The deaths throughout the kingdom were very numerous, so that one historian actually calls it a depopulation[739]. No rank of life remained exempt, but the Sweating Sickness raged with equal violence in the foul huts of the poor and in the palaces of the nobility[740]. The piety which, in the general dejection, was displayed by the whole nation, giving birth to innumerable works of Christian benevolence and philanthropy, whereby undoubtedly many tears were dried up—many orphans and widows protected from distress and want, is hence explained: for this phenomenon, highly delightful as it is in itself, occurs only under great afflictions and a general fear of death, as we are taught by the universal history of epidemics. We are willing to believe, to the honour of the English, that the religious impulse which they derived from their ecclesiastical reformation, may have had no small share in its production; yet, unfortunately, such is the nature of human society, that no sooner is the calamity over, than virtue relaxes. Scarcely were the funeral obsequies performed, when every thing returned to the usual routine[741]; in like manner, the Byzantines once, during a great earthquake, were seized with a fear of God, such as they had never before felt; day and night they flocked to the churches; nothing was to be seen but Christian virtue, self-denial, and works of benevolence, but these only lasted until the earth again became firm[742]. The very remarkable observation was made in this year, _that the Sweating Sickness uniformly spared foreigners in England, and, on the other hand, followed the English into foreign countries_, so that those who were in the Netherlands and France, and even in Spain, were carried off in no inconsiderable numbers by their indigenous pestilence, which was nowhere caught by the natives.