All these events so rapidly succeeded each other in the course of three weeks, that the knights and soldiers of Richmond, more and more excited every day by fear and hope, were scarcely equal to such exertions. Yet the very rapidity of the movements of the army was the cause why the disease could not spread so quickly, nor obstruct the final decision of Bosworth, although the report of it had already, before this event, spread universal terror; so that Lord Stanley, when authoritatively summoned by Richard to repair to his standard, sought to gain time, and, by way of excuse, alleged the prevalence of the new disease[362]. After the victory of Bosworth, King Henry remained two days in Leicester, and then without further delay hastened to London, which he reached in less than four days, unaccompanied by military parade, and attended only by a select body of followers. The remainder of his army, which stood greatly in need of repose after its severe toils, were not in a condition for marching, they therefore halted in the neighbouring towns, and were probably disbanded, according to the custom of the age[363]. The Sweating Sickness is said not to have made its appearance in London till the 21st of September[364], but historians have most likely intended by that day to mark the commencement of its virulence, which continued to the end of the following month, and lasted, therefore, in all, about five weeks. During this short period a large portion of the population[365] fell victims to the new epidemic, and the lamentation was without bounds so long as the people were ignorant that this fearful disease, unable to establish its dominion, would only pass through the country like a flash of lightning, and then again give place to the active intercourse of society and the cheering hope of life. There was no security against a second attack; for many who had recovered were seized by it, with equal violence, a second, and sometimes a third time, so that they had not even the slender consolation enjoyed by sufferers in the plague[366] and small-pox, of entire immunity after having once surmounted the danger[367]. Thus by the end of the year the disease had spread over the whole of England, and visited every place with the same severity as the metropolis. Many persons of rank, of the ecclesiastical and the civil classes, became its victims; and great was the consternation when, in the month of August, it broke out in Oxford. Professors and students fled in all directions: but death overtook many of them, and this celebrated university was deserted for six weeks[368]. Three months later it appeared at Croyland, and on the 14th of November, carried off Lambert Fossedyke, abbot of the monastery[369]. No authentic accounts from other quarters have been handed down to our times, but we may infer, from the general grief and anxiety which prevailed, that the loss of human life was very considerable. SECT. 2.—THE PHYSICIANS.