As soon as the occurrences of this unfortunate year could be more closely surveyed, a conviction was at once felt, that _it was one and the same general cause of disease which called forth the poisonous pestilence in the French camp before Naples, the putrid fever among the youth in France, and the sweating sickness in England, and that the varying nature of these diseases depended only on the conditions of the soil and the qualities of the atmosphere in the countries which were visited_[537]. If, in opposition to these notions, a narrow view of human life in the aggregate should raise a doubt, this would be strikingly refuted by the wonderful coincidence, in point of time, of all these phenomena, occurring in such various parts of Europe; for while the French army, after an exposure of four weeks to the miseries and poisonous vapours of its camp before Naples, perceived the first forebodings of its destruction, the great famine with the Trousse-galant in its train was in full advance on the other side the Alps, and almost on the same day the Sweating Sickness broke out upon the Thames. SECT. 4.—NATURAL OCCURRENCES.—PROGNOSTICS. The chronicles of all the nations of Europe are full of remarkable notices respecting the commotions of nature in these particular years, which were so utterly hostile to the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In England the period of distress was already approaching; towards the end of the year 1527. Throughout the whole winter, (November and December, 1527, and January, 1528,) heavy rains deluged the country, the rivers overflowed their banks, and the winter seed was thus rotted. The weather then remained dry until April; but scarcely was the summer seed sown, when the rain again set in, and continued day and night for full eight weeks, so that the last hope of a harvest was now destroyed[538], and the soaked earth, in the thick mists that arose from its surface, hatched the well known demon of the Sweating Disease. It was now of no avail that the torrents of rain ceased, for the softened soil gave the pestilence constant nourishment, and the damp warmth which, alternating with unseasonable cold, remained prevalent during the following years all over Europe, rendered men’s bodies more and more susceptible to severe diseases. The historians of that time were too much occupied with the intricate affairs of the court and of the church to devote any attention to nature, and on this account they have left us no satisfactory information of the state of the weather and the course of the seasons of those years in England, yet there is no reason to suppose that they were essentially different from those of the rest of Europe. This may be proved by the following collection of important natural occurrences, when taken in conjunction with the circumstances already stated respecting France and Italy.