Three weeks were occupied in the march, and their road lay chiefly through a mountainous country, not, as far as we are aware, more likely to give origin to malarious influence than other parts of the island. Yet the halt of the army at Shrewsbury, the place at which the last outbreak of the “gret dethe and hasty” undoubtedly commenced; the passage of the river Severn, which in the year 1483, overflowing its banks, had inundated the whole of the surrounding country; and the encampment on the low marshy ground outside the walls of the city of Lichfield, are especially worthy of remark. Fortune and victory sat on Henry’s helm. Disbanding his army, he advanced by easy stages to London, greeted as he went by the acclamations of the populace. All things seemed to promise a “harvest of perpetual peace, By this one bloody trial of sharp war”, when “sodenly”, to use the graphic words of an old chronicler, “a newe kynde of sicknes came through the whole region, which was so sore, so peynfull, and sharp, that the lyke was neuer harde of to any mannes remembraunce before that tyme: For sodenly a dedly and burnyng sweate inuaded their bodyes and vexed their bloud with a most ardent heat, infested the stomack and the head greuously: by the tormentyng and vexacion of which sicknes, men were so sore handled and so painfully pangued that if they were layed in their bed, beyng not hable to suffre the importunate heat, they cast away the shetes and all the clothes liyng on the bed. If they were in their apparell and vestures, they would put of all their garmentes, euen to their shirtes. Other were so drye that they dranke the colde water to quenche their importune heate and insaciable thirst. Other that could or at the least woulde abyde the heate and styntche (for in dede the sweate had a great and a strong sauoure) caused clothes to be layed upon theim asmuch as they coulde beare, to dryue oute the sweate if it might be. All in maner assone as the sweate toke them, or within a short space after, yelded vp their ghost. So that of all them that sickened ther was not one emongest an hundreth that escaped.”