The second letter of the Cardinal du Bellay is of this date; after recounting the names of nine courtiers who had been attacked, and of three who were dead, he says--“but when all is said, those who do not expose themselves to the air rarely die; so that out of more than 45,000 who have been attacked in London, not 2000 have died, whatever people may say. It is true that if you merely put your hand out of bed during the twenty-four hours, you instantly become stiff as a peacock. P.S. Since writing my letters, I have been informed that a brother of the Earl of Derby’s, and a son-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk’s, have died suddenly at the legate’s (Wolsey), who slipped out at the back door with a few servants, and would not let any body know whither he was going, that he might not be followed. The king at last stopped about twenty miles hence, at a house which M. the legate has had built, and I have it from good authority, that he has made his will and taken the sacrament, for fear of sudden seizure. Nothing ails him, thank God!” We shall hereafter see that the ambassador was inclined to think more seriously of it, when he had himself been a sufferer, and was the only survivor of nineteen who were attacked. However, in the absence of other evidence, we are bound to receive his statement as correct, in reference to the amount of mortality. And even this must have been proportionally as great as in our last epidemic of cholera and diarrhœa. It is calculated, in the Report of the Scientific Committee, published by the Board of Health, that seventy-one deaths in each 10,000 of the population of London took place, and that in this number there were 3473 cases of all forms of cholera and diarrhœa; in other words, that there was one death to every forty-eight attacks. But Du Bellay’s statement gives an average of two deaths in forty-five seizures; or more than double the proportion. Again, it must be remembered that these occurred in the space of sixteen days, whereas the cholera epidemic lasted six months. We do not wish to be supposed to insist on this calculation; in either case it can merely be an approximation, and we advance it here only to show that even a mild epidemic of the sweating sickness was no slight pestilence. On the first of July, we are informed that two cases had occurred at Tittenhanger; one being that of a gentleman’s servant, the other, one of the King’s wardrobe. On this day the King sends to Wolsey for “the byll that Mr. Fynche made, for the remedy of all suche as have fallyn syke in youre howse; for as His Hynes ys enformyd, he haythe doyne very well, boythe to bryng them to there swheyte ageine, when they fall owte, and allso to swayge the grete hete and burnyng.”