A.D. 1529, epidemic pestilence prevailed and carried off many distinguished persons in England. Contemporaries agree in their accounts of the dreadful weather all over Europe; the winter, however, was mild, and vegetation particularly advanced; violets were gathered at Erfurt in the middle of February: throughout the spring and summer wet weather continued to prevail; constant torrents of rain deluged the fields, and misery and famine spread in every direction. A heavy rain of four days’ continuance in the south of Germany, in June, was called the ‘St. Vitus’ Torrent,’ and was considered a hitherto unheard-of event; whole districts were under water, and many perished therefrom. An universal storm occurred again in August, occasioning great floods, especially in Thuringia and Saxony: the sun was rarely seen through the dark clouds during the latter part of summer and the whole of the autumn: with the exception of some suffocatingly hot days, the weather remained gloomy, cold, and wet, so that the people fancied they were breathing the foggy air of Britain. Violent remittent pestilence appeared in Amsterdam: Tyengius describes it as having broken out on the 20th of September, in the afternoon, during a misty foggy state of the atmosphere: it committed great ravages for the period of five days, when it disappeared as suddenly as it arose. In various parts of the German States the birds of the air became diseased; in the neighbourhood of Freyburg, in the Breisgau, they were found dead in great numbers, scattered under the trees, with boils as large as peas under their wings, indicating a disease that no doubt extended far beyond the Rhine. The river fish, from some cause, became unfit for food, and the sweating sickness broke out at Hamburgh, where it destroyed daily from forty to sixty persons. This pestilence lasted about a fortnight at Hamburgh, and 2000 of its inhabitants fell its victims: it afterwards spread all over Germany; it prevailed at Lubeck, Stettin, and in Zwickau. Earthquakes were experienced in Italy; blood-coloured rain fell at Cremona; a comet was seen in July; and disease prevailed among the porpoises in the Baltic. The famine in Germany this year is described by various authorities as being frightful. Suabia, Lorraine, Alsace, and the southern districts bordering on the Rhine suffered especially: in those places the misery was equal to that in France. In the Venetian territory, thousands perished from hunger, as was the case all over Upper Italy. In Pomerania, a peculiar kind of debility or lassitude affected the inhabitants: in the midst of their work, and without any conceivable cause, persons became palsied in their hands and feet, rendering them incapable of any exertion. About this period a pestilence, which was called ‘the English disease,’ broke out at Brussels, and carried off many of its inhabitants. CHAPTER V. FROM A.D. 1530 TO 1613.