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_,

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