI. 539. [524] Calendar of State Papers. Venetian, V. 541, under the date of 18 Aug. 1554. [525] Thomas Cogan, ‘The Haven of Health: chiefly made for the comfort of students, and consequently for all those that have a care of their health, amplified uppon fiue wordes of Hippocrates, written Epid. 6. Labour, Meate, Drinke, Sleepe, Venus.... Hereunto is added a Preseruation from the Pestilence: with a short Censure of the late sicknesse at Oxford.’ London, 1589. New ed. 1596, p. 272. [526] There is a single reference to a sweat on the Continent in 1551, which may really have been one of those epidemics of typhus (or influenza), with a sweating character, that were observed in 1557-8 and 1580. Brassavolus, writing de morbo Gallico, and illustrating the fact that epidemics were sometimes generated by drought (though mostly by humidity), says that the sweat in England, in former years, came with drought, and that at the time of his writing, the 15th September, 1551, that disease was vexing Flanders,—the season being extremely dry,—and had attacked many thousands. This was first noticed by HÄser, Op. cit. III. (1882), p. 332. The reference to Brassavolus is Luisini’s Script. de lue venerea. Lugd. Bat. 1728, f. p. 671. [527] Increase and Decrease of Diseases. London, 1801, p. 70. [528] See the references in Gruner, pp. 444, 448. [529] “The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections,” in Brit. Med. Journ., 4 August, 1883; “The Origin of Yellow Fever,” in North American Review, Sept. 1884; Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease, London, 1885, Chapter XIII. “Vicarious Infection.” [530] Polydore Virgil, p. 553. Philip de Comines says “three large ships and a considerable body of land forces.” (Chroniques du Roy Louis XI. Eng. transl. II. 674.) [531] Mezeray, II. 762. He adds: “the Bretons boast of having also lent aid to this prince.” His first expedition was purely with Bretons, but the second was composed mostly if not altogether of Normans. [532] This point, which is essential to the theory, was originally stated in an article on “Epidemics” in the Quarterly Review, Jan. 1887, and there claimed as original. The writer on “Sweating Sickness” in the Encycl. Brit. has adopted it as a common-place; it is obvious enough when pointed out, but Hecker had not done so. [533] The above account is summarised from the chapter in Hirsch, Geog. and Histor. Path. Eng. transl. I. 88. [534] Darwin, Naturalist’s Voyage round the World, pp. 435-6. [535] Bernard AndrÉ’s Annales Henrici VII. Rolls series, No. 10, p. 120. Under a date in January, 1508, he writes: “Quo quidem die nuncius ab urbe incredibilia dictu, hoc est de primis verni fructibus temporis floridoque frumento visis, referebat.” Both Fabyan and the anonymous author of MS. Cotton, Vitellius, A. XVI. (Chronicle of England from 1 Hen. III. to 1 Hen. VIII.) give the winter of 1506-7 as “a wonderful [easy] and soft winter without storms or frost,” but fail to remark on the weather of 1507-8. [536] Wriothesley’s Chronicle. [537] Fabyan, Stow. [538] Stow’s Annals. Hecker, in error, makes out this exceptional season to have been the one immediately preceding the sweat in the summer of 1528. [539] Cal. State Papers, under the date. [540] Summary in Hirsch, l. c. [541] Continuator of Fabyan. [542] Wriothesley, II. 139. [543] Drake’s Eboracum, (from the town council records). [544] Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, I. 651. [545] At Cambridge, in October, 1578, two deaths from plague in Queens’ College “moved many to depart.” Cal. Cecil MSS. II. under date 13 October. [546] Anthony Wood, under the respective years. [547] With reference to a pestilence at Oxford in 1448, Wood says: “occasioned, as ’twas thought, by the overflowing of waters, and the want of a quick passage for them from the ground. Also by the lying of many scholars in one room or dormitory in almost every Hall, which occasioned nasty air and smells, and consequently diseases.” Op. cit. I. 596. [548] Materials Illustrative of the Reign of Henry VII. Rolls ser. 60, II. p. 136. [549] Chronicle of England, sub anno. [550] Hist. Angl., p. 609 (Basil, 1546). [551] Stow, Annales. [552] In Rymer’s Foedera all these vacancies of bishoprics are entered under the year 1501, beginning with the see of Canterbury (Morton’s) on 9th January, 1501. [553] Plumpton Correspondence, Camden Soc. No. 4, p. 138: Letter of ? 1499, R. Leventhorpe, of Leventhorpe Hall, Yorkshire, to Sir R. Plumpton: “And sithe I hard say that a servant of yours was decesed of the sicknes, which hath bene to your disease, I am right sorry therefore;” he advises fasting, and trusts “ye sal be no more vexed with that sicknes.” In the next letter (cviii) to Sir R. Plumpton from his son:—“Also, sir, I am very sorry that the death seaseth not at Plompton.” [554] Hardwicke Papers, London, 1778, I. 2 (from Harl. MSS.). [555] Freeman, Exeter, in “English Towns” series, p. 99. [556] Annales Henrici VII. Rolls series, p. 88. [557] The information in the next few pages comes from the Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII., Domestic, unless otherwise referred to in the notes. [558] Chronicle of the Grey Friars, Camden Society, No. liii. 1852, p. 29. Stow puts the mortality under the year 1513. [559] Letter from the Fleet prison, assigned to 1517. Hist. MSS. Com. X. pt. 4. p. 447. [560] Phillips, History of Shrewsbury, p. 17. [561] Privy Purse of Henry VIII., p. 79. [562] The reference on p. 290 (note 2) to “no parish in London free,” under the date of 25 October, 1517, may imply that bills of mortality had been kept in that epidemic, which was certainly an occasion when Henry VIII. interposed in other ways to check the progress of plague. [563] Lately purchased for the Egerton Collection. No. 2603, fol. 4. [564] There was, however, an English translation of a small foreign essay on the plague, of unacknowledged authorship, published at London in 1534 by Thomas Paynel, canon of Merton, a literary hack of the time. [565] In the Record Office. State Papers, Henry VIII., No. 4633. It has been erroneously calendared by Brewer as a bill of mortality of the sweating sickness in 1528. [566] The Maire of Bristowe, his Kalendar. Camden Society, 1872, p. 53. [567] The plague is said to have been in Exeter in 1535 (Freeman, Exeter, in English Towns Series). [568] There is a copy in the Lambeth Library, No. 432. [569] Owen and Blakeway, I. 311. [570] Continuator of Fabyan. [571] Cussan’s History of Hertfordshire. [572] A London Chronicle of Hen. VII. and Hen. VIII. Camden Miscellany, 1859. [573] Acts of the Privy Council. New series, 1542-1547, p. 136. [574] Stow’s Annales. [575] Cal. Cecil MSS., I. 15. [576] Guildhall Records (Extracts by Furnivall in Appendix to Vicary’s Anatomy. Early English Text Society). [577] Brand’s History of Newcastle. [578] Hasted’s History of Canterbury, p. 130 (from parish registers). [579] Anthony Wood, op. cit. II. 74. At Banbury probably about the same year. Beesley’s History of Banbury (from Brasbridge). [580] Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, I. 5. [581] Acts of the Privy Council. New series, 1542-1547, 28 April, 1546, p. 397. [582] Ibid., Nov. 13, 1546, p. 552. [583] Camden’s Britannia, ed. Gough, I. 262. [584] Ibid. II. 265. [585] Calendar of State Papers. Domestic series, Vol. X. [586] Notes and Queries, 6th series, III. 477. [587] Nichols, Leicestershire, III. 891 (295 deaths from plague &c. 1555-59.) [588] Ormerod’s Cheshire, I. under 1558, with a reference to “Harl. MSS.” The Harleian MSS. relating to Chester fill many pages of the catalogue. [589] Calendar of State Papers, Eliz. I. p. 122. [590] Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1880, pp. 123, 144. [591] Letter from London to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Hist. MSS. Com. VI. 455, a. [592] Without date, but probably 1564. Watt conjectures 1556, but the book contains references to the fever-epidemic of 1558, and, as above, to the plague of 1563. [593] Munk, Roll of the College of Physicians, I. pp. 32, 63. [594] This and other information immediately following are from Cal. State Papers. Foreign series. [595] Calendar of Cecil MSS., under the dates. [596] Glover’s Hist. of Derbyshire (21 plague deaths in St Michael’s register, May-Aug. 1563). [597] Nichols; Kelly, in Trans. Hist. Soc. VI. 395. [598] Harwood’s Hist. of Lichfield, p. 304. [599] Hasted’s Hist. of Canterbury, p. 130 (parish registers). [600] Notes and Queries, 2nd series, XI. 69. [601] ‘How and whether a Christen man ought to flye the horrible plage of the Pestilence. A sermon out of the Psalme “Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi,” by Andrewe Osiander. Translated out of Hye Almayn into Englishe, 1537.’ Copy in the British Museum. The initials M.C. are taken to be those of Miles Coverdale. [602] Soranzo to the Senate of Venice. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, V. 541 (18 Aug. 1554). [603] Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. Domestic. [604] From Abstract of several orders relating to the Plague. MS. Addit. (Brit. Museum), No. 4376. Probably the originals of these abstracts are among the Guildhall records. I quote from the most accessible source. [605] Extracts from the Guildhall Records, by Furnivall, in Appendix to Vicary’s Anatomy of the Body of Man. Early English Text Society. [606] Cal. State Papers, Venetian, VII. 649. [607] Abstract, &c. in Brit. Mus. MSS., as above. [608] The following is the case by which he supports the recommendation to kill dogs in plague-time: “Not many years since, I knew a glover in Oxford who with his family, to the number of ten or eleven persons, died of the plague, which was said to be brought into the house by a dogge skinne that his wife bought when the disease was in the Citie” (Poor Man’s Jewel, Chapter VIII. London, 1578). [609] Transcripts from the MS. Archives, ed. Bayley, 1856. [610] News-letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Hist. MSS. Commis. VI. 455. [611] Machyn’s Diary, ed. J. Gough Nichols. Camden Soc., No. 42, p. 310. [612] Ibid. p. 396 (note by Nichols); and Guildhall Records, in Furnivall, l. c. [613] Abstract, &c. as above. [614] Stow’s Memoranda (Lambeth MS.), Camden Soc., 1880, p. 123. [615] Abstract, &c. as above. [616] Stow, ibid. [617] Record Office. State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. XLVIII., No. 70. [618] Endorsed “An abstract of such orders as have been heretofore for the preventing and decreasing of the plague in and about London.” [619] The searchers are mentioned at Shrewsbury as early as 1539 (Phillips). [620] Survey of London, ed. cit. p. 119. [621] Holinshed, III. p. 1260. [622] John Bell, London’s Remembrancer. Lond. 1665. [623] Liber Albus Londinensis. Rolls series, ed. Riley. The following instances occur in the report of the commissioners of 1343: P. 446: A water-gate “obturatur ratione unius gutturi exeuntis de una latrina,” etc. P. 449: the Ebbegate obstructed by certain persons named, “qui fecerunt in eadem venella latrinas supra dentes, quarum putredo cadit supra capita hominum transeuntium.” Same page: Wendegoslane “obturatur per fimos et garderobas.” Same page: Rethersgate obstructed “per fimos et alia hujusmodi foetida.” Same page: Dowgate. Two householders named “in eisdem aedificiis diversas latrinas fecerunt, pendentes ultra vicum ejusdem venellae; quarum putredines cadunt supra homines per eandem venellam transeuntes.” P. 450: at Queenhithe a “communis latrina.” P. 451: at Saltwharf the way to the river obstructed “pulvere et aliis putredinibus in eadem projiciendis.” P. 452: Lekynggeslane has two latrinae and is impassable owing to want of paving. Same page: Another venel obstructed by the Earl Marshall; three latrinae in it. In a perambulation of the ground outside the walls, 26 Ed. III. (1552), the following encroachments are noted among others: Outside Ludgate, one has erected a shed (camera) 16 ft. × 12¾ ft., and made there “unum profundum puteum et quadratum pro latrina”—a deep well and a latrine-pit together. Also outside Ludgate, William of Wircestre has a house there and two shelters for beasts, and a latrine, and part of the said house is 14 ft. × 7½ ft. [624] Statutes of the Realm, 17 Ric. II. [625] Riley, op. cit., p. 614. [626] Stow’s Survey. [627] Art. “Shakespeare,” Encycl. Britan. [628] Wodderspoon’s Memorials of Ipswich, p. 285, p. 259. [629] “Now first printed.” Exeter, 1765, p. 181. [630] Poulett Scrope, op. cit. p. 333. [631] D. Erasmi Epistolar. lib. XXX. London, 1642, Lib. xxii. Epist. 12 (without date). [632] Richard of Devizes. Eng. Hist. Soc. p. 60: “Apud Bristolliam nemo est qui non sit vel fuerit saponarius; et omnis Francus saponarios amat ut stercorarios.” [633] William Harrison’s Description of England (in Holinshed) gives proof enough that the filthy floors described by Erasmus had no existence two generations later, even among the poorer classes. [634] The correspondence is in Remembrancia, under the head of “Plague.” [635] From a memorandum of Lord Burghley’s, dated Hertford Castle, 21 Nov. 1582, it appears that a survey had shown 577 beds available for strangers in one parish of Hertford, and 451 in another, “so that there are lying two a bed above 2000 people.” Cal. State Papers. Domestic series, Elizabeth 1581-90, p. 75. [636] Stow’s Survey. [637] Remembrancia, p. 332. [638] Remembrancia. [639] Baddeley, Parish of St Giles, Cripplegate. Lond. 1888. [640] Ibid., under date August, 1672, p. 193. [641] Broadsheets in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries. Cited by W. Rendle, F.R.C.S., Old Southwark and its People. London, 1878, p. 198. Mr Rendle, in one place, seems to imply disapproval of this mode of coffinless burial; but in another (p. 225, note) he says it was “a sort of forecast of Mr Seymour Haden’s wise proposals.” His first thoughts appear to have been the best. [642] Sermon on Third Sunday in Advent, 1552. [643] Stow’s Memoranda. Camden Society, N. S. XXVIII., 1880, p. 125. [644] Stow, Annales, p. 662. [645] Cal. State Papers. [646] Cat. Cecil MSS. [647] On July 15, 1570, the Duke of Norfolk craved his release from the Tower, on account of the great risk to his bodily health and the infection of the pestilence in that part of the city. (Calendar of Cecil MSS.) [648] Report Hist. MSS. Commis. [649] Anthony Wood, op. cit. [650] Remembrancia, p. 38. [651] Turnor’s History of Hertford, pp. 236, 268. [652] The Loseley Manuscripts, ed. Kempe. London, 1836, p. 280. [653] Holinshed, III. p. 1240. [654] Letter to Cecil, Cal. Cecil MSS., II. 106 (under the year 1575). [655] Corporation records, in Notes and Queries, 6th series, II. 524. [656] Notes and Queries, 6th series, II. 390. [657] Ormerod’s Hist. of Cheshire, I. Harl. MS. 2177 (a death from plague, 3 Nov. 1574). [658] Cal. Cecil MSS., II. 107:—For the week ending 9 September, 1575, in St Margaret’s, 25 deaths (of plague 13), St Martin’s 3 of plague, Savoy, none, St Clement’s 3 (2 of plague). [659] Cecil to Earl of Lincoln. Ibid. 10 September, 1575. [660] The Maire of Bristowe, is Kalendar. Camden Soc. 1872, p. 59. [661] Wells corporation MSS., Hist. MSS. Com., I. 107. [662] Owen and Blakeway. [663] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1591-94, p. 269. [664] Tickell’s Hist. of Kingston upon Hull, 1798. [665] Records of the Burgh of Kirkcudbright. Hist. MSS. Commiss., IV. 539. [666] Remembrancia, p. 333 (27 Nov. and 6 Dec. 1582). [667] By permission of the Marquis of Salisbury. The contents of this small volume have not been included in the published Calendar of the Cecil MSS. [668] ‘A sermon preached at Powles Crosse on Sunday, the third of November, 1577, in the time of the Plague’ by T. W. London, 1578 (February 20). [669] Strype’s ed. of Stow’s Survey, Bk. IV. p. 34. Nonsuch was near Epsom. [670] Remembrancia of the City of London, p. 331. [671] Calendar of Cecil MSS., Part II. under the dates. [672] Turnor’s Hist. of Hertford, p. 236. [673] Cal. Cecil MSS. [674] Blomefield, vol. III. (“Norwich,” under the date). [675] Ibid. “Yarmouth.” [676] Morant’s Hist, of Essex, I. 50. [677] Hist. MSS. Commission, IX. 277 b. [678] Notes and Queries, 6th series, II. 524. [679] Cal. State Papers. [680] Nichols, Hist. of Leicestershire. [681] Cal. S. P. [682] Cal. State Papers. Eliz. 1581-90 (Lemon), pp. 45, 70. [683] Graunt’s Reflections on Bills of Mortality. 3rd ed., Lond. 1665, p. 135. [684] Hist. MSS. Com. [685] Saunders, Hist. of Boston, p. 228. [686] Duke of Rutland’s MSS. Hist. MSS. Com., May 24, 1586. [687] Saunders, l. c. [688] Notes and Queries, 2nd series, XI. 497. [689] Blomefield’s Norfolk. [690] Ibid. and Gawdy MSS. Hist. MSS. Com. [691] Glover’s Hist. of Derby, p. 613. [692] Archaeologia, VI. 80. [693] Townsend’s Hist. of Leominster, p. 59. [694] Sykes, Local Records of Northumberland and Durham, p. 80. [695] Cal. S. P., Domestic, Eliz. ed. Lemon. [696] Corporation MSS. of Plymouth. Hist. MSS. Com. X. pt. 4, p. 539. [697] Notes and Queries, 6th series, III. 477. [698] Dunsford’s Historical Memoirs of Tiverton, p. 38. [699] Bill of Mortality for the week ending October 20, 1603. Broadside in Guildhall Library, with summary, on margin, of the mortalities in 1563 and 1592-93. [700] Cal. State Papers, 1591-94, p. 312. [701] Ibid. p. 340. [702] Ibid. 1595-97, p. 45, May 26, 1595: “Arguments in proof of the advantages to be derived by the City of London from stopping up the town ditch:—It is the origin of infection, and the only noisome place in the city. In the last great plague, more died about there than in three parishes besides; these fields are the chiefest walks for recreation of the cityzens, and though the ditch were cast every second year, yet the water coming from the kennel and slaughter-houses will be very contagious. It is no material defence for the city, and half the ditch has been stopped these many years.” [703] London’s Remembrancer, by John Bell, Clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks. London, 1665. He says: “I shall begin with the year 1593, being the first year in which any account of the christenings and burials was kept. I cannot find any record of more antiquity than that of this year in the Company of Parish Clerks Hall.” However we can now point to original weekly bills of mortality of 1532 and 1535, to abstracts of weekly plague-burials in 1563-66, to the figures from one weekly bill of a series in 1574, and to abstracts of 1578-83. [704] The total of 25,886 was copied, probably from the broadside of 1603, into an anonymous essay of 1665, called Reflections on the Bills of Mortality, the total of plague alone being given as 11,503, evidently by a misprint for 15,003. At the same time a table was given, professing to be of the weekly deaths from all causes, in one column, and from plague in another, from March 13 to December 18, 1593. The column of plague-deaths sums up to 11,110, but the total of 11,503 (which originated in a misprint) is printed at the foot of the column as if that were the summation. The column of deaths from all causes is made to sum up to 25,886, the actual sum being 25,817. But the weekly mortalities in it for those weeks that had little plague are an absurdity for 1593. Whatever the source of this table, it is not genuine for 1593, and was disclaimed by Bell, the clerk of Parish Clerks’ Hall, whose essay was written in 1665 to correct that and other errors about former plagues in London. [705] Cal. State Papers. Addenda. Elizabeth. [706] Cussan’s Hist. of Hertfordshire. [707] Turner’s Hist. of Hertford, p. 268. [708] Glover’s Hist. of Derby, p. 613. [709] Harwood’s Hist. of Lichfield, p. 304. [710] Nichols, Leicestershire (Town records of Leicester); Kelly, in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. VI. (1877), p. 391 (at least 20 houses shut up). [711] Owen and Blakeway. [712] Parish registers in Townsend’s Leominster, p. 59. [713] Corporation MSS. Canterbury, in 9th Report of Hist. MSS. Commission, pp. 159 a, 160 a, b. “This plague continued from the end of September to the month of January.” [714] Parish Register of Penrith: “A sore plage was in London, Nottinghome, Derbie and Lincolne in the year 1593” (Jefferson’s Cumberland, I. 19). [715] Cal. Stale Papers. Addenda. Elizabeth. [716] Syer’s Memorials of Bristol. The excessive mortality at Leominster (41 burials in September, 1597) may have been an effect of the famine. (Townsend’s History, p. 59.) [717] Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1597, § 10, p. 347. [718] Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1597, p. 501. [719] Sykes, Local Records, p. 82. [720] Clarkson’s Hist. of Richmond. [721] Camden’s Britannia, p. 175. [722] Jefferson’s Cumberland, I. 273. But these are the same figures as for Penrith. [723] Ibid. I. 391. [724] Parish register of Penrith, in Jefferson, l. c. [725] Notes and Queries. 6th series, II. 524. [726] Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, X. 594. Edin. 1887. [727] Burgh Records of Aberdeen (Spalding Club), I. 66. [728] Exchequer Rolls Scot., XI. p. lxviii. [729] Ibid. [730] Burgh Records, pp. 88, 90, 130, 165. [731] Register of the Privy Council, Scotland, I. 5. [732] Cal. S. P. Scot. (Thorpe). [733] Burgh Records, pp. 222, 231, 244, 246. [734] Cal. S. P. Scot. 18 Nov. 1548. The Rhinegrave recovered, and came to Edinburgh on the 26th. [735] Reg. P. C. Scot. I. 279-81. [736] Ibid. I. 281-2. [737] Ane Breve Description of the Pest, Edin. 1568. Reprinted, for the Bannatyne Club, by James Skene of Rubislaw. Edin. 1840. [738] Diurnall of Occurrences, in Chambers. [739] Cited by R. Chambers (Domestic Annals of Scotland, I.) from M. Napier’s notes to the Spottiswoode Club edition of Spottiswoode’s History. [740] Op. cit. I. 53. [741] Burgh Records of Canongate. Maitland Club, Miscellany, II. 313 (in Chambers). [742] Chambers, I. 94. [743] Burgh Records of Glasgow, 1573-1581. Maitland Club, p. 27. [744] Reg. P. C. Scot., II. 415. [745] Ibid. p. 419. [746] Hist. MSS. Com., IV. 539. [747] Reg. Scots P. C., III. 229. [748] Ibid. [749] Ibid. III. 679. [750] Reg. Scots P. C. s. d. [751] Chronicle of Perth, Bannatyne Club, p. 4, and Chambers, I. 154. [752] Reg. Scots P. C., III. 727. [753] Calderwood’s Hist. of Kirk of Scotland, IV. 366: “It was first known to be in Simon Mercerbank’s house.” Birell’s Diary (1532-1605) in Chambers, I. 157. [754] Scots P. C., III. 746. [755] Ibid. V. 56. [756] Moysie, in Chambers, I. 157. [757] The Diary of Mr James Melville, 1556-1601. Bannatyne Club. Edin. 1829, p. 153. [758] Marioreybank’s Annals, in Chambers. [759] Melville’s Diary, p. 162. [760] Melville, p. 173; Calderwood, cited by Chambers; Cal. Cecil Papers, III. 298, 310. [761] Cal. Cecil Papers, III. 321. [762] Memorabilia of Glasgow, in Chambers. [763] Scots Privy Council. [764] Birell, in Chambers. [765] Scots P. C. [766] Calderwood, V. 655. [767] Two men sent to buy nolt in Galloway for the needs of the borough of Dumfries were stopped, with 38 head of cattle, by the provost and others of Wigton, at the Water of Crie, the cattle being impounded at Wigton for eight days so that they became lean. A hundred merks compensation was demanded. Scots Privy Council, V. [768] Scots P. C., VI. 164. [769] Aberdeen Kirk Session Records, Spalding Club, 1846, Calderwood (cited by Chambers, I. 319) says that the year 1600 was one of famine, and that there was also a great death of young children, six or seven being buried in Edinburgh in a day. [770] Scots Privy Council, VI. under the respective dates. [771] Burgh Records. [772] Smith’s Cork, II. 34. [773] Cal. State Papers. Domestic. [774] Smith’s Cork, on the authority of MS. annals. [775] Annals of Loch CÉ. Rolls ed., II. 289. [776] Brabazon to T. Cromwell. Cal. State Papers. Irish. [777] Cal. State Papers. Irish, 1566-7. [778] State Papers (Record Office), Irish, 1567, No. 54. Letter from Lord Treasurer Winchester and Ed. Baeshe, to the Lord Deputy. Mr Froude’s summary of it is that “the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them,” and again, “the reeking vapour of the charnel house.” I have had difficulty in deciphering the letter, but I can make out “being a graveyard where all their buriall,” etc. [779] Cal. State Papers. Irish. [780] Thady Dowling, p. 41. [781] Cal. State Papers. Domestic. Sept. 1, 1575. [782] Stubbs, in his edition of Roger of Howden (Rolls series, No. 51, II. 249), on the evidence of the Pipe Roll of 1166. [783] Memorials of London in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, ed. Riley. [784] Stow’s Survey of London, pop. ed. (1890), p. 66. [785] Hall’s Chronicle, ed. of 1809, p. 632. [786] This account of the Black Assizes at Oxford in 1577 was brought to light, like so many other things from the register of Merton, first by Anthony Wood in his Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford (ed. Gutch, II. 189). It was copied in full, from the original Latin text, in 1758, by John Ward, LL.D., and sent to the Royal Society, in whose Phil. Trans. (vol. L. p. 699) it is printed, with remarks, by Tho. Birch, D.D., Sec. R. S. [787] Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales. 3rd ed., Warrington, 1784, p. 342. [788] Hist, and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch, II. 188-192. [789] Georgius Edrichus, ‘In Libros aliquot pauli Aeginetae Hypomnemata quaedam.’ Londini apud Tomam East 1588 (without pagination). [790] The passage which Anthony Wood thought to relate to the gaol fever at Oxford in 1577 is the following, under the heading “De morbis publicÉ grassantibus:” “Publice grassari morbos vidimus Oxonii, et una nocte simul plus sexaginta agrotasse (sic) novimus, et in vicinis postridie pagis, eo forte aËre delato, fere centum. Quod etiam eodem tempore, regnante tum Edwardo sexto, Cantabrigiae evenit, cum duo simul liberi ducis inclyti Suffolchiae ibi morerentur. Nec tamen Oxonienses ulli fere interierunt, quod coeli constitutio apud nos quam ibi salubrior sit. Sed iis ita succurrendum morbis putamus, ut Brittanico sudore (sic enim vocant) opitulari solemus.” [791] Anthony Wood, as we have seen in the text, put together his version of the fever of 1577 from the Merton College register, from Stow’s Annals, and from Ethredge’s reference to the sweat of 1551. In 1758, John Ward, LL.D., copied the passage in the Merton register and sent it to the Royal Society; whose secretary, the Rev. Dr Thomas Birch, appended to it in the Philosophical Transactions some annotations—“copying,” as Carlyle said of him with reference to some Cromwell matter, “from Wood’s Athenae; and has committed—as who does not?—several errors,” his annotations being “sedulous but ineffectual”—to the extent of fixing on the original correct narrative an accretion of mistakes (600 for 60, sweating sickness for gaol fever, &c.). Trusting to the respectable Birch, Bancroft in his Essay on the Yellow Fever, with observations concerning febrile contagion &c. (Lond., 1811) has based a theory that the Oxford epidemic was not typhus at all. Murchison (Continued Fevers of Great Britain, 2nd ed. 1873, p. 103) has also been misled, and has found himself therefore at a disadvantage in answering Bancroft’s empty verbalisms about the invariable reproduction of typhus from some previous case. F. C. Webb, in a paper “An Historical Account of the Gaol Fever,” Trans. Epidem. Soc. for 1857, p. 63, has not used the Oxford case for any argumentative purpose, but he has, like the others, given the facts erroneously. He gives no particulars of the Exeter Black Assize. [792] Howard, On Lazarettos in Europe, &c. Warrington, 1789, p. 231: “But as I have found, in some prisons abroad, cells and dungeons as offensive and dirty as any I have observed in this country, where however the distemper was unknown, I am obliged to look out for some additional cause of its production. I am of opinion that the sudden change of diet and lodging so affects the spirits of new convicts that the general causes of putrid fever exert an immediate effect upon them. Hence it is common to see them sicken and die in a short time with very little apparent illness.” The last words are important. [793] Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History. In ten centuries. Cent. 10, §§ 914-15. Spedding’s ed. II. 646. [794] Holinshed’s Chronicle. New edition by Hoker, London, 1587, pp. 1547-8. [795] These statements by Hoker, chamberlain of Exeter, are sufficiently circumstantial; but they do not quite suit the theory of a writer in the Dict. Nat. Biog., under “Drake, Sir Bernard” that the ship was “a great Portugal ship,” called the Lion of Viana, with an English master, taken by Bernard Drake in Brittany. No doubt such a capture is stated in the Cal. State Papers, 1585, p. 295 (the reference given), Sir W. Raleigh’s ship the “Jobe” being included in the same petition; but nothing is said of Dartmouth as the port to which the two vessels were brought, or of Exeter as the place where their captains were imprisoned. It is of importance for the theory of the Exeter gaol fever to know whether Drake’s prisoners were Portuguese fishermen or not, and Hoker may be supposed to have known. [796] The author of the misadventure. He succeeded in getting home to Crediton, where he died on the 12th April, four weeks after the Assizes began. [797] Sir George Nicholls, in his History of the English Poor Law, 1854, I. 113, threw out the suggestion that the decay was in the old walled towns, and that it was compensated by the rise of populations on less hampered sites. This theory has been adopted by some later writers. [798] Calendar of State Papers. Domestic, Hen. VIII. [799] Becon’s Works, 3 vols. II. fol. 15-16. [800] Continuation of Fabyan’s Chronicle. [801] Greyfriars Chronicle, Camden Soc. LIII., 1852. Preface by J. G. Nichols, xxiv. [802] Strype’s ed. of Stow’s Survey of London. [803] In the Rolls of the Middlesex Sessions (Middlesex Record Society), there occur numerous entries of inquests on deaths in the gaol of Newgate from the 25th year of Elizabeth: a few of these are from plague; but by far the larger number are from “the pining sickness,” a malady which sometimes cut off several prisoners in the same few days and after a brief illness. In one of these epidemics (Dec. 1586-Feb. 1587), a single case is called “pestilent fever,” the other seven being “pining sickness.” Next year, June 19, there is a case of bloody flux, and, on June 24, a case of “pining sickness.” The other periods when the disease so named was epidemic in Newgate were Feb.-May, 1595, June and July, 1597, March, 1598, and March-April, 1602. The pining sickness was probably a generic term, and may have included chronic disease; there is a solitary case entered as ailing for as long a period as eight months, the usual duration of the sickness being one, two, or three days up to three or four weeks. This place will serve to notice the strange teaching about “parish infection” which has received currency among the writers of good repute as authorities. Guy (Public Health, Lectures, 1870, I. 23) says the gaol distemper was an old offender known as the sickness of the house: “I think I recognize it in the London Bills from 1606 to 1665 as the Parish Infection.” The column of figures in the London Bills which has been taken to show the weekly prevalence of a disease, otherwise unheard of, “parish infection,” really shows the number of “parishes infected.” The earlier bills showed, in the corresponding column, the number of parishes clear (“parish.clere” or “paroch.clere”). By adding up the number of parishes infected in each of the 52 weeks of a bad plague-year, a total of some thousands is got, and that total has been taken to be the annual mortality from “parish infection”—a pure myth. The original author of this singular mistake appears to have been Marshall, in his Mortality of the Metropolis, London, 1832, p. 67. Of the “parish infection,” he says: “The disease below is specified by Mr Bell in his Remembrancer [1665]; it is probably the same as exhibited under the name of spotted fever.” What Bell “specifies” is not another disease, but the number of parishes in the City and suburbs infected with the plague in each week of the year. [804] Annales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 19. Chronicle by an unknown author (St Albans) temp. Hen. VI., 1422-31:—“Quaedam infirmitas reumigata invasit totum populum, quae mure dicitur: et sic senes cum junioribus inficiebat quod magnum numerum ad funus letale deducebat.” In the Report of the Irish Local Government Board, Medical Department, 1890, influenza is identified under the name “slaedan,” or prostration, which was epidemic in Ireland in 1326 or 1328, the same epidemic being called “murre” in the Annals of Clonmacnoise. The use of the word “mure” in the St Albans Chronicle is just a century later. Murrain (or morena in Latin chronicles) is probably the modern survival of “mure” or “murre.” [805] I take this summary from Short (Chronology, etc. I. 204), who omits his authority, probably the foreign writers to whom he is usually indebted in the earlier period. The first part of Theophilus Thompson’s Annals of Influenza (Sydenham Society) is little else than extracts from Short, and therefore of foreign origin. [806] Cal. State Papers. Domestic, sub dato. [807] Thus in the continuation of Fabyan’s Chronicle under the year 1512, the Marquis of Dorset, sent into Spain with 10,000 men, is said to have “returned in winter by reason of the flix (dysentery).” And in Hall’s Chronicle (ed. of 1807, p. 523), we have particulars of the very serious sickness in his army in Biscay; owing to their diet being largely of garlic and fruits, and their drink being hot wines in hot weather, “there fell sick 3000 of the flix, and thereof died 1800 men.” [808] Continuator of Fabyan’s Chronicle, sub anno. There is an almost identical entry in A London Chronicle of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. (Camden Miscellany, vol. V. 1859), but under the year 1539, in a hot and dry summer. The most discrepant date and designation of the epidemic of those years are those given in Hardiman’s History of Galway (p. 40): “This charitable institution [St Bridget’s Hospital] was fortunately completed in the year 1543, when the sweating sickness broke out, and raged with great violence, destroying multitudes of the natives, and particularly the tradesmen of the town.” [809] The term “hot ague” occurs as early as 1518, in a letter of 18 July (Cal. State Papers). [810] Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors (1457-1559). Camden Society, II. 139. Anthony Wood also enters for Oxford, under 1557, “A pestilential disease to the settling of some and the driving away of many; the causes of which proceeding from the eating of green fruit, the Commissary commanded that none should be sold in the market or elsewhere in Oxford.” [811] Fabyan’s Chronicle, p. 711. [812] Stow’s Annales, ed. Howse, p. 631. Speed also has a paragraph, unusual with him, on the state of health in the year of Queen Mary’s death (1658), in which the mortality among the clergy is specially mentioned. [813] Extracts from Harrison’s MS. Chronologie by Furnivall, in Appendix to Elizabethan England. Camelot series, 1890, p. 267. His famine prices, and the enormous fall of them after harvest, are the same as given by Stow. [814] State Papers, Record Office. [815] John Jones, M.D. The Dyall of Ague, London, 1564? [816] Calendar of State Papers. Foreign, II. 1558, p. 398. [817] Calendar of State Papers. Foreign, II. 1558, p. 400. [818] New Observations, Natural, Moral, Civil, Political and Medical, on City, Town and Country Bills of Mortality. By Thomas Short, M.D., London, 1750. [819] 2 vols. London, 1749. [820] Calendar of Cecil MSS., II. 525. [821] Phil. Trans. XVIII. 105 [822] Graunt, Reflections on the Bills of Mortality, 3rd ed. 1665. [823] Opera, ed. Greenhill, p. 160. [824] Ibid. p. 169. [825] Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls series, No. 21, vol. V. Topogr. Hiberniae, p. 67:—“Advenarum, tamen, una his fere est passio et unica vexatio. Ob humida namque nutrimenta, immoderatum ventris fluxum vix in primis ullus evadit.” Flux among the English troops in Ireland in 1172 is mentioned by Radulphus de Diceto, Imag. Histor. I. 348. [826] Works of James I., p. 301. [827] Sloane MS. (Brit. Mus.) No. 389, folios 147-153. It bears no date, but is marked in the catalogue “xv and xvi cent.,” as if belonging either to the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth. [828] Hensler, who reproduced in 1783 (Geschichte der Lustseuche, App. p. 53) these and other particulars from one of the two remaining copies of Pinctor’s work (in the possession of Professor Cotunni of Naples), collated with the other copy in the Garelli library at Vienna, finds in the concluding dedication of the book to Alexander Borgia a sinister meaning, as if the supreme pontiff had been himself a victim of the grande maladie À la mode; it is easier, he says, to extricate the sense than the syntax of the passage. [829] There was another edition in 1539, and several more following. Paynel also added a short section, “A Remedy for the Frenche pockes,” to his book entitled, A Moche Profitable Treatise against the Pestilence. Translated into English by Thomas Paynel, chanon of Martin [Merton] Abbey, London, 1534. [830] Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1398-1570. Edited for the Spalding Club [by Dr John Stuart], vol. I. 1844, p. 425. [831] Phil. Trans., vol. 42 (1743), p. 420: “Part of a Letter from Mr Macky, professor of History, to Mr Mac Laurin, professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, and by him communicated to the President of the Royal Society; being an Extract from the Books of the Town Council of Edinburgh, relating to a Disease there, supposed to be Venereal, in the year 1497.” [832] Simpson (l. c.) quotes the Proclamation from the original minute-book, almost in the above spelling; it is in Vol. I. of the Town Council Records, fol. 33-34, and is entitled in the rubric “Ane Grangore Act.” [833] “On Syphilis in Scotland in the Fifteenth Century,” Trans. Epidem. Soc. N. S. 1. (1862), p. 149. Two of the entries are published in the Criminal Trials of Scotland, 1. 117; the others were collected for Simpson by Mr Joseph Robertson from the High-Treasurer’s Accounts in the Register House, Edinburgh. These accounts have since been published in the Rolls series (vol. I. 356, 361, 378 (bis), 386). [834] Op. cit. I. 437. [835] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York. Edited by Nicolas, London, 1830, p. 104. [836] Stow’s Survey of London, “Bridge Ward Without.” He ascribes these informations to “Robert Fabian,” both in the text and in the margin. The statement is certainly not made in Fabyan’s Chronicle of England under the year 1506, or other year of the decade, nor is it indexed as occurring in some earlier connexion. [837] Bernard AndrÉ’s Works. Rolls series, No. 10. [838] Erasmi Epistolae, folio. London, 1642, p. 1789 e. [839] Anthony Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch, I. 514. Freind (Hist. of Physic, Pt. II. p. 345) says that the French pox is mentioned in the will of Colet, dean of St Paul’s, 1518. [840] The Supplication of Beggers compyled by Symon Fyshe. Anno MCCCCCXXIIII. Lond. 1546. [841] Parliamentary History, I. 494. [842] Bullein’s Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence, 1564. Early English Text Society, Extra series, 1888, p. 122. [843] Bullein’s Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes, etc., 1562, foll. 2, 68. [844] Certain Works of Chirurgerie newly compiled and published by T. Gale. London, 1563. [845] Dyall of Agues, cap. VIII. “Of the Pestilential fever, or plage, or boche.” [846] William Clowes, A short and profitable Treatise touching the cure of the disease called (Morbus Gallicus) by unctions, London, 1579. [847] ‘A Prooved Practice for all young Chirurgeons, concerning burning with gunpowder, and woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, Pike, Launce or such other. Hereto is adjoyned a Treatise of the French or Spanish Pocks, written by John Almenar, a Spanish Phisician. Also a commodious collection of Aphorismes, both English and Latine, taken out of an old written coppy. Published for the benefit of his country by William Clowes, Maister in Chirurgery.’ New ed., 1591. [848] A most excellent and compendious Method, etc. London, 1588. [849] Read uses, among other terms, one that has played a great part in the modern pathology of syphilis. Among the points to be noticed are,—“if recent or old, if the ulcers or whelks be many, whether pustulous matter or gummie substance appear.” [850] John Banister, ‘A needefull new and necessarie treatise of Chyrurgerie, briefly comprehending the generall and particular curation of ulcers ... drawen forth of sundrie worthy writers.... Hereunto is annexed certaine experimentes of mine owne invention.’ London, 1575. [851] Peter Lowe, An easie, certaine and perfect method to cure and prevent the Spanish sicknes, Lond. 1596. For an account of the book see The Life and Works of Maister Peter Lowe. By James Finlayson, M.D. Glasgow, 1889. [852] A Treatise concerning the plague and the pox, discovering as well the means how to preserve from the danger of these infectious contagions, or how to cure those which are infected with either of them. London, 1652. [853] Burnet (History of his own Time, I. 395-6, Oxford, 1823) retails a good deal of unsavoury gossip concerning the disease in noble and princely personages after the Restoration. [854] Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality. By Captain John Graunt, F.R.S. Preface dated from Birchin Lane, January, 1662. [855] The origin of syphilis from leprosy has been maintained in a modern work by Friedr. Alex. Simon, Kritische Geschichte des Ursprungs, der Pathologie und Behandlung der Syphilis, Tochter und widerum Mutter des Aussatzes. Hamburg, 1857-8. [856] Hirsch, Geographical and Historical Pathology (Translated), II. 67, 68, 81. [857] In Hensler, p. 14, and Appendix, p. 11. [858] Ibid., App. p. 15. [859] In Hensler, Appendix, p. 66. [860] The rise of the pox in the Italian wars, with its dispersion over all Europe, comes into “The Smallpox, a Poem” by “Andrew Tripe, M.D.,” London, 1748: “Whip! thro’ both camps, halloo! it ran, [861] I do not include among the good evidence the often quoted letter of Peter Martyr to a professor of Greek at Salamanca, under the date of “nonis Aprilis, 1488,” in which “morbus Gallicus” is used as well as the Spanish name “las bubas.” It seems to me certain that the date should be 1498, or something else than 1488, the correspondence having gone on until 1525. The same kind of misdating occurs among the printed letters of Erasmus. [862] This letter is printed in his Opuscula, Papiae, 1496. Attention was first called to it by Thiene, in his essay confuting the doctrine of the West-Indian origin of syphilis. [863] In Hensler, App. p. 108. [864] Manardus, Epist. Med. lib. VII. epist. 2. Basil, 1549, p. 137 (as cited by Hirsch). The first letter of Manardus “de erroribus Sym. Pistoris de Lypczk circa morbum Gallicum,” was printed in 1500 (Hensler, p. 47). [865] I quote it from Hensler, Geschichte der Lustseuche die zu ende des xv Jahr hunderts in Europa ausbrach. Altona, 1783, Appendix, p. 109. [866] Mezeray, Histoire de France, II. 777. [867] The diagnosis in De Comines’ text appears to have struck the editors of the chief edition of his work, that of 1747; for they have appended a footnote to the passage, which is a superfluity unless it be meant to express surprise: “Charles VIII. malade de la petite vÉrole À l’age de vingt-deux ans.” [868] Martin, Histoire de France, VII. 257, 283. [869] Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology. Translated by C. Creighton, 3 vols. London, 1883-86, II. 92-98. [870] Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., containing an Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever, etc. Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D., London, 1821. [871] Th. NÖldeke, Geschichte der Araber und Perser, nach Tabari. Leyden, 1879, pp. 218, 219. [872] The term “autonomy” in the foregoing is used according to the exposition which I originally gave of it in an address to the British Medical Association (1883) on “The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections” (Brit. Med. Journ., Aug. 4, 1883). The semi-independence of constitutional states has been dealt with in my book, Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease. London, 1885. [873] The South-African controversy, which became acute, was carried on in journals of the colony (the South African Medical Journal about 1883 and 1884 is a likely source of information), but some echoes of it were heard in letters to the British Medical Journal, 1884. A few years ago a similar diagnostic difficulty arose, not in an African race, but among the inmates of a Paris hospital. In the smallpox wards of the HÔpital St Antoine, a number of cases occurred, one of them in a nurse, another in an assistant physician, of a particular skin-disease, which was either discrete or confluent, lasted about ten days, and was attended by fever up to 40° C. or 41° C. Yet these cases were discriminated from smallpox; they were diagnosed, and have been recorded, as an epidemic of ecthyma. (Du Castel, Gazette des HÔpitaux, 1881, No. 122, quoted in the Jahresbericht.) [874] Krankheiten des Orients. Erlangen, 1847, p. 127. [875] History of Physic, II. 190. [876] Gruner, a learned professor of Jena, who made collections of works or passages relating to syphilis and to the English sweat, published also in 1790 a collection of medieval chapters or sentences on smallpox, “De Variolis et Morbillis fragmenta medicorum Arabistarum,” including the whole of Gaddesden’s chapter but omitting the earlier and more important chapter from Gilbert. Gruner correctly says at the end of his extracts: “while the Arabists write thus, they seem to have followed their Arabic guides, and to have repeated what they received from the latter.” This is obvious from the text of the chapters themselves: some quote more often than others from Avicenna, Rhazes and Isaac; but it is clear that they all base upon the Arabians. The substance is the same in them all; it is a merely verbal handling of Arabic observation and theory. There are no concrete experiences or original additions, from which one might infer that they were familiar at first hand with smallpox and measles. HÄser, however, seems to take these chapters in the medieval compends as evidence of the general prevalence of smallpox in Europe in the Middle Ages. As he finds little writing about smallpox when modern medical literature began, he is driven into the paradox that epidemics of smallpox had actually become rarer again in the sixteenth century (III. p. 69). But the sixteenth-century references to smallpox, although they are indeed scanty, are at the same time the earliest authentic accounts of it in Western Europe. [877] This intention is most clearly expressed by Valescus de Tharanta: “Then let him be wrapped in a woollen cloth of Persian, or at least of red, so that by the sight of the red cloth the blood may be led to the exterior and so be kept at no excessive heat, according to the tenour of the sixth canon [of Avicenna].” Apud Gruner, p. 46. [878] History of Physic, Pt. II. p. 280. [879] Rosa Anglica. Papiae, 1492. [880] Chronica Majora. Rolls ed. V. 452. [881] Rolls of Parliament. [882] Early English Text Society’s edition by Skeat. Passus xvi. (108), and Passus vii. [883] Trench, in his Select Glossary, has adopted the derivation of measles from misellus, without apparently knowing that John of Gaddesden had actually used “mesles” for a form of morbilli. The derivation of measles from misellus has been summarily rejected by Skeat, who thinks that “the spelling with the simple vowel e, instead of ae or ea, makes all the difference. The confusion between the words is probably quite modern.” Perhaps I ought not to contradict a philologist on his own ground; but there is no help for it. I know of four instances in which the simple vowel e is used in spelling the name of the disease that is associated with smallpox, the English equivalent of morbilli. In a letter of July 14, 1518, from Pace, dean of St Paul’s to Wolsey (Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. II. pt. 1), it is said, “They do die in these parts [Wallingford] in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” In the Description of the Pest by Dr Gilbert Skene, of Edinburgh (Edin. 1568, reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840, p. 9), he mentions certain states of weather “quhilkis also signifeis the Pokis, Mesillis and siclik diseisis of bodie to follow.” And if a Scotsman’s usage be not admitted, an Oxonian, Cogan, says, “when the small pockes and mesels are rife,” and another Oxonian, Thomas Lodge, in his Treatise of the Plague (London, 1603, Cap. iii.) says: “When as Fevers are accompanied with Small Poxe, Mesels, with spots,” etc. On the other hand, Elyot, in the Castel of Health (1541), Phaer in the Book of Children, (1553), Clowes in his Proved Practice, and Kellwaye (1593) write the word with ea. There is, indeed, no uniformity, just as one might have expected in the sixteenth century. Again, Shakespeare (Coriolanus, Act III., scene I) spells the word with ea where it is clearly the same word that is used in The Vision of Piers the Ploughman in a generic sense and in the spelling of “meseles:”—“Those meazels which we disdain should tetter us.” Lastly, there are not two words in the Elizabethan dictionaries, one with e signifying lepers, and another with ea signifying the disease of morbilli. In Levins’ Manipulus Vocabulorum, we find “ye Maysilles” = variolae, but there is no word “mesles” = leprosi. There was only one word, with the usual varieties of spelling; and in course of time it came to be restricted in meaning to morbilli, Gaddesden’s early use of “mesles” in that sense having doubtless helped to determine the usage. [884] Harl. MS., No. 2378. So far as I have observed, there is no prescription for “mesles,” or for smallpox under its Latin name or under any English name that might correspond thereto. Moulton’s This is The Myrror or Glasse of Helth (? 1540), which reproduces these medieval prescriptions with their headings, is equally silent about smallpox and measles. [885] Willan’s Miscellaneous Works. “An Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever.” London, 1821, p. 98. The MS. is Harleian, No. 585. [886] Sandoval, cited by Hecker, Der Englische Schweiss. Berlin, 1834, p. 80. [887] MS. Harl., 1568. [888] There is a fine copy of the earliest printed version in the British Museum, with “Sanctus Albanus” for colophon. The same text was reprinted often in the years following by London printers—in 1498, 1502, 1510, 1515 (twice), and 1528. [889] Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876, p. 87. [890] Walsingham, Hist. Angliae, I. 299. Also Chronicon Angliae a quodam Monacho, sub anno 1362. [891] “Also manie died of the smallpocks, both men, women and children.” [892] History of the Smallpox, 1817. Blomefield, also, in his History of Norfolk, quotes the passage about “pockys” correctly from the “Fruit of Times,” applies it to Norwich, to which city it had no special relation, and then says that this is the first mention of “small pocks.” [893] Fabyan’s Chronicle. Ed. Ellis, p. 653. [894] Levins, Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570. Camden Society’s edition, column 158. [895] Lettres du Roy Louis XII. Brusselle, 1712, IV. 335. [896] Cal. State Papers. [897] “Item, que À son grand desplaisir il ait estÉ naguaires mal disposÉ d’une maladie nommÉe la petitte verolle, dont À present, graces À Dieu, il est recouvert et passÉ tout dangier.” Lettres du Roy Louis XII., IV. 260. Brusselle, 1712. [898] Cal. State Papers. [899] Cal. State Papers. [900] Edited by Gairdner for the Camden Society, 1880. [901] Bannatyne Club’s reprint, 1840, pp. 9-10. [902] The Loseley Manuscripts. Edited by Kempe. London, 1836, p. 315. [903] A Defensative against the Plague ... whereunto is annexed a short treatise of the small Poxe, how to govern and help those that are infected therewith. London, 1593. [904] Francis Davison’s Poetical Rapsodie. The poem of Spilman occurs at p. 189 of the edition of 1611. In the piratical edition of 1621, after Davison’s death, “small” is left out before “Pocks,” and Spilman’s name omitted at the foot of the verses. The printer’s error has had the singular effect of leading Dr Farmer, the writer on Shakespeare, to conclude that the word “pox” in the Elizabethan period meant smallpox even in imprecations such as “a pox on it.” [905] Sir Tobie Matthews’ Letters (1577-1655), London, 1660. (1) Donne to Mrs Cockaine, p. 342; (2) Donne to Sir R. D——, both without date. [906] Court and Times of James I. [907] Court and Times of Charles I. (Chamberlain to Carleton), I. 28. [908] Anthony Wood. [909] For Chester also, in the parish register of Trinity Church (Harl. MS. 2177) there is a note opposite 1636: “for this two or three years divers children died of smallpox in Chester.” [910] Cal. State Papers. [911] Ibid. [912] Hist. MSS. Commission, V. 146, 151, 156, 168, 174, 201. See also the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. [913] Natural History of Oxfordshire. Oxford, 1677, p. 23. [914] De contagione et contagiosis morbis, etc. Venet. 1546. [915] Titles in HÄser, III. 383. [916] Opus de peste ... necnon de variolis, Neap. 1577. [917] Les oeuvres de M. Ambroise ParÉ. 5th ed., Paris, 1598, Books XIX. and XX. The chapters on Plague, Smallpox, etc., were originally published, according to HÄser, in 1568. [918] See Purchas, Pilgrimes, III. 996, where syphilis and smallpox are included together as “infectious or pestilentiall pocks,” Ramusio being given as the authority for the smallpox and Oviedo for the great pox. [919] For details of the increase of London population, with the sources of evidence, I beg to refer to my essay, “The Population of Old London,” Blackwood’s Magazine, April, 1891. [920] Broadside in the Guildhall Library, bound up in a volume labelled Political Tracts, 1680. [921] “The time when it began in the City of Westminster and these places following: “Buried in Westminster from 14 July to 20 October, in the whole number 832, whereof of the plague 723. Buried in the Savoy from the 1st of June to the 20th of October, in the whole number 182, whereof of the plague, 171. Buried in the parish of Stepney from the 25th of March to the 20th of October, in all 1978, whereof of the plague, 1871. Buried at Newington-buts from the 14th of June to the 20th of October, in all 626, whereof of the plague, 562. Buried at Islington 201 in all, 170 of plague; at Lambeth 373 in all, 362 of plague; at Hackney 192 in all, 169 of plague. Buried in all within the 7 several places last aforenamed 4378, whereof of the plague, 3997. The whole number that hath been buried in all [to 20th October], both within London and the Liberties, and the 7 other severall places last before mentioned is 39,380, whereof of the number of the plague, 32,609.” From the parish registers the burials for the whole year are known: Stepney, 2257; Lambeth, 566; Islington, 322; Hackney, 321 (of plague 269). In Stow’s Annales, the mortality of 1603 is given as follows:—“There died in London and the liberties thereof from the xxiii day of December 1602 unto the xxii day of December 1603, of all diseases 38,244, whereof of the plague 30,578.” [922] Baddeley, l. c. [923] A short Dialogue concerning the Plague Infection. Published to preserue Bloud through the blessing of God. London, 1603. [924] The Wonderfull Yeare 1603, wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague. London, 1603. [925] In his Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606) he returns to the mode of burial in the plague: “All ceremonial due to them was taken away, they were launched ten in one heap, twenty in another, the gallant and the beggar together, the husband saw his wife and his deadly enemy whom he hated within a pair of sheets.” As an after effect of this mode of interment, “What rotten stenches and contagious damps would strike up into thy nostrils!” [926] A Treatise of the Plague. By Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Phisicke. London, 1603. It has been reprinted, among Lodge’s other works, by the Hunterian Club of Glasgow, 1880. [927] The opinion of Peter Turner, Doctor in Physicke, concerning Amulets or Plague-Cakes, whereof perhaps some hold too much and some too little. London, 1603, p. 10. Turner held high offices at the College of Physicians, and died in 1614. There was another physician of the name, also a dignitary of the College, Dr George Turner, whose widow was the notorious Mrs Anne Turner, executed for having been an instrument in the poisoning of Sir T. Overbury. Scott has drawn from her the character of Mrs Suddlechop, in The Fortunes of Nigel, a work invaluable for realizing the London of King James. The reference in the Earl of Northumberland’s accounts, under date Feb. 6, 1607, to a Dr Turner, who was paid ten shillings for a “pomander” against the plague, would suit either Dr Peter or Dr George (Hist. MSS. Commis. VI. 2, 29). [928] A letter from Hampstead, August 27, 1603, speaks of “the imprudent exposure of infected beds in the streets.” (Cal. State Papers.) [929] A New Treatise of the Pestilence, etc. the like not before this time published, and therefore necessarie for all manner of persons in this time of contagion. By S. H. Studious in Phisicke. London, 1603. [930] This mystification was pointed out in a note to “Thayre” (the 1625 edition) in the printed Catalogue of the Library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. [931] An Epistle discoursing upon the present Pestilence, teaching what it is and how the people of God should carrie themselves towards God and their neighbours therein. Reprinted, with some Additions, by Henoch Clapham. London, 1603. [932] A Short Dialogue, etc., ut supra. [933] In a volume with other pieces. London, 1605. [934] But several warders in the Tower died of it. (Cal. State Papers, Sept. 16, 1603.) [935] In Lysons, Environs of London. [936] Hist. MSS. Com. X. pt. 4, p. 5. [937] E.g. plague at Datchet (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. VI. 217). [938] John Bell, London’s Remembrancer. London, 1665 [1666]. [939] Extracts from Harrison’s MS. Chronologie by Furnivall in Appendix (p. 268) to Elizabethan England. Camelot Series, 1890. [940] A Sermon preached at Powles Crosse, etc. London, 1578. [941] Remembrancia (numerous extracts from the City records, under “Plays”). [942] Cal. State Papers, Addenda, James I. p. 534. [943] Notes and Queries, 6th series, II. 524. The mortality is stated on the authority of the parish registers of St George’s and St Michael’s, the dead having been “buried at the cabbin of Whitefryers.” [944] There is An Account of the Plague at Oxford, 1603, in the Sloane MS. No. 4376 (14), extracted from the register of Merton College, which had also been the source of Anthony Wood’s account, as summarised in the text. [945] Cal. State Papers. Addenda, 1580-1625. [946] Hist. MSS. Commis. IX. 160. [947] Izacke’s ‘Memorials of Exeter’ (in N. and Q., 3rd ser. VI. 217). [948] Bailey, Transcripts from the MS. Archives of Winchester, 1856, p. 109. [949] Cromwell. [950] Hist. MSS. Commis. IX. [951] Ibid. X. pt. I, p. 89. [952] Thompson’s Boston. [953] Hist. MSS. Com. IX. [954] ArchÆologia, VI. 80. [955] Rogers’ MS. in Hemingway’s Hist. of Chester. Harl. MS. 2177. [956] Earwaker, East Cheshire, II. 471; I. 406. [957] Bridges and Whalley, II. 53; I. 124. [958] Drake’s Eboracum. Lond. 1736, p. 121. [959] Sykes, Local Records of Northumberland and Durham. [960] Phillips, Owen and Blakeway. [961] Cal. State Papers. Addenda, 1580-1625. [962] Parish Register (in a local history). [963] Notes and Queries, 6th ser. II. 390. [964] Ib. [965] Ib. [966] Ib. [967] Cal. State Papers, 1608-9. [968] Hemingway. [969] Cal. S. P. [970] Hist. MSS. Com. V. 570. [971] ArchÆologia, VI. 80. [972] Blomefield. [973] Sykes. [974] Nichols, III. 892-3. [975] Nichols (parish registers); Kelly, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 1877, VI. 395. [976] Sykes. [977] Hemingway. [978] May, Hist. of Evesham, 1845; p. 371. [979] Add. MS. 29,975. f. 25. [980] Hist. MSS. Com. IX. 162. [981] Ib. I. 101. [982] Beesley, Hist. of Banbury. [983] Dean Butler’s notes to Clyn’s and Dowling’s Annals. [984] Smith’s Cork, from MS. Annals. [985] Chambers, Domestic Annals. [986] Cal. State Papers. [987] Chambers. [988] Cal. State Papers. [989] Balfour’s Annals of Scotland (in Chambers, I. 399). [990] Ibid. [991] Chambers. [992] Aberdeen Burgh Records. [993] Chambers. [994] Chron. of Perth. [995] Chambers. [996] Ibid. [997] The invaluable letters of Chamberlain, as well as those of Mead (of Cambridge) and others, were collected by Dr Thomas Birch in the last century, and printed in 1848 under the titles The Court and Times of James I., and C. and T. Charles I., without an index but with some useful notes. [998] Chamberlain to Carleton, C. and T. James I., II. 504. [999] Chronological History of the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors, etc. 2 vols. Lond. 1749, I. 306:—“This fever began, and raged terribly in England in 1623; was little, if at all, short of the plague.” [1000] Chamberlain to Carleton, in Court and Times of Charles I., I. 28. [1001] Salvetti’s Diary, in Hist. MSS. Com. XI. pt. I, p. 26. [1002] Cal. S. P. 15 Sept. [1003] Holland. [1004] Bell, London’s Remembrancer. [1005] C. and T. Charles I., letter of 2 July, 1625. [1006] In a volume of Topographical Papers in the British Museum, 1298, m (18). [1007] W. Heberden, Junr., Increase and Decrease of Diseases. Lond. 1801, p. 66. He gives no authority; “1626” is clearly a misprint. [1008] Calendar of State Papers, 1625-26, p. 184. [1009] The Red Crosse (broadside). London, 1625. [1010] Parish Histories, and in Lysons’ Environs of London. [1011] Britain’s Remembrancer, containing a Narrative of the Plague lately past. London, 1628. [1012] The Fearfull Summer, or London’s Calamitie. Printed at Oxford, 1625 (reprinted with additions, Lond. 1636). [1013] Holland’s Posthuma. Cantab. 1626. [1014] The Weeping Lady, or London like Ninivie in Sackcloth. By T. B. London, 1625. [1015] Hist. MSS. Commission, XI. pt. I, p. 6. [1016] Bradwell’s book, to be mentioned in the sequel, was written for practice during the plague. There is a reference to something of Sir Theodore Mayerne’s on the plague of 1625, which I have not succeeded in finding. His Opera Medica contain ordinary cases treated by him in London in December, 1625, but there is no mention of plague-cases. Woodall’s essay on plague, published in 1639, thus refers to his experience in the epidemic of 1625: “In anno 1625 we had many signes contrarie to the plagues in other times; yea, and many did dye dayly without any signes or markes on their bodies at all.” [1017] C. and T. Charles I. I. 48. [1018] A Watchman for the Pest, teaching the true Rules of Preservation from the Pestilent Contagion, at this time fearfully overflowing this famous Cittie of London. Collected out of the best authors, mixed with auncient experience, and moulded into a new and most plaine method. By Steven Bradwell, of London, Physition. 1625. [1019] Cal. State Papers. [1020] Ib. [1021] Th. Locke to Carleton, Cal. S. P., 14 Aug. [1022] Salvetti. [1023] Locke to Carleton, 27 Aug. [1024] Cal. S. P. [1025] Mead, letter in C. and T. Ch. I. I. 43. [1026] Cal. S. P. [1027] Ibid. [1028] Mostly from parish registers in Lysons’ Environs of London. [1029] Winchester was probably a fair sample. In the city archives under the year 1625 there is this entry: “Item, it is also agreed that the decayed cottage where Lenord Andrews did dwell, he lately dying of the plague, shall be burned to the grounde for fear of the daunger of infection that might ensue if it should stande.” (Bailey, Transcripts, etc. Winchester, 1856, p. 110.) In a petition relating to Farnham, Jan. 1628, the town is described as being “impoverished through the plague and many charges,” which may mean that plague had been diffused in Surrey and Hampshire. [1030] Cal. State Papers. [1031] Cal. State Papers. [1032] MSS. of the Corporation of Plymouth. Hist. MSS. Commis. IX. 278. Accounts are given (p. 280) of the monies collected for the relief of the poor and sick people of Plymouth “in the time of the infection of the pestilence from Sept. 29, 1625, to that day A.D. 1627.” But that does not imply that the infection lasted all that time. The civic year began with September 29, and the accounts are those that fall within two complete financial years. [1033] Cal. State Papers. [1034] Notes and Queries, 6 ser. III. 477. [1035] Cal. S. P. [1036] Ib. [1037] Cal. S. P. [1038] Ib. [1039] Cal. S. P. [1040] Letter from Mead in C. and T. Charles I. I. 51. [1041] Blomefield. [1042] At Coventry in 1626, £20 was paid to the poor in lieu of a feast at Lammas, by reason of the infection. (Dugdale, Warwickshire.) [1043] The following curious extract was sent by J. A. Picton to Notes and Queries, 6th ser. I. 314 from the parish register of Malpas, Cheshire, 1625: “Richard Dawson (brother of the above-named Thomas Dawson of Bradley) being sick of the plague and perceiving he must die, at that time arose out of his bed and made his grave, and caused his nephew John Dawson to cast straw into the grave, which was not far from the house, and went and laid him down in the said grave and caused clothes to be laid upon, and so departed out of this world. This he did because he was a strong man and heavier than his said nephew and another wench were able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. Thus much was I credibly tould. He died 1625. “John Dawson, son of the above-mentioned Thomas, came unto his father when his father sent for him being sick, and having laid him down in a ditch died in it the 29th day of August, 1625, in the night. “Rose Smyth, servant of the above-named Thomas Dawson, and last of that household, died of the plague and was buried by Wm. Cooke the 5th day of September, 1625, near unto the said house.” [1044] Memoranda of Rev. Thomas Archer, of Houghton Conquest. MSS. Addit. Brit. Museum. [1045] Blomefield. [1046] Phillips’ Hist. of Shrewsbury. Hist. MSS. Com. X. pt. 4. p. 498. [1047] Hist. MSS. Com. II. 258. [1048] Hist. of County of Lincoln, II. 187. Notitiae Ludae, p. 41. [1049] Tickell’s Hist. of Kingston-upon-Hull. Hull, 1798. [1050] Gawdy MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com. X. pt. 2), various letters from Sept. 14, 1636, to Nov. 26, 1638, relating chiefly to Norwich. [1051] Boys, Hist. of Sandwich, pp. 707-8. [1052] R. Jenison, D.D., Newcastle’s Call to her Neighbor and Sister Towns. London, 1637. [1053] Heberden says that it began in Whitechapel, but does not say where he got the information. [1054] Middlesex County Records, III. 62. [1055] Ibid. [1056] The College of Physicians reported also in May, 1637, on the causes of plague—overcrowding, nuisances, &c.; among the causes assigned the following is noteworthy: Those who died of the plague were buried within the City, and some of the graveyards were so full that partially decomposed bodies were taken up to make room for fresh interments. (Cited by S. R. Gardiner, History, &c., VIII. 237-9, from the State Papers.) [1057] Natural and Political Reflections on the Bills of Mortality. London, 1662. [1058] Cal. State Papers. [1059] Strype’s ed. of Stow’s Survey of London. [1060] Rendle (Old Southwark, 1878, p. 96) quotes the following from a letter written in 1618 by Geoffrey Mynshall from the King’s Bench prison: “As to health, it hath more diseases predominant in it than the pest-house in the plague time ... stinks more than the Lord Mayor’s dog-house or Paris Garden in August ... three men in one bed.” [1061] Cal. S. P. 1601-3, p. 209. [1062] Middlesex County Records, II. [1063] Cited by Gardiner, History, VIII. 289. [1064] Calendar of State Papers. [1065] Cal. S. P. [1066] Ibid. [1067] Ibid. The coexistence of malignant fever with plague at Northampton in 1638 is decisively shown by particulars of cases published by Woodall, Op. cit. 1639. See also Freeman, Hist. of Northampton, p. 75 (but under the year 1637). [1068] Ibid. [1069] Ibid. [1070] Camden’s Britannia, ed. Gough, II. 244. [1071] Notes and Queries, 6th series, IV. 199. [1072] Hist. MSS. Com. V. 173. [1073] Diatribae duae de Fermentatione et de Febribus. Hagae, 1659. [1074] Morbus Epidemicus anni 1643; or the New Disease. Published by command of his Majesty. Oxford, 1643. [1075] From Rushworth. [1076] “The City, with much emotion, ranks its trained bands under Essex: making up an Army for him, despatches him to relieve Gloucester. He marches on the 26th [August]; steadily along, in spite of rainy weather and Prince Rupert; westward, westward; on the night of the tenth day, September 5th, the Gloucester people see his signal-fire flame up, amid the dark rain, ‘on the top of Presbury Hill;’—and understand that they shall live and not die. The King ‘fired his huts,’ and marched off without delay. He never again had any real chance of prevailing in this war.... The steady march to Gloucester and back again, by Essex, was the chief feat he did during the war; a considerable feat, and very characteristic of him, the slow-going inarticulate, indignant, somewhat elephantine man.” Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Cromwell. [1077] From the translation by S. Pordage. London, 1681. [1078] Anthony Wood, II. pt I. p. 469. [1079] Dunsford’s Histor. Mem. of Tiverton, p. 184. [1080] The military events from Rushworth. [1081] Dunsford, Histor. Memoirs of Tiverton. Harding, Hist. of Tiverton. [1082] Rushworth. Moore, Hist. of Devonshire, I. 149. [1083] Beesley’s Hist. of Banbury, p. 387. [1084] In Somers’s Tracts. Scott’s ed. V. 294. [1085] Sykes. [1086] Clarendon, referring to a proposed Royal visit to Bristol in April says: “The plague began to break out there very much for the time of the year.” [1087] Cal. State Papers. [1088] Rushworth. [1089] Letters and Speeches, I. [1090] Seyer’s Memorials of Bristol, II. 466. [1091] Whitaker, History of Leeds, p. 75. [1092] Harwood, Hist. of Lichfield, p. 306. [1093] Pordage’s translation of Willis’s Remaining Works, p. 131. [1094] Nichols, III. 893. [1095] Cornelius Brown, Annals of Newark. London, 1879, p. 164. [1096] Ibid. [1097] Notes and Queries, 6th ser., III. 477. [1098] Rushworth. [1099] Histor. MSS. Com. XI. 7, p. 190. [1100] Ibid. IX. 1, p. 201. [1101] Hist. of Carlisle, 1838. [1102] Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland. [1103] Baillie’s Letters. 3 vols. Edited by D. Laing for the Bannatyne Club. [1104] Kennedy, Annals of Aberdeen, I. 270 (expenses of the epidemic from the Council Register, vol. LIII. p. 130). [1105] Hemingway, Ormerod. The Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission (V. 339) notes that Dr Cowper’s MS. contains details of 2,099 deaths, but reproduces none of them. [1106] Hist. MSS. Commiss. V. 342. [1107] Owen and Blakeway. [1108] Rushworth, Pt. 4, vol. II., pp. 1100, 1109. [1109] Annals of Ireland by Clyn and Dowling, Dean Butler’s notes pp. 64, 65 (ref. to Carte’s Life of the Duke of Ormonde). [1110] Cal. State Papers. [1111] The weekly bills of mortality for Dublin, July 20—Aug. 2, 1662, showed only 14 baptisms and 20 burials in ten parishes; but these can hardly have been all the births and deaths in the city. [1112] Smith’s Cork, vol. II. from Cox MSS. [1113] Cal. S. P. Sept. 21, 1650. [1114] H. Whitmore, M.D. Febris Anomala; or the New Disease that now rageth throughout England, with a brief description of the Disease which this Spring most infested London. London, 1659 (4 November). [1115] Hist. MSS. Commission, X. pt. 4, p. 106. [1116] Willis, Diatribae duae. Hagae, 1659. [1117] Pyretologia. 2 vols. London, 1692-4. Appendix to 1st volume, p. 415. [1118] Sent to Notes and Queries, 1st ser. XII. 281, by Mr H. Hucks Gibbs. [1119] Hist. MSS. Commiss. V. 146 (Sutherland letters). [1120] Greenhill’s edition (Sydenham Society, 1844), pp. 37, 93, 95-98. [1121] Purchas, His Pilgrimes. 4 vols., folio. London, 1625, vol. I. Book II. p. 36. [1122] Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, &c. 3 vols. London, 1599, III. 225-6. [1123] Pericarditis scorbutica—a condition which has been observed mostly in Russia in recent times. The whiteness of the heart would have been due to the fibrinous layer of lymph on its surface, from the pericarditis. [1124] Hakluyt, III. 241. [1125] Hakluyt, II. Part II., pp. 22, 36, 48. [1126] Hakluyt, III. 501. [1127] Sir James Stephen’s Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, pop. ed. p. 125. [1128] Hakluyt, II. pt. 2, p. 99. [1129] The famous figure in Paradise Lost (IV. 159) is taken from the route to India passing within Madagascar—a poetic colouring of dreary and painful realities:— As when to them who sail [1130] The World Encompassed &c., Hakluyt Society, ed. Vaux, p. 149, and Hakluyt, III. 740. [1131] A summarie and true discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage begun in the year 1585. Published by M. Thomas Cates. Shortened in Hakluyt, III. 542. The earlier part of the narrative is by Captain Bigges, and, after his death in the West Indies, by his lieutenant, Croftes. [1132] Mr Froude (History, XII. 150) must be pronounced somewhat happy in his bold guess of “yellow fever.” At the same time the enthymeme by which he had reached his conclusion is altogether wrong: first, in assuming that the infection “broke out” after the capture of Cartagena, ignoring the fact of its disastrous prevalence in mid-ocean two or three months before, shortly after leaving the Cape de Verde islands; and secondly in assuming that the yellow fever for which Cartagena and other harbours of the Spanish Main became notorious in later times had existed as an infection there in the 16th century. [1133] Sir Richard Hawkins, who commanded the galliot ‘Duck’ in Drake’s expedition of 1585, thus refers to the Cape de Verde islands, on the occasion of touching there in his own expedition to the Pacific in 1593 (Purchas, IV. 1368): These islands are “one of the most unhealthiest climates in the world. In two times that I have been in them, either cost us the one half of our people, with fevers and fluxes of sundry kinds, some shaking, some burning, some partaking of both; some possesst with frensie, others with slouth; and in one of them it cost me six months’ sickness, with no small hazard of life.” He then gives a reason for the great risk to health: the north-east breeze about four in the afternoon seldom faileth, “coming cold and fresh, and finding the pores of the body open and for the most part naked, penetrateth the very bones, and so causeth sudden distemperature, and sundry manners of sickness, as the subjects are divers whereupon they work. Departing out of the calmes of the Islands, and coming into the fresh breeze, it causeth the like; and I have seen within two days after that we have partaked of the fresh air, of two thousand men above an hundred and fifty have been crazed in their health.” This seems to refer to the epidemic in Drake’s fleet, as given in the text; but it is clearly an imperfect account of the facts, and in theory altogether improbable, as a trade wind within the tropic cannot be credited with such effects, even if the forms of sickness were conceivably due at all to chill. Darwin (Naturalist’s Voyage in the Beagle, p. 366) says: “The island of St Jago, at the Cape de Verde, offers another strongly-marked instance of a country, which anyone would have expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. I have described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a few weeks after the rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly withers away and dries up; at this period the air appears to become quite poisonous; both natives and foreigners often being affected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically subject to the same process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy.” But the Galapagos have been uninhabited, except in recent times by two or three hundred people banished from Ecuador. On the other hand the Cape de Verde islands are believed to have been at one time well wooded and not unfertile; and the Portuguese settlements in them, to say nothing of the native negro villages, had a fair population. It is not easy to understand the pernicious character of their fevers without assuming that spots of soil had become pestilential by human occupancy; but it is at the same time clear that a degree of befouling of the soil which would be innocuous in ordinary, would there engender deadly miasmata owing to the remarkable alternations of drought and wetness under a tropical sun. [1134] Hakluyt, III. 286. [1135] Mr Hubert Hall, of the Record Office, in Society in the Elizabethan Age. London, 1886, p. 120. [1136] Hakluyt, III. 583. [1137] Hakluyt, III. 804, 820; and other details in the 1st ed. (1589) pp. 809, 810. [1138] Hakluyt, III. 842-52. [1139] Purchas, IV. Bk. 7, Chap. 5, (reprinted from Hawkins’s own narrative of the voyage, published a few months after the author’s death in 1622). [1140] Mr J. K. Laughton (Dict. of National Biography. Art. “Hawkins, Sir Richard”) points out that Hawkins’s narrative of the ‘Daintie’s’ voyage had not always been authenticated by reference to notes or documents. It seems probable also, from his remarks on the epidemic in Drake’s fleet after leaving the Cape de Verde islands in 1585, that he trusted his memory too much. But that objection of writing from memory has no force as against his general observations and reflections on scurvy. [1141] Purchas, part IV. p. 1877. [1142] Ibid. p. 1623. [1143] Woodall defends the use of biscuit in his Surgeon’s Mate, published in 1617. [1144] Purchas, III. 847. [1145] The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, Knight, to the East Indies. Hakluyt Society, ed. Clements Markham, 1878; and in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, II. pt. 2, p. 102. [1146] The slowness of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope in old times was due less to the build or rig of the ships than to the course shaped: instead of steering southwest from Madeira across the Atlantic almost to the coast of Brazil at Cape San Roque, so as to get the north-east trade wind, and thence on another tack in a wide sweep round to the Cape with the south-east trade wind, the earlier navigators sailed past the Cape de Verde islands and along the Guinea coast, keeping within meridians 20 degrees to the eastward of the modern track, and so falling into the tropical calms at one part, and at another part of the voyage into the baffling south-east trades, varying in force according to the season. [1147] Purchas, I. 147. [1148] Calendar of State Papers. East Indies (under the respective dates). [1149] It seems to have passed into common usage, as “to lie in cold obstruction and to rot” (Meas. for Meas. III. 1), and to have been kept up therein after the faculty had dropped it—if indeed Byron’s line, “Where cold Obstruction’s apathy” be a survival of medical terminology. There is an instance of the same kind of survival in the use of “scorbutic;” at one time land-scurvy was detected (under the influence of theory) in many forms, and we find in the Pickwick Papers a late reminiscence of that singular dogma in the “young gentleman with the scorbutic countenance.” [1150] The three earlier instances from Purchas, I. 248, 466, the later from the Cal. State Papers, East Indies. [1151] Cal. S. P. Colonial. East Indies. Dec. 24, 1628. [1152] Ibid. Feb. 6, 1626, p. 146. [1153] William Hedges’ Diary. Hakluyt Society, 1887, I. 24, 54. [1154] A Letter of M. Gabriel Archar, in Purchas, pt. IV. p. 1733; Smith’s Virginia, in Pinkerton, XIII. 99; W. Strachey, in Purchas, pt. IV. p. 1753. [1155] Theobald makes this the storm and shipwreck which Shakespeare brings into the Tempest. [1156] Purchas, IV. p. 1762. [1157] Cal. S. P. America and West Indies. [1158] Dermer, in Purchas, IV. p. 1778: Belknap’s American Biography (“Life of Gorges”), I. 355. [1159] John Winthrop’s Journal, p. 11. [1160] Winthrop, I. pp. 119, 123. [1161] Ibid. II. 310. [1162] Refs. in Noah Webster’s Hist. of Epid. and Pestil. Diseases. Hartford, 1799, I. 189, 191, 193. [1163] Letter of Norris, in Hist. of S. Carolina, I. 142. [1164] Saco, History of African Slavery in the New World (Spanish). Barcelona, 1879. [1165] Oviedo, in Purchas, III. 996:—“Extract of Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo:—‘I had acquaintance with divers which went in the first and second voyages of Columbus; of which was Peter Margarite, commendator in the second voyage, of most respect with the king and queen, who complained of those paines. [Syphilis was prevalent in Barcelona and Valencia previous to 1494. See Chapter VIII.] Soon after, in the year 1496, began the disease to arrest some courtiers; but in those beginnings it was only amongst baser persons of small authority; and it was thought that they got it by having to do with common women. But afterwards it extended to principal persons, and the physicians could not tell what to think of it, so that many died.’... But indeed it came from Hispaniola, where it is ordinary, and the remedy also [guaiacum]. Our author (l. c. civ.), and Ramusio in his preface to his third Tome, say that the souldiers of Pamfilo de Nuney, having the small pocks, infected the Indians which never before heard of that disease; in so much that of 1,600,000 soules in that island there are so few left, as by and by you shall hear.... The covetousnesse of the mine-workers, neglect of diet, change of gouvernours growing worse and worse, caused them to poison, kill and hang themselves, besides those which were consumed by infectious or pestilentiall pocks (those before mentioned out of Ramusio) and other diseases.” [1166] Calendar of State Papers. Amer. & W. I., I. 57. [1167] Ibid. [1168] Cal. S. P. Amer. & W. I., under the respective dates. [1169] The account that follows is taken from Father Dutertre’s Histoire generale des Antilles habitÉes par les FranÇois, 4 vols., Paris, 1667-1671, which superseded his earlier work of 1654. [1170] Cal. S. P. Amer. & W. I., II. 529. [1171] Ligon, Hist. of Barbadoes. London, 1657. [1172] Winthrop’s Journal, II. 312. [1173] Dutertre, Hist. gen. des Antilles habitÉes par les FranÇois. 4 vols. Paris, 1667-1671. [1174] Cal. State Papers, Amer. and W. I., I. 301. [1175] The chronology of yellow-fever epidemics in Hirsch (I. 318) is made to begin with Guadeloupe, 1635 and 1640, on the authority of Dutertre (as above), the epidemic of 1647 at Bridgetown being the third in order. [1176] Benjamin Moseley, M.D., Treatise on Tropical Diseases, and on the Climate of the West Indies, 3rd ed. (1803), p. 476. [1177] Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados. London, 1750, p. 37. [1178] Cal. S. P. Amer. and W. I., under the dates. [1179] In Sir John Hawkins’ second voyage as a slaver (1565), he was allowed to trade on the Spanish Main only for his “lean negroes,” which were within the purchasing means of the poorer Spaniards. The voyage had been tedious, and the supply of water short “for so great a company of negroes.... Many never thought to have reached to the Indies without great death of negroes and of themselves; but the Almighty God, who never suffereth His Elect to perish,” etc. Hakluyt, III. 501. [1180] Clarkson, History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. New ed., Lond. 1839, pp. 307, 352. He showed his prepared document to Pitt:— “Mr Pitt turned over leaf after leaf, in which the copies of the muster-rolls were contained, with great patience; and when he had looked over about a hundred pages accurately, and found the name of every seaman inserted, his former abode or service, the time of his entry, and what had become of him, either by death, discharge, or desertion, he expressed his surprise at the great pains which had been taken in this branch of the inquiry; and confessed, with some emotion, that his doubts were wholly removed with respect to the destructive nature of this employ.” (p. 273.) [1181] T. Aubrey, M.D., The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum. London, 1729, p. 107. [1182] Gillespie, Obs. on the Diseases in H. M.’s Squadron on the Leeward Island Station in 1794-6. Lond. 1800. [1183] For example, Mr R. L. Stevenson in a striking passage of Treasure Island. [1184] Thurloe’s State Papers, III. IV. and V.; Harl. Miscell. III. 513; Long’s History of Jamaica, 3 vols. London, 1774; Cal. S. P., Amer. and W. I. [1185] Harl. Miscel. l. c. [1186] Sir Anthony Shirley touched at Jamaica in 1596, and reported, “we have not found in the Indies a more pleasant and wholesome place.” Hakluyt, III. 601. Long (History of Jamaica, 1774, II. 221) states the case very fairly with reference to the unfortunate expedition of Venables in 1655: “The climate of the island has unjustly been accused by many writers on the subject, the one copying from the other, and represented as almost pestilential, without an examination into the real sources of this mortality, which being fairly stated, it will appear that the same men carrying the like thoughtless conduct and vices into any other uninhabited quarter of the globe, must infallibly have involved themselves in the like calamitous situation.” [1187] MS. State Papers, Colonial (Record Office), Vol. XIV. No. 57 (1660). [1188] Thomas Trapham, M.D., Discourse of the State of Health in Jamaica. Lond. 1679. [1189] Moseley, op. cit. p. 421, without reasons given; followed by Hirsch. Geog. and Hist. Pathol. (English transl.), I. 318. [1190] Hist. of Jamaica, III. 615. [1191] Cal. S. P. Amer. and W. I. [1192] Cal. S. P. Amer. and W. I. 1669-74, § 144. [1193] Ibid. § 264, III. [1194] With a preface by the Printer to the Reader, beginning “The reprinting of these sad sheets.” Printed and are to be sold by E. Cotes, living in Aldersgate Street, printer to the said Company. [1195] The advertisement is cited in Brayley’s edition of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. [1196] Sloane MS. no. 349. ??????af?a, or, An experimental Relation of the Plague, of what happened remarkable in the last Plague in the City of London, etc. By William Boghurst, Apothecary in St Giles’ in the Fields. London, 1666. [1197] Reprinted in A Collection of very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the last Plague in the year 1665. London, 1721. [1198] ????????a. London, 1671. Translation by Quincy, 1720. [1199] ????t??a, or, the Pest Anatomized. By George Thomson, M.D. London, 1666. [1200] London, 1667. [1201] Among the crop of books brought up by the Plague of Marseilles, in 1720 (the immediate cause of Defoe’s book also) was one by Richard Bradley, F.R.S., a writer upon botany, on The Plague of Marseilles. Also Observations taken from an original Manuscript of a graduate physician, who resided in London during the whole time of the late plague, anno 1665. London 1721 (and two more editions the same year). The title-page of this astute gentleman is of the catch-penny order. All that is said of the original manuscript occupies about the same number of lines in the text as in the title, and might have been extracted in the course of five minutes’ research; it consists merely of a list of a few things supposed to be distinctive signs of plague—extraordinary inward heat, difficulty of breathing, pain and heaviness in the head, inclination to sleep, frequent vomiting, immoderate thirst, dryness of the tongue and palate, and then the risings, swellings, or buboes. Boghurst’s third chapter is occupied with twenty-one such signs, and his fourth chapter with a hundred more signs and circumstances, in numbered paragraphs. It is possible that his was the manuscript out of which the botanist made capital in his title-page; but his meagre list of signs might have been got from almost any work on almost any febrile disorder, and is not sufficient to identify Boghurst by, although a word or phrase here and there is the same. However, Defoe would have seen Bradley’s title-page, and might have inquired after the Sloane MS. [1202] Of the six plague-deaths in 1664, three were in Whitechapel parish, and one each in Aldgate, Cripplegate and St Giles’s-in-the-Fields. [1203] Reliquiae Baxterianae. London, 1696, I. 448. This entry in his journal is dated September 28, 1665, at Hampden, Bucks. [1204] Ed. cit. Chap. XIV. p. 131:—“Diseases which seem to be nearest like its (plague’s) nature; which chiefly are fevers, called pestilent and malignant; for ’tis commonly noted that fevers sometimes reign popularly, which for the vehemency of symptoms, the great slaughter of the sick, and the great force of contagion, scarce give place to the pestilence; which, however, because they imitate the type of putrid fevers, and do not so certainly kill the sick as the plague, or so certainly infect others, they deserve the name, not of the plague, but by a more minute appellation of a pestilential fever.” [1205] In a letter from London, 9 May, 1637 (Gawdy MSS. at Norwich, Hist. MSS. Commis. X. pt. 2. p. 163) it is said: “There is a strange opinion here amongst the poorer sort of people, who hold it a matter of conscience to visit their neighbours in any sickness, yea though they know it to be the infection.” [1206] Evans, in preface to 1721 edition of Vincent’s book. [1207] Cal. State Papers. [1208] Ibid. [1209] Evans, l. c. [1210] Reliquiae Baxterianae. London, 1696, II. 1. 2. [1211] Milton, with his wife and daughters, spent the summer and autumn in the same quiet neighbourhood, at Chalfont St Giles, in a cottage which Ellwood had secured for him, still remaining with its low ceilings and diamond window-panes. He there showed Ellwood the manuscript of Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667. The poem contains no reference to the plague, unless, indeed, the flight to the country had given point to the lines in the 9th book: “As one who long in populous city pent, An opportunity arises in the 12th book, where the Plagues of Egypt come into the prophetic vision of events after the Fall; but the movement is too rapid to allow of delay, and we have no more than— “Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss, Gibbon thought that the comet of 1664 (which was generally remarked upon as a portent of the plague that followed) might have suggested the lines, II. 708-11 “and like a comet burn’d, Gibbon seems to make a slip in taking these as “the famous lines which startled the licenser;” those are usually taken to have been I. 598-9, the figure of the sun’s eclipse, which “with fear of change [1212] Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 4376 (8). “Abstract of several orders relating to the Plague,” from 35 Hen. VIII. to 1665. [1213] In excavating the foundations of the Broad Street terminus of the North London Railway, the workmen came upon a stratum four feet below the surface and descending eight or ten feet lower, which was full of uncoffined skeletons. Some hundreds of them were collected and re-interred. (Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser. IV. 85.) The ground was part of the old enclosure of Bethlem Hospital (St Mary’s Spital outside Bishopsgate), and was acquired for a cemetery, to the extent of an acre, by Sir Thomas Roe, in 1569. Probably there were plague-pits dug in it during more than one of the great epidemics, from 1593 to 1665. [1214] Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1665, p. 579. [1215] Reliquiae Hearnianae. Ed. Bliss, 1869, II. 117 (under the date of Jan. 21, 1721). [1216] The City Remembrancer. London, 1769 (professing to be Gideon Harvey’s notes). [1217] Procopius (De Bello Persico, II. cap. 23, Latin Translation) says the same of the great Justinian plague in A.D. 543 at Byzantium: “ut vere quis possit dicere, pestem illam, seu casu aliquo seu providentia, quasi delectu diligenter habito, sceleratissimos quosque reliquisse. Sed haec postea clarius patuerunt.” On this Gibbon remarks: “Philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or Providence;” and most men will agree with Gibbon. But, if we could be sure of the fact of immunity (and Boghurst’s testimony is a little weakened by his deference to Diemerbroek, who knew the classical traditions of plague), it might be possible to explain it on merely pathological grounds. [1218] John Tillison to Dr Sancroft, September 14, 1665. Harl. MSS. cited by Heberden, Increase and Decrease of Diseases. London, 1801. Woodall, writing in 1639, and basing on his experience of London plague in 1603, 1625, and 1636, is in like manner emphatic that the symptoms varied much in individuals and in seasons. [1219] Cal. State Papers. Hist. MSS. Com. IX. 321. [1220] Cal. State Papers. Cal. Le Fleming MSS. p. 37 (also for Cockermouth). [1221] Ibid. [1222] Mead seems to have known that there were plague-cases at Battle in 1665. [1223] Cal. S. P. [1224] Hist. MSS. Com. II. 115. [1225] The History and Antiquities of Eyam, with a full and particular account of the Great Plague which desolated that village A.D. 1666. By William Wood, London, 1842. This small volume, which owes its interest solely to the plague-incident, has gone through at least five editions. Among those who have written, in prose or verse, upon the same theme, Wood mentions Dr Mead, Miss Seward, Allan Cunningham, E. Rhodes, S. T. Hall, William and Mary Howitt, S. Roberts, and J. Holland. The story is also in the Book of Golden Deeds. [1226] Bacon (Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. X. § 912. Spedding II. 643) says: “The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath been said. And they report that, where it is found, it hath a scent of the smell of a mellow apple; and (as some say) of May-flowers; and it is also received that smells of flowers that are mellow and luscious are ill for the plague: as white lilies, cowslips and hyacinths.” [1227] Sir Thomas Elyot, in The Castle of Health (1541), says that “infected stuff lying in a coffer fast shut for two years, then opened, has infected those that stood nigh it, who soon after died.” (Cited by Brasbridge, Poor Man’s Jewel, 1578, Chapter VIII.) [1228] Milner’s Hist. of Winchester. [1229] The City Remembrancer, Lond. 1769, vol. I.—an account of the plague, fire, storm of 1703, etc., said to have been “collected from curious and authentic papers originally compiled by the late learned Dr [Gideon] Harvey.” But the section on the plague is almost purely Defoe and Vincent, with a few things from Mead. [1230] These figures, with the two oaths, had been copied by the antiquary Morant for his History of Essex, and are preserved in No. 87. ff. 55 and 56, of the Stowe MSS. in the British Museum, where Mr J. A. Herbert, of the Manuscript Department, pointed them out to me. In his printed History Morant has summarized the plague-deaths in monthly periods. The Bearers’ Oath, fol. 57:— “Ye shall swear, that ye shall bear to the ground and bury the bodys of all such persons as, during these infectious times, shall dye of the pestilence within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as ye shall have notice of, and may be permitted to bury, carrying them to burials always in the night time, unless it be otherwise ordered by the Mayor of this Towne; And ye shall be always in readiness for that purpose at your abode, where you shall be appointed, keeping apart from your families together with the searchers, and not to be absent from thence more than your office of Bearers requires. Ye shall always in your walk, as much as may be, avoid the society of people, keeping as far distant from them as may bee, and carrying openly in your hands a white wand, by which people may know you, and shun and avoid you. And shall do all other things belonging to the office of Bearers, and therein shall demean yourselves honestly and faithfully, discharging a good conscience; So etc. August 1665. James Barton and Oath 6. p. 44. The Oath for the Searchers of the Plague, 1665. “Yee and either of You shall sweare, that ye shall diligently view and search the corps of all such persons, as during these infectious times, shall dye within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as you shall or may have access unto, or have notice of; And shall according to the best of your skill, determine of what disease every such dead corps came to its death. And shall immediately give your judgment thereof to the Constables of the parish where such corps shall be found, and to the Bearers appointed for the burial of such infected corps. You shall not make report of the cause of any one’s death better or worse than the nature of the disease shall deserve. Yee shall live together where you shall be appointed, and not walk abroad more than necessity requires, and that only in the execution of your office of Searchers. Ye shall decline and absent yourselves from your families, and always avoid the society of people. And in your walk shall keep as far distant from men as may be, always carrying in your hands a white wand, by which the people may know you, and shun and avoid you. And ye shall well and truly do all other things belonging to the office of Searchers, according to the best of your skill, wisdom, knowledge, and power, in all things dealing faithfully, honestly, unfeignedly and impartially. So help” etc. [1231] Morant, Hist. of Essex, I. 74. [1232] Deering, Nottingham, vetus et nova, 1751, pp. 82-83. Copied in Thoresby’s edition of Thoroton’s History of Nottingham, II. 60. |
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