Another outbreak of plague in 1593 produced an order against plays, which were said to bring too many people, and the plague with them, from London. Regulations were also passed against overcrowding in the houses. At the beginning of the reign of James I., however, the infection spread once more from London to Oxford. Term was prorogued; the colleges broke up; and the citizens were so hard hit that they petitioned the University for aid. A weekly contribution from the colleges alleviated the distress that arose from this doleful sickness. The town was almost deserted; the shops were closed; and only the keepers of the sick or the collectors of relief appeared in the streets--"no not so much as dog or cat." The churches were seldom opened, and grass grew in the common market-place. Next year and the next plague broke out again, by which time some arrangements had been made for a system of isolation. Yet the mediæval attitude of mind towards medicine and sanitation would seem to have lasted on through the Age of Reason. For in 1774, when small-pox had many times scourged the town, all attempts at inoculation were formally forbidden by the Vice-Chancellor and Mayor. Foxe had aided the rise and rejoiced in the success of Wolsey. But that success was not universally popular. In spite of his benefactions to learning, and the University, it was an Oxford Laureate, one of our earliest satirists, who, when the Cardinal was at the height of his power, more monarch than the King himself, attacked him with the most outspoken virulence. A crown of laurel would seem to have been the outward sign and symbol of a degree in Rhetoric, and rhetoricians were occasionally styled Poets Laureate. John Skelton, who was perhaps Court Poet to Henry VIII., was certainly tutor to Prince Henry and Laureate of both Universities. He was very proud of this distinction, and, not being troubled by any excess of modesty, he wrote a poem of 1600 lines in praise of himself: "A Kynge to me myn habite gave; At Oxforth the Universyte, Auvaunsed to that degre By hole consent of theyr Senate, I was made Poete Laureate." So he says; and Cambridge apparently followed suit and admitted him (1493) to a corresponding degree, and likewise encircled his brows with a wreath of laurel.