A heavier affliction than has yet been described was in store for England: for in the latter end of May, the Sweating Fever broke out there in the midst of the most populous part of the capital, spreading rapidly over the whole kingdom; and fourteen months later, brought a scene of horror upon all the nations of northern Europe, scarcely equalled during any other epidemic. It appeared at once with the same intensity as it had shewn eleven years before, was ushered in by no previous indications, and between health and death there lay but a brief term of five or six hours. Public business was postponed: the courts were closed, and four weeks after the pestilence broke out, the festival of St. John[531] was stopped, to the great sorrow of the people, who certainly would not have dispensed with its celebration had they recovered from the consternation arising from the great mortality. The king’s court was again deserted, and to the various passions and mental emotions which had been clashing there since the year 1517, as, for instance, those arising from the theological zeal which had been excited by Henry VIIIth’s defence of the faith, was added once more the old alarm and distress, which seemed to be justified by the death of some favoured courtiers; particularly of two chamberlains[532], and of Sir Francis Poynes, who had just returned from an embassy to Spain. The king left London immediately, and endeavoured to avoid the epidemic by continually travelling, until at last he grew tired of so unsettled a life, and determined to await his destiny at Tytynhangar. Here, with his first wife and a few confidents, he resided quietly, apart from the world, surrounded by fires for the purification of the air, and guarded by the precautions of his physician, who had the satisfaction to find that the pestilence kept aloof from this lonely residence[533]. How many lives were lost in this, which some historians have called _the great mortality_, can be estimated only by the facts which have been stated, and which betoken an uncommonly violent degree of agitation in men’s minds. Accurate data are altogether wanting, yet it is quite evident that the whole English nation, from the monarch to the meanest peasant, was impressed with a feeling of alarm at the uncertainty of life, to which neither the rude state of society, nor a constant familiarity with the effects of laws written in blood[534], had blunted their sensibility. Such a state does not exist without very numerous cases of mortality which bring the danger home to every individual, so that it is to be presumed that the churchyards were everywhere abundantly filled. Nor did this destructive epidemic come alone. Provisions were scarce and dear, and whilst hundreds of thousands lay stretched upon the bed of death, many perished with hunger[535], and the same scenes would have been experienced as in France, had not the corn trade afforded some relief[536].