After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Sweating Sickness: Deadly Tudor Plague

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

It's a medical-history-mystery: the Sweating Sickness. Things get clammy as Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling ask what was this deadly disease? What happened when Anne Boleyn got it? And why were sufferers sewn into their bedsheets?Edited by Nick Thomson. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

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On a cool, cloudy January morning in twenty twenty two, Ian Indredson makes himself some eggs, plays with his dog, walks out the door of his waterfront home and disappears. The 54-year-old senior government spokesperson is a gifted writer. He lives a life of some privilege and comfort with his wife, Gloria, and their beloved Black Lab willow. So what happened to Ian? I'm veteran journalist Laura Palmer, and this is Island Crime Season 7 Evaporated. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. acast.com. The friary stirs before sunrise, the usual toll of the bell calling the brothers to prayer. Brother Matthew wakes with a start. His chest is tight, his breathing laboured. A faint chill ripples through him, though the summer air is yet warm. He wipes his brow and rises diligently to prepare for Matins. By the time he reaches the chapel, though, a dull ache has infiltrated his limbs. He falters during the liturgy, clutching at the wooden pew for support, then steadies himself once more. Come mid-morning, after a short rest, Brother Matthew returns to his duties. Though his pace is slow, his movements are heavy.

Sweat pours from his body now, soaking his habit. His stomach churns unpredictably, and his hands tremble as he fumbles with the tools of his work in the herb garden. He can no longer ignore the foreboding sense that something is not as it ought to be. By midday, Brother Matthew can no longer stand. He collapses onto a bench in the cloister, his face pale and glistening, his pulse racing beneath clammy skin. Other brothers approach cautiously, but their concern is laced with fear. They whisper amongst themselves, reluctant to draw too near.

Meanwhile, Matthew's breathing becomes shallow, rasping as the fever overtakes him. Eventually, carried to the infirmary, however reluctantly, Matthew's condition deteriorates rapidly. His body convulses with violent chills, followed by waves of heat so intense that his skin seems to burn beneath his drenched robes. His head throbs, his vision blurs and he is too weak to drink the herbal infusions offered to him. He lies motionless on a straw mattress, staring blankly at a vaulted ceiling as the hours slip away. As the sun sets, the friary grows still. Brother Matthew's final breaths scratch at the walls in the dimly lit infirmary. His face is ashen, his features hollow,

his heart strained by the relentless fever finally falters. By Complen, he is gone. The brothers prepare to bury him swiftly, knowing that death now walks among them. Music Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And I do not feel well after listening to that. We are in the studio.

I thought you were actually saying that you didn't feel well. It is warm. This is a weird time to be saying it. It is warm in here. I am feeling a little bit overheated. A little bit sweaty and sick myself. A little bit sweaty. Hiddius. This is the Tudor melody, the sweating sickness. I am fascinated by this history because it's a mystery, right? It's a medical mystery history.

Medical mystery history. You're welcome. We don't know what it was. We don't really know where it came from. We don't know where it went. And that's the end of this episode. Why bother going any further? To date, we have done quite a lot of plague related sickness episodes. We've done the Black Death with Helen Carr, amazing. Eam Plague Village. Yep. What was the other one we did? Typhoid Mary, of course. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was your episode. Yeah, yes. I invented Typhoid Mary. Yes, you created her. Let's head into the 16th century though,

because this time we are in Tudor England. Give me some context. The main Tudor himself, well no, main Tudor is Elizabeth I guess, but the second main Tudor himself, Henry VIII, is on the throne between 1509 to 1547. I would say arguably the main Tudor. Do you think you see? I would say she's the main Elizabethan, if anything. Do you not think she's the main Tudor? I would say Henry's the main Tudor. Write in with your opinions. I know why you're saying that. I do know why you're saying that. And that was my instinct to say that, but then I was like not think she's the main tutor? I would say Henry's the main tutor.

Write in with your opinions. I know why you're saying that. I do know why you're saying that. And that was my instinct to say that. But then I was like, no, Elizabeth is the main tutor. People are going to have very strong feelings on this. I've got to call it. They are.

I would say Elizabeth is an Elizabethan. Yeah, but like she's a tutor Elizabethan. I mean, I would always rather hear about her than Henry. But I'm going to say people are going to say Henry VIII is the main tutor. I'm going to come out on Team Elizabeth for that one. Anyway, she's... Well, we digress. This doesn't really concern her that much because by the time she comes to the throne, it's gone. So this is a very like...

Stop going on about Elizabeth I. You're never going to meet her. That would be nice if I married Elizabeth I, would it? No, this is weird now. I don't know what I'm talking about. She's dead. Henry VIII is on the throne from 1509 to 1547, yes. And by 1551 is the last definite recorded incident of the sweating sickness. So it really is like... It really is in his brain. We think, it's hard to say, but the first recorded incident of this is 1485, which is when Henry Tudor, Henry VII comes to the throne. So it's the father and son. That's it. Doesn't really, it goes into this Edward the sixth reign as well,

but it doesn't go too much further. So Elizabeth first is entirely irrelevant to this conversation. Wow. Wow. Wow. Indeed. Okay. Okay. So just give me a sense of what's happening in England and across Europe in this moment, because there's a lot of changing politics and there's been a lot of health crises up to this point, right? Yeah. So in England we have, obviously we've had in the thirties, 1530s, the dissolution of the monasteries. So that's obviously bringing a lot of religious turmoil. In Europe, Charles the fifth is the prominent force in Europe and somebody that Henry kind of reluctantly has to look up to,

like he's so much more powerful than Henry is realistically. But yes, the health crises that are making their way across Europe at this time, we've spoken about them in the introduction. So we have the Black Death, bubonic plague, we have syphilis appearing for the first time towards the end of the 15th century. So we have all of this and they think there's a connection between travel between the new world whenth century. So we have all of this and they think there's a connection between travel between the new world when that appears. So these are, you know, there are life threatening diseases making themselves very much known. And not just threatening in terms of individual lives, right, but whole society. As we see

with the Black Death in the 14th century, these diseases are feared. Now this is one of the weird things about the sweating sickness. It doesn't have that kind of an impact. Now, it still kills people, but the scale is just not the same at all. This is what adds to the mystique. We'll get into all of this, but do bear in mind as well that in the context of England, the population in London, where a lot of what we'll be talking about today takes place, is that it's tripled in the course of a hundred years, essentially during the 16th century. So we go from about 50,000 at the start of the 16th century to almost 150 at the end. He's mathing. He is.

He can sometimes do them. And the other thing to bear in mind is increased travel. Now, not that travel was not happening in the middle ages, it was, but it's increasing now. So the disease is spreading in different ways. Tell me this. I will. Is there a sense that the conditions in the city that's becoming increasingly crowded and full of people who are coming in from different places and passing through different places and bringing things, diseases with them potentially, is there a sense that this

is becoming medically dangerous? Is there a health, a public health concern or is that not part of the discourse? No, there is a public health concern, but I'm not sure that it would be wholly accurate to say that it is unique to this moment in time in that I'm not sure they're thinking to themselves, we are being inundated with- This is a dangerous moment. Yeah. Yeah. Like for instance, with us, we can kind of identify with that when we had COVID, we're like, this is a dangerous moment. I don't think they were thinking that in terms of the sweating sickness. That's not to say they didn't fear it because they really did.

Yeah. I will say though, Erasmus writes in this century about the unsanitary conditions. And I don't know if he's necessarily writing about these in terms of being worried about health or just noting how disgusting the situations are. But he talks about the floors of people's homes being covered in spittle, vomit, urine and I have in brackets here both men and dogs. Women and cats not so much clearly. No, no. You'd never see a woman spitting or urinating on the floor. Beer, dregs of beer and cast off bits of fish. That is what I like to do with fish I eat

in my house. You see, I'm going to caveat that a little bit and obviously that is what Erasmus says and he was there, I was not. But there is also, don't underestimate a little bit of house pride. It's not like the tutors or tutor people were living in absolute squalor. Yeah, they're not the cliche, the medieval quote unquote dark ages cliche that we think. Yes, obviously we're living in very different times and disease is more easily transmitted in the situation, in the conditions that they're living in. But let's talk about specifically

the sweating sickness now. Yeah, Gwenn, what is it? I can't tell you. And if that's what you've come here to find out, you'll never really know. I thought you were a doctor. Oh my God, my nephew's going to be like, see, told you you were a real doctor. Finally, he's proven right. So it was known as the sweating sickness. It was also known as the stoop galant and the new acquaintance. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'll tell you in a second. Amazing. Stoop nave and know thy master. Now, the reason being, and we'll get into why in a minute, is it often affected people in the middle to upper classes. So stoopnave is basically

going you're just as good as anybody else now or know thy master, i.e. God is the only person that is above you. So you're being humbled by the symptoms. We have a, we do have a theory as to why that might be and we'll come to that in just a minute but we have an account from the first outbreak in 1485 from somebody, a French doctor, Thomas Le Forestier, who witnessed what he was seeing in London at the outbreak of this illness. And this is what he wrote. He says, a new kind of sickness came through the whole region, which was so sore, so painful and sharp that the like was never

heard of to any man's remembrance before that time. And these are people who've lived through the Black Death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would actually go as far as to say that, listen, this was not good. Hyperbole. Yeah, and we'll see how bad this was, but I would say I would prefer to get the sweating sickness over the Black Death any day. Okay, okay. So what specifically are the symptoms then? So sudden onset, as in like you're fine and then you're not fine very quickly, right?

So you not have two days where you're like, oh, I've got a few aches and pains. You know when you get a cold and you're like, why is my back sore? I can feel a cold coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that time of year isn't it? Everyone's always like, oh, I can feel a cold. I can feel it coming on. But no. But no.

You're not having that. You're like, bam. Oh my God, I'm really not well, very suddenly. Severe chills, fever and sweating. But the sweating is in the parlance of the day, malodorous. So it's bad smelling sweat. And like, not that you've been in for days. We know in this period as well that people often believe that sickness is carried by smell right, and by contaminated air. So this must have been a real cause for concern if people start to smell like they're sick. That's not good. And this smell and the kind of the look of dampness. Now this is, you would look wet.

This wasn't just, oh, I've got a little uncomfortable under my arms. No, you would look like you're drenched. And the way they often said it is in quick cases, you would be dead before your clothes dried. So before your clothes could dry out from your own sickness, from sudden onset to your clothes having dried, you'd be probably dead if you were going to die. I mean, that's really quick. That's horrendous. That's really frightening. And another common adage about it was you could be merry at dinner and dead by supper.

Dinner happening more towards the middle of the day than nowadays. That's just day drinking isn't it? So like this is how quick this was. But, but, but there is hope. If you survived the first 24 hours, it was far more likely you were going to. Oh, so this doesn't necessarily kill you? No, no, no, no. So you can get this and survive. So you can be dead in a day, half a day. And also, can I just say, I think it's really interesting how the Tudor day is measured there in terms of meals and that the sweating

sickness is interrupting the routines, the patterns of ordinary life and having that effect, that devastating effect of killing someone within that short timeframe that's so organized and understood and everyone has a place to go to and a role to fulfill in this society and you can be wiped out of it in a second. And you're going to miss your place to be. Unless you have it for more than 24 hours and then you might survive. You're far more likely, no, but quite likely after 24 hours to survive. So yeah, if you get through the night say or whatever it is, then things might look a little bit better for you. But one of my favourite symptoms is, and this is before the chill comes right,

apparently you get a terrible sense of impending doom. That's what the contemporary accounts say. You're getting anxiety just hearing you say this. Impending doom, I think I have that all the time. There was a guy writing at the time called John Harding right and he wrote that there was again a little bit of exaggeration here but it means it happened somewhere. The cliches exist for a reason but people got so hot and were so sweaty that they take off all their bedclothes, take off their actual clothes because we're kind of in a sense of delirium here and just go running through the streets in order to try and rid themselves of this you know. And again you've got thatgressing, I mean, it's kind of funny as a scene, but

you've got that transgressing of boundaries and behaviors and you're leaving your domestic space and you have no clothes on and it's sort of visible impropriety and panic. It must have spread panic, you know, all these people running around naked, sweating, and then they're dead the next second. And it's interesting because you have all of these acute symptoms, right? And they're coming together to form this awful illness. But we think now, although we cannot be sure because obviously there's no case studies to be able to test, but we think the most likely cause of death was dehydration. So actually it is something that could have been

dealt with had they known exactly how they were dying. I mean, that's only a theory though, but yes. So we don't know where this has come from. Do we know how it spreads at least? Is this seemingly random? Do people work out what's going on? We don't really know, but there are theories and we love a medical theory here. A lot of historians are like, no, why would you guess about what things are happening in the past? I'm like, I want to know, just guess away, you're fine. It's fine, we're not real medical doctors, don't take our advice.

As long as I'm entertained, who cares? We do think it was likely transmitted through human contact. It was more prevalent in crowded cities, so it's a matter of deduction there. It makes sense. If it's happening more in cities and crowded areas, then that would make sense that some kind of contact is most likely. Modern people who've looked at this with medical backgrounds have said it's some kind of a hantavirus and that would link it to rodent population. So we're talking about rats potentially. Okay. Initially. We know they help to spread the plague.

Yes. So it's just maybe some other form of hantavirus. Or to be fair to the rats, the fleas before anyone writes it. It's the fleas. I know it's the fleas. So is this just one big pandemic that happens? Does it come in periods? Does this come and go? It comes and goes. As I said, the start is very Tudor, so we have 1485 at the very beginning, 1508, so gives a bit of a breather, 1517, 1528, and then the last recorded instant of this specific sweating sickness is recorded in 1551. So it really is very contained, like relatively so. It is, but if you were born around 1500 and say you lived to the age of 50, you've seen

a lot of that in your lifetime if you survive it. Like those are several waves coming and going that would shape your life and your anxieties and your fears, I suppose. And that's on top of all the other diseases that you might catch and all the accidents you might have and oh my god. Yeah, and all the phony you might have. Very much localized to England, by the way. Yeah, it doesn't really venture outside England. And when it does, in the few cases that it does, it's only within English populations in places like the north of France.

Okay. Yeah. So it's very English centric. Not that it's targeting English people because diseases can't do that. Wait a second. But that's where we're seeing it occur. So it is. I can hear the Tudor conspiracy theories coming right now. I have here written the question, why was it feared?

But I think it's quite self-explanatory really. I mean, this is seemingly random. It's coming and going in these waves with very little way to predict them. You can survive it or you can be dead in a few hours. And it seems to target people in the sort of middling to upper strata of society, which is unusual. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's feared, because we have more records of it being feared, because it was hitting that more literate part of society, so therefore they're writing about it more.

I mean, is there something that people in those classes are doing that the lower classes are not that is spreading it? Well, one of the main sites of infection were places like monasteries, those that still survived anywhere where the clergy were together. So men and middle to upper class men were getting this disease at an unusual rate. So what are you looking at me like after? For those of you who can't see, Maddie just pulled down her glasses and looked at me. What do you mean? I feel like I've done something. No, is this through some kind of sexual contact? Is that what's happening? But then you'd see

that throughout society, wouldn't you? I'm just thinking, you know, these- That's hilarious. Yeah. I mean, I see where your brain went. I don't think so. No, because that would happen across society. What is it about monasteries then? They're administering medical help to people outside- Close living quarters. Well, close living quarters. But so are people in a lot of- In Tudor towns. Shooter. Households. Cities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's, it's not a disparate population in London at this point. It is distinct from things like the bubonic plague because there is no visible like buboes or. The lumps that you get in the groin. Yeah. Cause you remember like, we always hear like, oh, oh, there's a lump under the armpit. We know this is very serious. The panic you would have felt if you'd felt that lump.

It wasn't that with this. Although people were still really scared because of the speed with which people would deteriorate and that in itself was much faster than the people wanted. It's genuinely really frightening. And the fact that we still don't know what it is, the mystery is really unsettling. If you're like me and you love history, but in particular you love the smutty, salacious, gossipy history, then do I have the perfect podcast for you. If you fancy finding out about the slippery origins of lube, or how Vikings linked sex and magic together, then listen no further. Join me, Kate Lister, on Betwixt the Sheets where I delve into the most outrageous, the most taboo and the downright sexiest parts of our history. It's the kind

of history that you probably wouldn't bring up at a family lunch, but you might bring it up down the pub. From the history of swear words to answering important questions like just how incestuous were Neanderthals? And so much more. Listen every Tuesday and Friday wherever it is that you get your podcasts. A podcast by History Hit. Was there any treatment? Was there effective treatment? I imagine there was a range of proposed treatments in the treated period, but how do you actually compact this? Did anyone work it out? No, they didn't work. And if they did work it out, see the thing is they probably did

work it out because it disappears, but they don't necessarily know what they did because they didn't know what they were treating necessarily. But the thought at the time was that you needed to encourage the sweating. Now, if you are linking the cause of death to dehydration, in hindsight that might feel not necessarily, but they always said that didn't they? Like sweat it out, get it out, get it out, the humours, get all that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. There's an imbalance in your body, so you need to purge yourself. I mean, it kind of makes sense. You can see, yes, that would obviously dehydrate people and make things

a thousand times worse, but you can see why they would do that. Can you see why they might sew them into their bedsheets as a form of treatment? Because they did that too. Well, because they kept running naked around. Well, yeah, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, as they- Just stop granddad running down the street with no pants on. Because they were like, sweat this out. They were just like, keep them in, keep them warm, sew them into the bedsheets so they can't like free themselves from it. Keep them awake

as much as you can within the 24 hour period. That was one of the things. So they knew that this 24 hour thing was key. So you're exhausted, dehydrated, brilliant. It's interesting about being sewn into the bedclothes. I imagine if you are suffering from a fever and the sweating sickness, would that not feel like you're being sort of stitched into a shroud? Can you imagine? I would hate that. I can't even have my feet covered by my blanket at night.

Oh really? Are you not worried that the monster under the bed will get them there? My dogs sleep under the bed. Oh, okay. So they're taking care of that. So my feet. Yeah, they're dealing with that situation. They cannot be covered. Have to be out. Do you wear socks in bed? God no. No, no, no. My dog lies on top of me.

The dogs eventually make their way in. She slowly crushes me. You've got big dogs as well. Yeah. She thinks that she's married to my husband and she gets in between us and slowly uses her arms and legs to push me out of the bed. She doesn't have arms. She's a dog. The four legs then. Whatever they are. The four.

She does not think she's a dog. She thinks she's a human. She thinks she's a raven-haired beauty that's married to your husband. Yep. Speaking of raven-haired beauties, yes, Link. Amazing. Anne Boleyn. Where's this going? Oh, nice. Woo. She gets it.

What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anne gets it now. I didn't notice. Obviously she survives. Yeah. I didn't actually know this until I listened to this. I mean, that would change the course of English history. That is an amazing what if. What if. Yeah. I didn't actually know there's some kind of I mean, that would change the course of English history. That is an amazing what if.

What if. Yeah. But no, she didn't. So when does she get it? She gets it in 1528, the summer of 1528, because she is... That's like the third outbreak, fourth outbreak at that point, I think. Yes, that's the fourth outbreak. I think so. You've been listening. The thing to notice about this, right, the fourth outbreak. And you've been listening. The thing to notice about this, right? The thing to remember about this is Anne gets it from a maid because it's going around court. So just as it goes around religious orders, court is living in close

quarters and you know, it's spreading there. Henry VIII is actually a bit of a hypochondriac and I did not know this. And he goes, get me the flip out of here. I don't want to be anywhere near this. Well, look, from his point of view, he is God's representative on there. He's the king. He has a job to do. He has to rule all over England. He does not want to get this. Again, we know what this looks and feels like in our own time, but he implements or he oversees the implementation of quarantine isolation measures. Definitely across court. Yeah. Wow. And he takes himself out of it and he retreats to like remote hunting

lodges and so again, we know that they know it's something about living in close quarters, but they're not quite sure what it is. I mean, that's an incredible moment at court. Everyone's in quarantine. The King's gone off for a simple shooting party, you know, away to a lodge somewhere. That is... And he keeps moving too. He won't just stay in one hunting lodge, he keeps moving around as if it might follow him. He's really rude, it's chasing him. Well, I mean, they don't know how it spreads really. He wouldn't let his attendants come close to him to serve him. He would only have the

small few that could. He conducted court business through messengers. So he'd be like, don't come near me. I'll get my message to you and you'll just have to wait a day or whatever to get it. It was meter big gaps marked on the floor. Yeah, two meter things. Yeah. And it's not just, it wasn't just afraid of getting sweating sickness. He was just afraid of getting sick generally. And again, I think you're right. I think it's that like, I can't die. I am the king. It's a really interesting mindset, isn't it? Because Henry VIII on the one. And again, I think you're right. I think it's that like, I can't die, I am the king.

It's a really interesting mindset, isn't it? Because Henry VIII on the one hand, he's sort of obsessed with bodily function, isn't he? He's obsessed with procreating and creating a male heir. And in that way, he's thinking in terms of longevity, he's thinking in terms of his survival and the survival of his house and his reign far beyond his own lifetime. But then he's also thinking, I could die tomorrow of the sweating sickness. Oh my God, I could die any second. Which he could. Yeah, he is as vulnerable as anyone else. And it must have been hard and sort of strange to exist as the ruling monarch at a time when you're thinking about that longevity and how

it can all be snuffed out in an instant. It's a weird headspace to be in. And he doesn't have a son in 1528. Okay, so he's really panicking. So he has no legacy to leave at this particular moment in time. So yeah, this isn't, but speaking of legacies, and his is so closely tied to Anne Boleyn, she, as I say, she contracts during this time after a lady in her chamber became ill. Are they romantically involved at this moment? Yes. They haven't done anything for, that's going to formalise their union just yet, but they

are back and forth, they are flirting and they are. She has made an impact on him big time. But he leaves nonetheless and she goes to Hever Castle. Now she leaves to go to Hever before she's symptomatic, but she's called it a court. So by the time she gets to Hever, she's sick. How annoyed would you be if you were one of the servants at Hever and it was like, oh Anne's coming back from court. Oh my god, she's sweating. Now Henry may have abandoned her, but he did send his personal physician to her to treat her.

I mean that's a... So yeah, Dr. William Butts. Is that a romantic gesture after he's buggered off and left you? It's as romantic as Henry the Eighth gets I think. I think that's kind of... But like, boss bitch that she is, she recovers quickly. She's like, I am not letting this get me down. I would expect nothing less from Anne. Yeah, she's like, absolutely, this ain't stopping me. And then this, you know, some historians have argued that this is really a critical

moment in their relationship because this cements his desire for her when there was the potential of losing her. So he's like, hold on, I have to... critical moment in their relationship because this cements his desire for her when there was the potential of losing her. So he's like, hold on, I have to, I have a wife. Does she really have it? The sickness? Oh my god, you are in conspiracy theory land. She goes away from court. She's like, oh no, Henry, I'm so ill, you might lose me, send you a doctor. Is it warm in here? I'm not saying she lied. I'm just saying question mark.

She recovers suspiciously swiftly as well. I'm good for her if she faked it, but I don't know. We weren't there. And did you do it? Okay. So we'll take her at word. So she recovers from the sickness, which she absolutely lied about. Carry on. But there is panic at court. Not just because Anne Boleyn isn't Anne Boleyn at this point, but like courtiers are catching it basically. So this isn't good. Okay. And people are dying in the heart of power and the King's gone again. He's absent and people are dropping dead. People who are important in the realm.

Yeah. And it's not good when the King upsets himself, even if he's doing it for preservation. Well, it doesn't look good, does it? It doesn't fill you with confidence you're going to be okay. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have a diplomat, Eustace Chapuys, and Eustace has described the kind of sense of dread that was going around court. He says, the illness is so contagious and deadly that it spares no one. In some houses, it has killed all the inhabitants, leaving them desolate. spares no one. In some houses it has killed all the inhabitants, leaving them desolate. So now we see a bit of a mass, in the same way as people always replicate what the monarch's doing, right? People now run from London as well. So they're like, let's get out, we'll go to our country estate.

Even though at this point, of course, it's spread through that community. Yeah, yeah, they probably have it already. Probably some people are carriers maybe and haven't been... Or did she? Well, yeah, did she? We'll never know. Or will we? But anyone who remained a court kept those isolation rules that Henry had put in before he went. Now tell me this, when I think of the sweating sickness, I do automatically think of Hilary

Mantel and Thomas Cromwell and Wolf Hall because his family is pretty much wiped out, right? His wife and his two daughters. And that's historically accurate, you know, and I think Mantell's description, you can go to page 103, I remember that off the heart because I read it for the, no, I just went back to it for this particular thing and I remember it was on page 103. All right, no. Super fun. The description of how Elizabeth, right? Yeah, Elizabeth Weeks, his wife, how she dies is on 103. And I think it's like, you know, as ever, Mantell has really done her research and the way she describes

the demise of Elizabeth Weeks is incredible. But historically, yes, Elizabeth Weeks, his wife does die and Grace and Anne, his daughters come to the disease as well. It's really well depicted, right, in the book. And then she uses it fictionally to inform her version of Cromwell's stoicism and his, you know, his reason for going forward because he gathers himself after this period of grief. Now, we don't have documentary evidence of that necessarily. Well, not to the extent that we know that it's covered in Wolf Hall, but certainly mental use is that. And that's another interesting what if of history, if Thomas Cromwell had died in that

moment. And of course he goes on to broker that relationship between Henry and Anne amongst other things and obviously eventually faces his own downfall. It's fascinating. It makes you think, I suppose, about the people who did die of this mysterious illness at court in particular and across society. But I'm thinking specifically about these big players at court and who was taken out of the running, which women were never going to be the next queen, you know, who may have caught Henry's eye otherwise. Yeah, who may have like usurped Anne Boleyn. Exactly, you know, which courtiers were plotting against who and those plots, all those machinations

just fell to the sidelines and were forgotten because their players died. And it's very easy to forget that until you said, oh, what if she had, Anne Boleyn had died? And it's like, oh yeah, that would have changed everything. This will have changed everything. This sickness has transformed the trajectory of the country. Do you want to hear a prayer that was made up to help stop the spread of this illness? Always. In the summer of 1551, the sweating sickness was spreading through England for the final time, and the 13-year-old King Edward VI was deeply concerned. He was an ardent Protestant, and saw in this the hand of God hath been thus marvelously provoked. After one plague he hath sent another and another, increasing it so from one to

one till at length, seeing none other remedy, he hath thrown forth this most extreme plague of sudden death." The only way to appease God, the only way to end this pestilential arms race between mankind's ability to err and the creator's ability to make ever more deadly diseases was through prayer. He implored the bishops to have their people pray. Now one of the prayers written in response to this young king's plea survives. It is a clammy and sticky thing in itself. It says the following,

We beg in weakness, sweat and worry, that Mary the blessed mother will hear us in our sad sweat. And the prayer goes on to plead to Christ, who for the health of our souls on the Mount of Olives bent your knees sweating abundantly. Grant that your sweet mother of intervention will deliver us from the great deadly perspiration to find safety. They should put that on the side of deodorant bottles. That is a sweaty prayer, isn't it? It's a bit much.

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A message from the government of Canada. Okay, so now we've got little King Edward, Henry's son. We fast forwarded a little bit here. This is the final wave of the sickness. Final outbreak. In 1551. This is the final one. Is there anything that marks this out as being different other than it is the final countdown?

Not so much, no. There's nothing particularly unusual about this one. There's just no recorded cases beyond that. It's so random, isn't it, really, when you think about it? The ascendancy of Protestantism and the dissolution of the monasteries. Some people do say that the dissolution of the monasteries is now more advanced. Interesting. That it's not spreading in those centers. That it's not spreading in those centres. That it's not spreading. It is interesting that here we've got a young Edward. He is relatively new to the throne,

he's certainly young. And like his father, he is being threatened by this. He might be wiped out, his court might be wiped out. This is an illness that doesn't seem to discriminate between people. We know it's more prevalent in terms of certain centers, probably based on the written record, but also in terms potentially of just the concentration of people in those spaces, whether it's the Royal Court or the monastery or whatever it is. Is there a sense with this wave that it is spreading through society equally and indiscriminately? It is no different really to what has gone before, although we do get an account during this outbreak that it's spreading indiscriminately so that it's attacking the houses of the poor

and the rich alike. From what I can make out, that's actually no different. It just happens to be recorded during this. Nothing changes about the ways in which the disease is... It's not mutated. Yeah, no. It's just, I think it's always been in the poor houses. It's just... Just not recorded. Just not recorded in the same way. It's because like if it's, if it's impacting court, guess where you're going to hear about court. You know what I mean? You're not going to hear about the lowlier orders necessarily. But then once you get a bit more used to it and it's been around a few more times, it's like, well actually it's over there too. We forgot about that one. It's always been over there, but now you can hear about it a bit more used to it and it's been around a few more times, it's like, well, actually it's over there too. We forgot about that one. It's always been over there, but

now you can hear about it a bit more. So yeah, they do say that in the final outbreak, but I don't think, I don't think there's anything different about it really in that sense. The written record that we have about it is Patchy at Best. Yeah, it is. And it doesn't really give us an insight into what it was, where it came from or where it went. It just disappears after this. Yeah. And again, like we spoke about some of the speculation that people have had since, and again, I love this when people look back. Potentially I'm not supposed to, but I do.

Actually loves vague speculation. I love the conspiracy theory. It feels like it's very inventive almost. It's very like, oh, okay, let's go with that. But here are some of the other, I said hantavirus before, right? Some kind of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. That's been, this is all modern. These are medical words. They are anthrax. Oh, yeah. So that was another thing. A novel strain of influenza. But all of this remains speculative. You have to say, because here's the thing. I think what they're getting at with some of these theories is that there must have been a mutation at some point that it can't just drop off the face of the earth, but that it's... So people became immune to it?

That or it morphed into something else that we now know as the flu. Oh, okay. But like something that would be a less potent strain. So you're not dying within 24 hours. So we might still be living with something that had its origins in this. Speculative, but it's just as much of a possibility as anything else. I think that's so tantalising. We always talk about the distance in terms of us in our present moment and wherever we're talking about in the past and the ways that we might collapse that distance and access people and their lived experience, their bodily experience.

And you know, often we can do that through the written record or through material culture or archaeology or whatever it is. And actually, the idea, I mean, it's not a comforting idea, but the idea that we are still living with the diseases that ravage the bodies of people who've come before us. It's, you know. We say this from a very privileged position with medical intervention possible today, but there's something for me that is really tantalising that does collapse that time, that those bacteria, those viruses, whatever it is, might still be around in our bodies. That blows my mind in the same way when you hear about someone being the grandson of a founding father in America, because you have to do the math, you're like, how is that possible? And you realize how close history is, you know, those, those kind of weird facts that

you see on the internet, it really makes it tangible and present. I certainly would not want to have the sweating sickness. We're very lucky to have the medical situation that we do now. But yeah, there's something, it makes us all seem human and fallible. And linked. And linked. Yeah. And that we're part of an ongoing, you know, we're sort of, we are all linked. We are part of this sort of ongoing human existence, this experiment on this rock floating through earth

and we're all susceptible to these things. It is fascinating. It does collapse that time. One of the things on the counter of that, which that is just as possible as what I'm about to say, and I don't know where I lie on that to be honest, because it all seems so intangible to me in terms of my medical knowledge is not, you know, I'm not an expert in any of these diseases. There is another theory that there was a little ice age in the middle of the 16th century and that that stopped the disease in its tracks. So it's very Jurassic Park almost. Yeah. Okay, so there were environmental factors that-

Potentially, potentially. We don't know, we just don't know. And that's one of the reasons why there is this lingering legacy of the sweating sickness and why it makes it into the, well, it makes it into the pages of Wolf Hall because it's relevant to Thomas Cromwell's history. But it's also quite dramatic and it's also heart rending and it speaks to loss and all of those things you're talking about. Those individual households, those individual losses on a huge scale, you've got that micro and macro history. And we have people like Thomas Cromwell, we have people like Anne Boleyn, we have people like Henry VIII.

Never heard of him. Never heard of any of those people. But like, usually the people who are dying of the plague say remain nameless and the upper echelons of society get away with it a little bit, but we're not getting away with it here. So we're hearing about these, we have figures to attach some of these illnesses to now. Do you think it's, it's thought of today as a Tudor illness? Do you think it's attached to that period in terms of how, how we imagine that period? How we see it in our minds? Yeah, I think so. And again, it fits so easily into that Wolf Hall thing, which is the most

Tudor Tudor thing at the moment. Even you know, it's quite a few years old now, but still like the TV productions, there's been stage productions, there's been several series. So when we think Tudor now, we think Wolf Hall like most people will. That history is written into our culture in different ways. So too is the sweating sickness because that's part of the Wolf Hall lore as well. So it's, it has very much, I think cemented itself as a, as a Tudor, what did you say? A Tudor mystery history.

Yeah. A Tudor medical mystery history. All right. Don't forget medical. Yeah. So that's all I have for you now, Maddie. Finish up the episode there. Well, I will be going for a shower and some fresh air and will not be going anywhere near any monsteries or the Royal court indeed anytime soon. Would you have legged it out to the countryside? Oh my god, yes. I feel like you'd be living out there anyway. You'd be like, don't come near me. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody talks to me. Somebody was giving out to me the other day telling me off in English parlance for being so hermetic. I was like, babe, I'm fine. I'm good. I'm doing fine.

I am delighted with myself over here. We have to coax him with treats into the studio to talk to other people. I was like, I'm good. I'm all right. I'm happy. Okay, so you'd survive because you're anti-social, right? Fantastic. Well, that is all we have time for. But if you have enjoyed this Tudor tale and you're not already familiar with our sister podcast, Not Just The Tudors, with Professor Susanna Lipscomb, go and listen to that now. It's a deep dive into so many of these topics and more. If you have a suggestion for After Dark, do get in touch with us. We do read all your emails or our producers do. So email us at afterdark at historyhit.com. Bye.

She read it. I wrote that, but she didn't need to read it, but she didn't. I could hear it in your voice. And I thought, I'll do it. I'm delighted you read it. See ya. ACAS powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. On a cool cloudy January morning in 2022, Ian Indredson makes himself some eggs, plays with his dog, walks out the door of his waterfront home and disappears. The 54 year old senior government spokesperson is a gifted writer. He lives a life of some privilege and comfort with his wife, Gloria and their beloved Black Lab Willow. So what happened to Ian? I'm veteran journalist Laura Palmer,

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