Life & death in early English plagues; Covid is "just another" pandemic

The first confirmed outbreak of sweating disease arrived in England in 1485, to­w­ards the end of the Wars of the Roses (1455–87). This led to spec­ul­ation that it may have been brought over from France by the French mercenaries used by Henry Tudor to win the English throne. Major ep­idemic waves followed in 1508, then 1517, 1528 and 1551. After that, it disappeared.  

The English Sweating Sickness

History in the (Re) Making

Henry VIII and Catherine married in 1509 and had a daughter, Mary, but no surviving sons to follow Henry on the throne. Henry fancied a courtier, Anne Boleyn, and asked the pope for a divorce. Rejected by the pope, he broke with Rome, created the Church of England, and named himself head. After Anne also did not produce a male heir, she was later beheaded for treason.

The Sweating Disease in 1528 was ident­ified in Calais  (an English territory then), which was experiencing another horrid outbreak. When the disease reached epidemic proportions, it broke out in London and speedily spread over the whole of England (but not Scotland). The victim began with fever and pains in the neck, back and abdomen, vomit­ing and extremes of chills and fever. It ended with strong sweat and ghastly smell, just before the victims’ deaths. Note that it was fatal for up to half the population and at all levels of society - from the poor to royalty. 

The worst sickness showed itself again in London by April 1536. In May, men of the Inner Temple died from the sickness; the Abbot of York was excused from attending Parliament because of the plague which has visited his house near St Paul’s. The election of knights to serve in Parliament for Shropshire could not be held at Shrewsbury because of the plague locally. Before the suppression of the abbeys, one of the king’s visi­tors of the abbeys found hardly any place clear of the plague in Somerset, and was much impeded in his work. In Sept one of the frequent coron­ations of new queens in Henry VIII’s reign was like to be postponed.

In Oct the plague was at Dieppe, thought to have been brought over from Rye. In Yorkshire also, the Duke of Norfolk was sent to put down the rebellion in Nov 1536 and came into close contact with plague. Many were dying in Doncaster, including 9 soldiers. At Oxford the plague was active, and the scholars had be sent into the count­ry. In London in Nov it was dangerous to be in Lincoln’s Inn.

Unlike nowadays, when most people can’t think of any pandemic before Covid, literature from previous plagues WAS republished. In 1536 a small essay on plague by the C14th bishop of Aarhus was reprinted in London, as the title declares having been “of late practised and proved in many places within the City of London, and by the same many folk have been recovered and cured.” Beyond 1538, the domestic records of State only mentioned plagues from time to time eg 1540’s summer was a sickly one throughout Britain; it introduced a different (?new) type of disease, dysenteries.

Plague had returned in the spring 1537, just months before Jane Seymour went into labour, and Henry was naturally concerned. The disease had spread rapidly across the south, reaching London and the Home Coun­ties in the summer months. Appropriat­ely Henry’s decided to withdraw him­self, family and court from the city’s hot summer and fetid air.

Henry VIII had finally produced the legitimate son he craved. In Oct 1537, Prince Edward/King Edward VI, was born at Ham­p­ton Court Palace, west of London, on the River Thames. Henry had only taken Hampton Court from Cardinal Thomas Wol­sey in 1525. The new mother Jane Sey­mour, wrote to the chief minister, Thomas Crom­well, to in­form him of the birth of a son conceived in lawful matrimony!

Edward’s christening was indeed a moment of great promise and relief for Henry, finally confirming his family’s succession. Thus the ch­ristening demanded all the splendour of the royal court and involved the attendance of elite nobles from across the kingdom, including the princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Prin­c­ess Mary and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, were two of the godparents.

Three days after Edward’s birth, the infant prince was christened in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, attended by c400 people. Edward in a white christening gown was collected from his mother’s palace rooms and carried to its chapel under a royal canopy by prominent members of the English nobility. The prince was greeted by 24 trum­peters on his arrival at the chapel.

A mandate was issued to London’s sheriffs, placing plague restrict­ions on those who could attend court on that day. The nobles chosen to carry the prince at his christ­en­ing remained where they were in Croydon Palace, 20 ks east of Hampton Court, rather than travelling to Hampton Court and risking carrying infect­ions with them.

Following the ceremony, Edward was returned briefly to his parents in the queen’s private apartments, before being taken by his nurses to be kept in isolation in his own lodg­ings in Chapel Court, to protect the precious boy. Only those with royal approval were all­owed near the child to pro­tect him from possible infection or harm. This all revealed the tangible anxiety around the welfare of the child, parents and court in the context of a national health crisis.

It wasn’t until 1539 that Parish Registers of the births, marriages and deaths began to be kept, at least irregularly. By their means it was possible to trace the existence of epidemic disease in the country, which might not have otherwise been reported.

  

The Monk, by Hans Holbein, depicting death

The New Yorker.

Conclusion
The Black Death of the late C14th killed more people than the 1536-7 plague, as did the great influenza pandemic in the early C20th, and the disease that struck Tudor England was just as terr­if­ying. But nothing is new under the sun and we moderns still have a lot to learn. Pandemics still arrive freq­­uently, still spread quickly and still kill randomly. In every century and in every country, isolation must be mandatory and vaccinations urgently supplied.