London and the Kingdom - Volume 1: A History Derived Mainly from the Archives at Guildhall in the Custody of the Corporation of the City of London.Sharpe, Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson)
History
London and the Kingdom - Volume 1: A History Derived Mainly from the Archives at Guildhall in the Custody of the Corporation of the City of London.
Sharpe, Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson)
London (England) -- History
Lest any unfavourable report should reach the cardinal, the Recorder and
another were ordered to ride in all haste to Sion, where Wolsey was
thought to be, and if they failed to find him there, to follow him to
Windsor and to report to him the active measures that had been taken to
prevent any further insurrection in the city.(1072) "Evil May-day" was
long remembered by the citizens, who raised objection to Thomas Semer or
Seymer, who had been sheriff at the time, being elected mayor ten years
later.(1073) In May, 1547, all householders were straitly charged not to
permit their servants any more to go maying, but to keep them within
doors.(1074)
(M571)
With gibbets all over the city, each bearing a ghastly freight, and the
summer approaching, it is scarcely surprising that the city should soon
again be visited with an epidemic. "At the city gates," wrote an
eye-witness, "one sees nothing but gibbets and the quarters of these
wretches"—the wretches who had been hanged for complicity in the late
disturbance—"so that it is horrible to pass near them."(1075) The
"sweating sickness," which had again made its appearance in 1516, and had
never really quitted the city (except for a few weeks in winter), now
raged more violently than ever, accompanied by measles and small-pox. The
king ordered all inhabitants of infected houses to keep indoors and hang
out wisps of straw, and when compelled to walk abroad to carry white
rods.(1076) This order, however, was badly received in the city and gave
rise to much murmuring and dissatisfaction.(1077) The civic authorities
did what they could to mitigate the evil by driving out beggars and
vagabonds, and removing slaughter-houses outside the city walls,(1078) as
well as by administering relief to the poorer classes by the distribution
of tokens or licences to solicit alms. These tokens consisted of round
"beedes" of white tin, bearing the City’s arms in the centre, to be worn
on the right shoulder.(1079) In the midst of so much real suffering, there
were not wanting those who took advantage of the charitable feeling which
the crisis called forth and were not ashamed to gain a livelihood by
simulating illness. Such a one was Miles Rose, who on the 11th March,
1518, openly confessed before the Court of Aldermen that he had frequently
dissembled the sickness of the "fallyng evyle" (or epilepsy) in divers
parish churches in the city, on which occasions "jemewes" of silver,
called cramp rings, would as often as not be placed on his fingers by
charitable passers-by, with which he would quickly make off, pocketing at
the same time many a twopence which had been bestowed upon him.(1080)
(M572)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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