Shortly after for the better preservation of his royal person, he constituted and ordained a certain number as well of archers, as of divers other persons, hardy, strong, and active to give daily attendance on his person, whom he named yeomen of his guard, which precedent men thought that he learned of the French king when he was in France. For it is not remembered that any king of England before that day used any such furniture of daily soldiers. In this same year a kind of sickness invaded suddenly the people of this land, passing through the same from the one end to the other. It began about the one and twentieth of September, and continued until the latter end of October, being so sharp and deadly that the like was never heard of to any man's remembrance before that time. For suddenly a deadly burning sweat so assailed their bodies and distempered their blood with a most ardent heat, that scarce one amongst an hundred that sickened did escape with life; for all in manner as soon as the sweat took them, or within a short time after, yielded the ghost. Beside the great number which deceased within the city of London, two mayors successively died within eight days and six aldermen. At length, by the diligent observation of those that escaped (which marking what things had done them good, and holpen to their deliverance, used the like again), when they fell into the same disease the second or third time as to divers it chanced, a remedy was found for that mortal malady which was this. If a man on the day time were taken with the sweat, then should he straight lie down with all his clothes and garments and continue in the sweat four and twenty hours after so moderate a sort as might be. If in night he chanced to be taken, then should he not rise out of his bed for the space of four and twenty hours, so casting the clothes that he might in no wise provoke the sweat, but lie so temperately that the water might distil out softly of its own accord. And to abstain from all meat if he might so long suffer hunger and to take no more drink neither hot nor cold than would moderately quench and assuage his thirsty appetite. Thus with lukewarm drink, temperate heat and measurable clothes many escaped: few which used this order (after it was found out) died of that sweat. Marry! one point diligently above all other in this cure is to be observed, that he never did put his hand or feet out of the bed to refresh or cool himself, which to do is no less jeopardy than short and present death. Thus this disease coming in the first year of King Henry's reign, was judged (of some) to be a token and sign of a troublesome reign of the same king, as the proof partly afterwards shewed itself. LAMBERT SIMNEL (1486). +Source.+--Holinshed's _Chronicle_, Vol. III., p. 484. (London, 1808.)