The next summer, 1517, was the season of the third sweat. It was hardly over when plague began in London in September. On the 21st the Venetian envoy speaks of having had to avoid “the plague _and_ the sweating sickness;” on the 26th he writes that the plague is making some progress and he has left London to avoid it. On the 15th October the king was at Windsor “in fear of the great plague.” One writes on 25 Oct., “As far as I can hear, there is no parish in London free[559].” On the 16th November the envoy begs the seignory of Venice to send someone to replace him as he thinks it high time to escape from “sedition, sweat and plague.” On the 3rd December the king and the cardinal were still absent from London on account of the plague; on the 22nd their absence was causing general discontent, the plague being somewhat abated. It was not until March, 1518, that the court approached London; on the 15th the Venetian envoy rode out to Richmond to see the king, and found him in some trouble, as three of his pages had died “of the plague.” The court withdrew again to Berkshire, and on the 6th April it was decided by the king’s privy council at Abingdon that London was still infected and must be avoided, the queen (Catharine of Arragon) having declared the day before that she had perfect knowledge of the sickness being in London, and that she feared for the king, although she was no prophet. On the 7th April the report of four or five deaths at Nottingham (“as appears by a bill enclosed”) was made the ground of postponing a projected visit of the king to the north. The spring was unusually warm, which made the risk of sickness to be judged greater. It is clear that public business was suffering by the prolonged absence of the court from London, and that the existence of infection was being denied. On the 28th April Master More certified from Oxford to the king at Woodstock that three children were dead of the sickness, but none others; he had accordingly charged the mayor and the commissary in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes and bear white rods, according as your grace devised for Londoners;” this was approved by the king’s council, and the question was discussed whether the fair in the Austin Friars of Oxford a fortnight later should not be prohibited, as the resort of people “may make Oxford as dangerous as London, next term” (the law courts sat at Oxford in Trinity term). However, the interests of traders had to be kept in view also. On 28th June, 1518, Pace writes from the court at Woodstock to Wolsey that “all are free from sickness here, but many die of it within four or five miles, as Mr Controller is informed.” On the 11th July he writes again from Woodstock that two persons are dead of the sickness, and more infected, one of them a servant to a yeoman of the king’s guard; to-morrow the king and queen lodge at Ewelme, and stop