John Ashdown-Hill
John Ashdown-Hill
One thing that stands out is that he's rather generous in his view of Henry Tudor's actions post-Bosworth. The story that's frequently cited is of him antedating the start of his reign to the day before the battle, but Ashdown-Hill states that there's no evidence for this and that, in fact, the strength of his own claim (that of conquest) was entirely dependent on Richard being the de facto king. Does anyone have a contrary view?
He also looks at the treatment of Richard's body in the context of other medieval battles and exonerates Henry from the charge of showing unusual and excessive disrespect. (And he suggests that John Howard was killed *after* Richard, which is the opposite of my previous understanding, but that's by-the-by.)
Jonathan
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
1) I don't know why John claims that Norfolk was killed after Richard.
2) Also, even if Richard's body had been found despoiled it could have been laid in a cart and covered for the journey to Leicester. Crowland - although hostile to Richard - was shocked by the treatment of hs body so it was evidently not normal for the time. Either Henry deliberately had the body removed in that manner to degrade Richard or it was abandoned on the field altogether and only turned up after the army had moved on when the heralds were going over the field identifying and counting, and that was the only means of transport they could provide at that point. That would tie in with the claim that it was a herald who brought the body to Leicester.
3) Crowland's claim that Henry dated his reign to the eve of Bosworth is not quite right, but that is not to exonerate HT. At the beginning of the reign the claim was even more startling - ie that he had been the rightful king all along and that Richard and his soldiers consitituted a rebel army from the day they massed against him, which was 21st August; Henry had been giving himself the royal style for months before Bosworth. Totally at odds with his simultaneous claim to be king by right of conquest, of course. In the end, inevitably, Henry couldn't just wipe out Richard's reign. First,it was too long. Second, there would have been the problem of coming up with a date for the real end of Edward V's reign - ie facing head on the problem of what had become of him and his brother. And that, of course, would have left their sister Elizabeth as the rightful monarch....
Best,
Marie
--- In , Jonathan Evans <jmcevans98@...> wrote:
>
> Finally got around to reading John Ashdown-Hill's 'The Last Days of Richard III'. Very interesting though, of necessity, something of a speculative reconstruction rather than a conventional biographical narrative. I'm particularly interested in how he looks at the various myths and stories that have accreted around Richard and examines their plausibility.
>
> One thing that stands out is that he's rather generous in his view of Henry Tudor's actions post-Bosworth. The story that's frequently cited is of him antedating the start of his reign to the day before the battle, but Ashdown-Hill states that there's no evidence for this and that, in fact, the strength of his own claim (that of conquest) was entirely dependent on Richard being the de facto king. Does anyone have a contrary view?
>
> He also looks at the treatment of Richard's body in the context of other medieval battles and exonerates Henry from the charge of showing unusual and excessive disrespect. (And he suggests that John Howard was killed *after* Richard, which is the opposite of my previous understanding, but that's by-the-by.)
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2012, 12:20
Subject: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Thanks for the detailed reply, Marie:
>2) Also, even if Richard's body had been found despoiled it could have
been laid in a cart and covered for the journey to Leicester.
> Crowland - although hostile to Richard - was shocked by the treatment of hs body
so it was evidently not normal for the time. Either
> Henry deliberately
had the body removed in that manner to degrade Richard or it was
abandoned on the field altogether and only turned
> up after the army had
moved on when the heralds were going over the field identifying and
counting, and that was the only means of
> transport they could provide at that point. That would tie in with the claim that it was a herald who
brought the body to Leicester.
It seems to be John's contention that the fighting - or the rout? - moved on after Richard's death, meaning that the body wouldn't have been recovered immediately and could have been stripped by looters, as happened on other battlefields. (This would also tie in with Paul's email of the other day.) Regarding the subsequent treatment of the body, John asks the question "what *would* be normal?". He gives the examples of Charles the Bold, found several days later, stripped and badly disfigured, and also James IV, and he asks what means would be at hand to convey anyone deceased from the field, when those who lost their lives were usually buried in situ. Displaying the body was an inevitable requirement, and happened with other deposed kings. I agree with you that transit, covered, in a cart would be more appropriate in our eyes, but John intriguingly linked being slung over a horse with depictions of slain warriors, and even harked back to
Achilles dragging Hector around the walls of Troy. In this context, he even suggested that the employment of one of Richard's heralds to return his body to Leicester might have been a mark of respect. It's not an argument that convinces me, but it is interesting and anything that makes us look again at received wisdom is a good thing.
> 3) Crowland's claim that Henry dated his reign to the eve of Bosworth is not quite right, but that is not to exonerate HT. At the beginning
> of
the reign the claim was even more startling - ie that he had been the
rightful king all along and that Richard and his soldiers
> consitituted a rebel army from the day they massed against him, which was 21st August; Henry had been giving himself the royal style for
> months before
Bosworth. Totally at odds with his simultaneous claim to be king by
right of conquest, of course. In the end, inevitably,
> Henry couldn't
just wipe out Richard's reign. First,it was too long. Second, there
would have been the problem of coming up with a date
> for the real end of Edward V's reign - ie facing head on the problem of what had become of
him and his brother. And that, of course, would
> have left their sister
Elizabeth as the rightful monarch....
Yes, this certainly doesn't exonerate Henry, but rather makes the whole thing a lot muddier and more plausible in terms of how a pretender would have to campaign. It's more a case of a constantly shifting story of self-justification than a sudden machiavellian act, which is what the conventional interpretation of the ante-dating story implies.
Cheers
Jonathan
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
>
> Finally got around to reading John Ashdown-Hill's 'The Last Days of Richard III'.<snip>
>
> One thing that stands out is that he's rather generous in his view of Henry Tudor's actions post-Bosworth. The story that's frequently cited is of him antedating the start of his reign to the day before the battle, but Ashdown-Hill states that there's no evidence for this and that, in fact, the strength of his own claim (that of conquest) was entirely dependent on Richard being the de facto king. Does anyone have a contrary view?
>
> He also looks at the treatment of Richard's body in the context of other medieval battles and exonerates Henry from the charge of showing unusual and excessive disrespect. (And he suggests that John Howard was killed *after* Richard, which is the opposite of my previous understanding, but that's by-the-by.)
Carol responds:
I had the same reaction. First, regarding the Duke of Norfolk, I very much doubt that he was still alive when Richard charged. What would have been the point of a last-ditch, desperate charge if all were going well on the field? I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that the Earl of Oxford simply out-generaled Norfolk (who was a great sea captain, but evidently not as brilliant on land).
That aside, Ashdown-Hill may be right that Henry Tudor didn't specifically predate his reign to August 21, but he is mistaken if he claims that Henry didn't backdate it to some undetermined point before Bosworth, as he had to do if he wanted to declare the men who fought for Richard traitors. Here's the pertinent ruling by Parliament (the act of attainder):
"DATE: November, 1485. AUTHOR: King and council. TEXT: "Rotuli Parliamentarium," ed. J. Strachey, 6 vols.(London, 1767-83), VI, p. 176. (English; spelling modernized.)
"Richard, late duke of Gloucester, calling and naming himself, by ursurpation, King Richard the Third <snip list of names> [in] the first year of the reign of our sovereign lord [Henry VII], assembled to them at Leicester ... a great host, traitorously intending, imagining and conspiring the destruction of the king's royal person, our sovereign leige lord. And <snip list of weapons> [on 22 August in Leicestershire] by great and continued deliberation, traitorously levied war against our said sovereign lord and his true subjects there being in his service and assistance under a banner of our said sovereign lord, to the subversion of this realm, and common weal of the same."
http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron1.html#parliament
Unfortunately, the version I'm quoting here combines quotation with paraphrase (for which I've substituted bracketed information), but it gives the general idea. The Croyland Chronicler had good reason to bewail this piece of tyranny. Ironically, Henry himself later had this act in essence repealed when he thought himself in danger of being deserted by his own army in time of need. The Treason Act of 1495 declared that "noe person going wth the Kinge to the Warres shalbe attaynt of treason."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Act_1495
(I've resorted to Wikipedia as a source here, but someone else may have a better link.)
In any case, it's true that Henry's claim to be king by right of conquest depends logically on Richard's being de facto king at the time, but when did logic stop Henry from having his way? He couldn't attaint men who had fought for a lawful king as traitors, so Richard had to be a usurper calling himself king fighting against "our sovereign lord in the first year of his reign."
Ashdown-Hill, though his work is valuable in many respects, appears to be incorrect here. Henry wanted it both ways, and tyrannical usurper that he was, he succeeded.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
> It seems to be John's contention that the fighting - or the rout? -
> moved on after Richard's death, meaning that the body wouldn't have
> been recovered immediately and could have been stripped by looters,
> as happened on other battlefields.
Yes,. Malory has this as a bit of detail in the Morte d'Arthur - the
"pillers and robbers" on the battlefield at the end, who even kill
stricken knights in order to rob them of their finery.
> (This would also tie in with Paul's email of the other day.)
> Regarding the subsequent treatment of the body, John asks the
> question "what *would* be normal?". He gives the examples of
> Charles the Bold, found several days later, stripped and badly
> disfigured, and also James IV, and he asks what means would be at
> hand to convey anyone deceased from the field, when those who lost
> their lives were usually buried in situ. Displaying the body was
> an inevitable requirement, and happened with other deposed kings.
> I agree with you that transit, covered, in a cart would be more
> appropriate in our eyes, but John intriguingly linked being slung
> over a horse with depictions of slain warriors, and even harked
> back to
> Achilles dragging Hector around the walls of Troy. In this
> context, he even suggested that the employment of one of Richard's
> heralds to return his body to Leicester might have been a mark of
> respect. It's not an argument that convinces me, but it is
> interesting and anything that makes us look again at received
> wisdom is a good thing.
It makes sense to me, as it's far from exceptional in the time-
period. I think it's very important for people to set aside notions
of "what would be appropriate in our eyes". Studying the Middle Ages
is like being an anthropologist entering a 'lost world'. It's a very,
very alien universe (which is why it's so exciting and fascinating).
I can't recommend highly enough Robert Bartlett's 'Inside the
Mediæval Mind' series as an introduction to the mind-set. I think
some of it may be available online: it was originally done for the
Open University.
best wishes,
Marianne
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Vickie
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 24, 2012, at 6:58 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
> Jonathan Evans wrote:
> >
> > Finally got around to reading John Ashdown-Hill's 'The Last Days of Richard III'.<snip>
> >
> > One thing that stands out is that he's rather generous in his view of Henry Tudor's actions post-Bosworth. The story that's frequently cited is of him antedating the start of his reign to the day before the battle, but Ashdown-Hill states that there's no evidence for this and that, in fact, the strength of his own claim (that of conquest) was entirely dependent on Richard being the de facto king. Does anyone have a contrary view?
> >
> > He also looks at the treatment of Richard's body in the context of other medieval battles and exonerates Henry from the charge of showing unusual and excessive disrespect. (And he suggests that John Howard was killed *after* Richard, which is the opposite of my previous understanding, but that's by-the-by.)
>
> Carol responds:
>
> I had the same reaction. First, regarding the Duke of Norfolk, I very much doubt that he was still alive when Richard charged. What would have been the point of a last-ditch, desperate charge if all were going well on the field? I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that the Earl of Oxford simply out-generaled Norfolk (who was a great sea captain, but evidently not as brilliant on land).
>
> That aside, Ashdown-Hill may be right that Henry Tudor didn't specifically predate his reign to August 21, but he is mistaken if he claims that Henry didn't backdate it to some undetermined point before Bosworth, as he had to do if he wanted to declare the men who fought for Richard traitors. Here's the pertinent ruling by Parliament (the act of attainder):
>
> "DATE: November, 1485. AUTHOR: King and council. TEXT: "Rotuli Parliamentarium," ed. J. Strachey, 6 vols.(London, 1767-83), VI, p. 176. (English; spelling modernized.)
>
> "Richard, late duke of Gloucester, calling and naming himself, by ursurpation, King Richard the Third <snip list of names> [in] the first year of the reign of our sovereign lord [Henry VII], assembled to them at Leicester ... a great host, traitorously intending, imagining and conspiring the destruction of the king's royal person, our sovereign leige lord. And <snip list of weapons> [on 22 August in Leicestershire] by great and continued deliberation, traitorously levied war against our said sovereign lord and his true subjects there being in his service and assistance under a banner of our said sovereign lord, to the subversion of this realm, and common weal of the same."
>
> http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron1.html#parliament
>
> Unfortunately, the version I'm quoting here combines quotation with paraphrase (for which I've substituted bracketed information), but it gives the general idea. The Croyland Chronicler had good reason to bewail this piece of tyranny. Ironically, Henry himself later had this act in essence repealed when he thought himself in danger of being deserted by his own army in time of need. The Treason Act of 1495 declared that "noe person going wth the Kinge to the Warres shalbe attaynt of treason."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Act_1495
>
> (I've resorted to Wikipedia as a source here, but someone else may have a better link.)
>
> In any case, it's true that Henry's claim to be king by right of conquest depends logically on Richard's being de facto king at the time, but when did logic stop Henry from having his way? He couldn't attaint men who had fought for a lawful king as traitors, so Richard had to be a usurper calling himself king fighting against "our sovereign lord in the first year of his reign."
>
> Ashdown-Hill, though his work is valuable in many respects, appears to be incorrect here. Henry wanted it both ways, and tyrannical usurper that he was, he succeeded.
>
> Carol
>
>
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I had the same reaction. First, regarding the Duke of Norfolk, I very much
doubt that he was still alive when Richard charged. What would have been the
point of a last-ditch, desperate charge if all were going well on the field?
I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that the Earl of Oxford simply
out-generaled Norfolk (who was a great sea captain, but evidently not as
brilliant on land).
//snip//
I don't know where I got it from, but I've always understood that Richard
personally entered the battle because Norfolk had been killed and the forces
the Duke had been leading were starting to give way BECAUSE of his death and
NOT because the royal army (the real one, NOT Tudor's fake one!) was losing
physically.
Shorter version - Norfolk's troops suffered a brief loss of morale upon the
death of their leader and THAT was the reason Richard entered the battle.
Personally, I can't see Richard, after spending possibly several hours
watching the battle, and with his own and Northumberland's troops still
available (as far as Richard knew, anyway), making a "do or die" charge into
the battle. Had Richard already been directly involved in the fighting, THEN
I could imagine him losing his perspective, but not otherwise.
I guess I would have to say that such a charge doesn't seem to fit the
"psychology" of what I've come to know of Richard III the person. (Alright,
I'll admit it, I'm a big fan of Monsieur Poirot!)
Thanks for the link to H7's attempt to have his cake and eat it too! That's
going into my "save" file.
Doug
Inside the Medieval Mind by Robt Bartlett (was RE: John Ashdown-Hill
I just finished John Ashdown-Hill’s *The Last Days of Richard III* and was
reviewing the old thread when I found your recommendation for this series. I
did find the videos for at least a part of the series available here:
http://www.ovguide.com/tv/inside_the_medieval_mind.htm
Here’s a tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/cm4hc73
It looks excellent. I don’t suppose he specifically mentions Richard
anywhere?
Loyaulte me lie,
Johanne
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanne L. Tournier
Email - jltournier60@...
or jltournier@...
"With God, all things are possible."
- Jesus of Nazareth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of Dr M M
Gilchrist
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 9:06 PM
To:
Subject: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
<snip>
Studying the Middle Ages is like being an anthropologist entering a 'lost
world'. It's a very, very alien universe (which is why it's so exciting and
fascinating). I can't recommend highly enough Robert Bartlett's 'Inside the
Mediæval Mind' series as an introduction to the mind-set. I think some of it
may be available online: it was originally done for the Open University.
best wishes,
Marianne
Re: Inside the Medieval Mind by Robt Bartlett (was RE: John Ashdown-
Renate
--- In , Johanne Tournier <jltournier60@...> wrote:
>
> Hello, Marianne et al –
>
> I just finished John Ashdown-Hill's *The Last Days of Richard III* and was
> reviewing the old thread when I found your recommendation for this series. I
> did find the videos for at least a part of the series available here:
>
> http://www.ovguide.com/tv/inside_the_medieval_mind.htm
>
>
>
> Here's a tinyurl:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/cm4hc73
>
>
>
> It looks excellent. I don't suppose he specifically mentions Richard
> anywhere?
>
>
>
> Loyaulte me lie,
>
>
>
> Johanne
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Johanne L. Tournier
>
>
>
> Email - jltournier60@...
>
> or jltournier@...
>
>
>
> "With God, all things are possible."
>
> - Jesus of Nazareth
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>
> From:
> [mailto:] On Behalf Of Dr M M
> Gilchrist
> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 9:06 PM
> To:
> Subject: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
>
>
>
> <snip>
>
> Studying the Middle Ages is like being an anthropologist entering a 'lost
> world'. It's a very, very alien universe (which is why it's so exciting and
> fascinating). I can't recommend highly enough Robert Bartlett's 'Inside the
> Mediæval Mind' series as an introduction to the mind-set. I think some of it
> may be available online: it was originally done for the Open University.
>
> best wishes,
> Marianne
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
John Ashdown-Hill
In his WOTR book he posits an interesting idea about Stanley, which gives a reason, as far as John is now concerned, for a few of the stories about Richard he debunked in a previous book!
It goes like this.
When Richard heard about Tudor's invasion and summoned Stanley to Nottingham Stanley declined, saying via a messenger, that he was suffering from the sweating sickness.
John suggests that the messenger carried the sickness to Nottingham and gave it to the king, thus explaining:- 1. his disturbed night the night before Bosworth; 2. his rising early and catching his priests unprepared for the mass, 3. his need for a drink during the battle and 4. his ill considered decision to charge at Tudor that ended in his death.
Now remind me John, are these not ALL stories you gave solid reasons for dismissing in your book The Mythology of Richard III ?
And quite rightly too imo.
Paul
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
As I've mentioned previously, I simply do not understand how Richard could have lost Bosworth, even after Norfolk's death, so I get why biographers could be casting about for explanations. Doug here: Yet, amazingly enough, they shy away from facing the fact that without Stanley's intervention Richard would have won. Which also mean a close study of Richard's dispositions at Bosworth, the fact that the Yorkists were defeating Tudor's forces until Norfolk was killed and just why Richard personally entered the fighting. All the accounts I've read have Norfolk's men at least fighting Tudor's forces to a stand-still. It wasn't until the Duke's death that his forces began to give way, which I take to mean they continued fighting, but were being slowly pushed back. And that was the military situation when Richard and his knights rode into the fighting, most likely in a formation aimed directly at where Tudor was. It was then that the Yorkist forces, led by Richard, reached where Tudor was and engaged his personal bodyguard (the equivalent, I presume, of those knights who rode with Richard). That was also when Stanley intervened with such great effect; attacking the Yorkists on their flank and probably also in their rear. I've also heard two reasons for Northumberland's failure to intervene against Stanley. The first is that Richard stationed Northumberland as a guard on the London road and thus Northumberland was too far way to come to Richard's aid. The problem with that excuse is that the only reason to guard the London road would have been to prevent Tudor's forces from slipping past Richard's, a situation that no longer applied once it was plain there would be a battle the following day. Once it became clear that Tudor was going to fight where he was, the greatest force that would be needed on the London road would be some sort of patrol/piquet, placed there to give the alarm on the very slim chance Tudor tried to sneak around Richard during the night. The second reason for Northumberland's inaction that I've heard is that of sheer incompetence on Northumberland's part. Really? How much military expertise does it take to shout Charge! ? Which is all that would have been required of him... A counter-argument that Northumberland's forces weren't mounted and couldn't have gotten to the battle in time to stop Stanley is, if you'll pardon the expression, hogwash. There never was any need for Northumberland to meet Stanley's forces as they were riding into battle, all that was needed was for Northumberland's troops to attack Stanley's in exactly the same manner as Stanley was attacking Richard's/Norfolk's in the flank and rear. Which is exactly what would have happened even if Stanley's troops were mounted and Northumberland's on foot. The fact that Northumberland's men would arrive after Stanley's would have been even more dangerous for Stanley, his troops would have lost whatever formation they'd had and would be forced to turn their attention from attacking the Yorkists to repelling an attack on themselves and thus negating their ability to influence the part of the battle that Richard was fighting. If I, an OAP from the US can see that, why does anyone think that Richard would not also have realized the necessity to counter Stanley's force with a force of his own? Especially when he had such a force available Northumberland's. So I'm left with the conclusions that Richard did make provisions to counter a possible Stanley intervention with his placement of Northumberland's forces and that it was the failure of Northumberland, whether through staggering incompetence or base treachery, to act that led directly to Richard's death. From the time I first read Williamson's The Mystery of the Princes, I've never believed that Richard's entering the fighting at Bosworth was some sort of do or die move on his part and the more I've learned about him the less real it sounds. Richard took his duties very, very seriously. He was contemplating a re-marriage, for reasons of state, while his beloved wife lay dying because it was his duty to provide an heir for the kingdom. Until that heir was born, or lacking that, officially determined and announced, it was his duty to remain alive which ruled out impetuous, quixotic charges. Doug who apologizes, again, for the length of his postings
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I'm absolutely no military historian but there are a couple of things that puzzle me:
1. Northumberland had been Richard's deputy in the Scottish wars and had even been allowed to create his own knights. So he must have had some military experience and have been very trusted. The Scottish wars are an enigma to me; no-one seems to agree what sort of action actually took place apart from laying siege to Berwick. Was there any hand to hand fighting? I honestly can't tease it out and most of the historians who write about it are very biased against Richard. Even the wiki article, which is for once quite good, can't work it out.
2. Northumberland had in 1469 been found guilty of associating with Courtenay and Hungerford and had to spend a few months' in the Tower. The judge in that trial had been the young Richard (doing Edward's bidding again) and Percy had had to make a very grovelling apology to Edward in front of Richard (and Stillington). Was there an old lingering grudge there, especially when Richard didn't automatically make him Lord of the North when he became King? Buckingham has a lot to answer for, I reckon. There must have been some hurt people, and I include Hastings in them.
In the end, the reason Richard died on that day, was that most cruel of things - a patch of bog and bad luck. Yes he was daft to put himself in the front line, but Edward always did. If he'd killed HT what Stanley did would have been immaterial. We only learn when the bad luck strikes. H
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Monday, 22 February 2016, 16:03
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
nvenice2 wrote:
As I've mentioned previously, I simply do not understand how Richard could have lost Bosworth, even after Norfolk's death, so I get why biographers could be casting about for explanations. Doug here: Yet, amazingly enough, they shy away from facing the fact that without Stanley's intervention Richard would have won. Which also mean a close study of Richard's dispositions at Bosworth, the fact that the Yorkists were defeating Tudor's forces until Norfolk was killed and just why Richard personally entered the fighting. All the accounts I've read have Norfolk's men at least fighting Tudor's forces to a stand-still. It wasn't until the Duke's death that his forces began to give way, which I take to mean they continued fighting, but were being slowly pushed back. And that was the military situation when Richard and his knights rode into the fighting, most likely in a formation aimed directly at where Tudor was. It was then that the Yorkist forces, led by Richard, reached where Tudor was and engaged his personal bodyguard (the equivalent, I presume, of those knights who rode with Richard). That was also when Stanley intervened with such great effect; attacking the Yorkists on their flank and probably also in their rear. I've also heard two reasons for Northumberland's failure to intervene against Stanley. The first is that Richard stationed Northumberland as a guard on the London road and thus Northumberland was too far way to come to Richard's aid. The problem with that excuse is that the only reason to guard the London road would have been to prevent Tudor's forces from slipping past Richard's, a situation that no longer applied once it was plain there would be a battle the following day. Once it became clear that Tudor was going to fight where he was, the greatest force that would be needed on the London road would be some sort of patrol/piquet, placed there to give the alarm on the very slim chance Tudor tried to sneak around Richard during the night. The second reason for Northumberland's inaction that I've heard is that of sheer incompetence on Northumberland's part. Really? How much military expertise does it take to shout Charge! ? Which is all that would have been required of him... A counter-argument that Northumberland's forces weren't mounted and couldn't have gotten to the battle in time to stop Stanley is, if you'll pardon the expression, hogwash. There never was any need for Northumberland to meet Stanley's forces as they were riding into battle, all that was needed was for Northumberland's troops to attack Stanley's in exactly the same manner as Stanley was attacking Richard's/Norfolk's in the flank and rear. Which is exactly what would have happened even if Stanley's troops were mounted and Northumberland's on foot. The fact that Northumberland's men would arrive after Stanley's would have been even more dangerous for Stanley, his troops would have lost whatever formation they'd had and would be forced to turn their attention from attacking the Yorkists to repelling an attack on themselves and thus negating their ability to influence the part of the battle that Richard was fighting. If I, an OAP from the US can see that, why does anyone think that Richard would not also have realized the necessity to counter Stanley's force with a force of his own? Especially when he had such a force available Northumberland's. So I'm left with the conclusions that Richard did make provisions to counter a possible Stanley intervention with his placement of Northumberland's forces and that it was the failure of Northumberland, whether through staggering incompetence or base treachery, to act that led directly to Richard's death. From the time I first read Williamson's The Mystery of the Princes, I've never believed that Richard's entering the fighting at Bosworth was some sort of do or die move on his part and the more I've learned about him the less real it sounds. Richard took his duties very, very seriously. He was contemplating a re-marriage, for reasons of state, while his beloved wife lay dying because it was his duty to provide an heir for the kingdom. Until that heir was born, or lacking that, officially determined and announced, it was his duty to remain alive which ruled out impetuous, quixotic charges. Doug who apologizes, again, for the length of his postings
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On 22 Feb 2016, at 16:03, 'Doug Stamate' destama@... [] <> wrote:
nvenice2 wrote:
As I've mentioned previously, I simply do not understand how Richard could have lost Bosworth, even after Norfolk's death, so I get why biographers could be casting about for explanations. Doug here:Yet, amazingly enough, they shy away from facing the fact that without Stanley's intervention Richard would have won. Which also mean a close study of Richard's dispositions at Bosworth, the fact that the Yorkists were defeating Tudor's forces until Norfolk was killed and just why Richard personally entered the fighting.All the accounts I've read have Norfolk's men at least fighting Tudor's forces to a stand-still. It wasn't until the Duke's death that his forces began to give way, which I take to mean they continued fighting, but were being slowly pushed back. And that was the military situation when Richard and his knights rode into the fighting, most likely in a formation aimed directly at where Tudor was. It was then that the Yorkist forces, led by Richard, reached where Tudor was and engaged his personal bodyguard (the equivalent, I presume, of those knights who rode with Richard). That was also when Stanley intervened with such great effect; attacking the Yorkists on their flank and probably also in their rear.I've also heard two reasons for Northumberland's failure to intervene against Stanley. The first is that Richard stationed Northumberland as a guard on the London road and thus Northumberland was too far way to come to Richard's aid. The problem with that excuse is that the only reason to guard the London road would have been to prevent Tudor's forces from slipping past Richard's, a situation that no longer applied once it was plain there would be a battle the following day. Once it became clear that Tudor was going to fight where he was, the greatest force that would be needed on the London road would be some sort of patrol/piquet, placed there to give the alarm on the very slim chance Tudor tried to sneak around Richard during the night.The second reason for Northumberland's inaction that I've heard is that of sheer incompetence on Northumberland's part. Really? How much military expertise does it take to shout Charge! ? Which is all that would have been required of him...A counter-argument that Northumberland's forces weren't mounted and couldn't have gotten to the battle in time to stop Stanley is, if you'll pardon the expression, hogwash. There never was any need for Northumberland to meet Stanley's forces as they were riding into battle, all that was needed was for Northumberland's troops to attack Stanley's in exactly the same manner as Stanley was attacking Richard's/Norfolk's in the flank and rear. Which is exactly what would have happened even if Stanley's troops were mounted and Northumberland's on foot. The fact that Northumberland's men would arrive afterStanley's would have been even more dangerous for Stanley, his troops would have lost whatever formation they'd had and would be forced to turn their attention from attacking the Yorkists to repelling an attack on themselves and thus negating their ability to influence the part of the battle that Richard was fighting.If I, an OAP from the US can see that, why does anyone think that Richard would not also have realized the necessity to counter Stanley's force with a force of his own? Especially when he had such a force available Northumberland's.So I'm left with the conclusions that Richard did make provisions to counter a possible Stanley intervention with his placement of Northumberland's forces and that it was the failure of Northumberland, whether through staggering incompetence or base treachery, to act that led directly to Richard's death.From the time I first read Williamson's The Mystery of the Princes, I've never believed that Richard's entering the fighting at Bosworth was some sort of do or die move on his part and the more I've learned about him the less real it sounds. Richard took his duties very, very seriously. He was contemplating a re-marriage, for reasons of state, while his beloved wife lay dying because it was his duty to provide an heir for the kingdom. Until that heir was born, or lacking that, officially determined and announced, it was his duty to remain alive which ruled out impetuous, quixotic charges.Dougwho apologizes, again, for the length of his postings
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Doug wrote:
"I've also heard two reasons for Northumberland's failure to intervene against Stanley. The first is that Richard stationed Northumberland as a guard on the London road and thus Northumberland was too far way to come to Richard's aid. The problem with that excuse is that the only reason to guard the London road would have been to prevent Tudor's forces from slipping past Richard's, a situation that no longer applied once it was plain there would be a battle the following day. Once it became clear that Tudor was going to fight where he was, the greatest force that would be needed on the London road would be some sort of patrol/piquet, placed there to give the alarm on the very slim chance Tudor tried to sneak around Richard during the night. If I, an OAP from the US can see that, why does anyone think that Richard would not also have realized the necessity to counter Stanley's force with a force of his own? Especially when he had such a force available Northumberland's.
"So I'm left with the conclusions that Richard did make provisions to counter a possible Stanley intervention with his placement of Northumberland's forces and that it was the failure of Northumberland, whether through staggering incompetence or base treachery, to act that led directly to Richard's death."
Carol responds:
I agree with most of your post, but I can think of no reason why Northumberland, who was doing well under Richard and had served him well during Buckingham's Rebellion, would betray him (or prefer an unknown part-Welshman like Tudor). What if he was watching the wrong Stanley (Lord Thomas) and could not get to the part of the field where Sir William was?
I agree with you that the layout of the battle is crucial, but I don't know enough about battle tactics to say more.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
"I agree with most of your post, but I can think of no reason why
Northumberland, who was doing well under Richard and had served him well
during Buckingham's Rebellion, would betray him (or prefer an unknown
part-Welshman like Tudor). What if he was watching the wrong Stanley (Lord
Thomas) and could not get to the part of the field where Sir William was?
I agree with you that the layout of the battle is crucial, but I don't know
enough about battle tactics to say more."
Doug here:
Well, to be honest, wasn't Buckingham "doing well" under Richard? And yet,
he rebelled.
If, as has been suggested, Northumberland was dissatisfied with his not
being made "Lord of the North" (a position, if not the title, previously
held by his family), I'd think that might be considered a motive. As for why
Northumberland might prefer "an unknown part-Welshman," I think your
description just about says it all. Tudor was unknown and, more importantly,
part Welsh; what better assumption for Northumberland to make than that
Tudor would need Northumberland to handle the North much more than Richard,
who'd spent so much time there, did? That such an assumption proved to be
false certainly shouldn't prevent us from considering it; and, in my case,
finding it believable.
As for battle "tactics" during the WotR, I tend to look a most of the
encounters as basically being giant brawls between two opposing forces,
rather than the set-piece encounters of later generations. It's undoubtedly
a generalization, but I think if one approaches the various battles from
that starting point, it makes their outcomes easier to understand; as well
as making it possible to appreciate those leaders who actually showed
military skills in their deployment of forces and how they applied those
forces. Most importantly, I think, when we refer to "armies" in regards to
the forces employed, we have to remember these forces had little in common
with the well-drill and well-organized armies of later generations.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I agree with what you say about battles being brawls, Doug. In the case of Bosworth it was about two people, Richard and HT. It's interesting to speculate what would have happened if William Stanley had intervened on the part of Richard but couldn't get to him and he'd still been killed. That was a distinct possibility; as we've seen from the 'Dominic' reconstruction, once Richard was unhorsed he was at a real disadvantage and mercenaries couldn't care less whether they were killing a king. So what would have happened if the Yorkists had won but Richard was dead?. Would they have sent for Lincoln? It wasn't like the battles of the English Civil War where it wouldn't really have mattered if Prince Rupert had met an unfortunate end (heaven forfend!), the bigger picture was still there to be negotiated between a defeated, but living, king.
As for Buckingham, I think it was a bit like Northumberland. Richard had spent years as deputy and found the deputy duties hard to hand over, even if he did in title. No-one stepped into the role that Richard had held under Edward. And that must have been a great disappointment to more than one. But to be fair, they didn't give him much time to earn the trust which Edward had had in him. H
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 2016, 14:37
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Carol wrote:
"I agree with most of your post, but I can think of no reason why
Northumberland, who was doing well under Richard and had served him well
during Buckingham's Rebellion, would betray him (or prefer an unknown
part-Welshman like Tudor). What if he was watching the wrong Stanley (Lord
Thomas) and could not get to the part of the field where Sir William was?
I agree with you that the layout of the battle is crucial, but I don't know
enough about battle tactics to say more."
Doug here:
Well, to be honest, wasn't Buckingham "doing well" under Richard? And yet,
he rebelled.
If, as has been suggested, Northumberland was dissatisfied with his not
being made "Lord of the North" (a position, if not the title, previously
held by his family), I'd think that might be considered a motive. As for why
Northumberland might prefer "an unknown part-Welshman," I think your
description just about says it all. Tudor was unknown and, more importantly,
part Welsh; what better assumption for Northumberland to make than that
Tudor would need Northumberland to handle the North much more than Richard,
who'd spent so much time there, did? That such an assumption proved to be
false certainly shouldn't prevent us from considering it; and, in my case,
finding it believable.
As for battle "tactics" during the WotR, I tend to look a most of the
encounters as basically being giant brawls between two opposing forces,
rather than the set-piece encounters of later generations. It's undoubtedly
a generalization, but I think if one approaches the various battles from
that starting point, it makes their outcomes easier to understand; as well
as making it possible to appreciate those leaders who actually showed
military skills in their deployment of forces and how they applied those
forces. Most importantly, I think, when we refer to "armies" in regards to
the forces employed, we have to remember these forces had little in common
with the well-drill and well-organized armies of later generations.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I suspect that most of the new ideas about the battle are pure speculation, just like the old ones. There's really little enough to go on.
My guess with Northumberland is that he had never been entirely happy with the balance of power in the North when Richard was Duke of Gloucester,* and had hoped for a freer reign with Richard as King, just like Lord Stanley on the other side of the Pennines, and that is why both supported Richard in the beginning. But Richard maintained his control through his council in the North, in which Northumberland had to share power with Lincoln, and Richard didn't even relinquish his hold on the Stewardship of the Duchy of Lancaster in the North. So I think Stanley and Northumberland may have felt rather let down and frustrated by 1485 (although the North in general was probably the better for that), and HT was a young man with no experience and no ties in the region other than his sporting of the Richmond title, and so may well have seemed like the answer to their prayers. Add to that the fact that Northumberland's wife was HT's ex-fiancée, and you have considerable scope for a crumbling of loyalties.
*Hicks talks about Northumberland's complaints to the King in 1474; and the fiasco over the position of Prior of Tynemouth, which we recently looked at on the forum, seems to confirm that the rivalry between Nothumberland and Gloucester continued long after that.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Thomas Stanley was at Bosworth - I've recently discovered that there are grants to him from Henry which specifically thank him for his assistance there.
I'm starting to wonder how early our first references are to Sweating Sickness in the North before Bosworth. Could it be a complete red herring? In any case, I wonder whether the incubation period would have ruled out Richard having been ill with it.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
As some of you will know I now have a very large database on the gentry and nobility of this period, on which I toil every day trying to verify accuracy (and dodge Stillington). Now it is very, very, very rare for a woman of Eleanor's age and standing not to remarry. I know there is this sort of belief that widows moved into convents as a kind of halfway house to taking the veil, but this was women who were generally much older. Because the death rate for married women was much worse than for men, it was not unusual for men to marry at least three times, and for the wealthy women who survived to marry three, four or even five times. It didn't marry whether the woman was good at producing children or not, most men had had enough children with their first wife. An aristocratic wife like Eleanor would have been a substantial prize - think of MB's marriages. So did she not remarry because she couldn't - that is because she had already contracted to marry again? Now some might say that her sister did the same, but Edward no doubt put stipulations on the Mowbray inheritance.
I've never doubted about Eleanor being a party in all this, but I have doubted until now about the existence or otherwise of an actual pre-contract. Not I hasten to add, because I doubt Richard believed it, but because it could have been a wider ruse to destabilise the Yorkists. I've also been looking further at the origins of Eleanor's Wiltshire lands and will come back to you on that. H
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 2016, 14:37
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Carol wrote:
"I agree with most of your post, but I can think of no reason why
Northumberland, who was doing well under Richard and had served him well
during Buckingham's Rebellion, would betray him (or prefer an unknown
part-Welshman like Tudor). What if he was watching the wrong Stanley (Lord
Thomas) and could not get to the part of the field where Sir William was?
I agree with you that the layout of the battle is crucial, but I don't know
enough about battle tactics to say more."
Doug here:
Well, to be honest, wasn't Buckingham "doing well" under Richard? And yet,
he rebelled.
If, as has been suggested, Northumberland was dissatisfied with his not
being made "Lord of the North" (a position, if not the title, previously
held by his family), I'd think that might be considered a motive. As for why
Northumberland might prefer "an unknown part-Welshman," I think your
description just about says it all. Tudor was unknown and, more importantly,
part Welsh; what better assumption for Northumberland to make than that
Tudor would need Northumberland to handle the North much more than Richard,
who'd spent so much time there, did? That such an assumption proved to be
false certainly shouldn't prevent us from considering it; and, in my case,
finding it believable.
As for battle "tactics" during the WotR, I tend to look a most of the
encounters as basically being giant brawls between two opposing forces,
rather than the set-piece encounters of later generations. It's undoubtedly
a generalization, but I think if one approaches the various battles from
that starting point, it makes their outcomes easier to understand; as well
as making it possible to appreciate those leaders who actually showed
military skills in their deployment of forces and how they applied those
forces. Most importantly, I think, when we refer to "armies" in regards to
the forces employed, we have to remember these forces had little in common
with the well-drill and well-organized armies of later generations.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Sorry if this is repetition, but so far my first reply hasn't shown up.
I recently discovered grants to Thomas Stanley after Bosworth which specifically thank him for the help he gave there. They're in Campbell's 'Materials for a History of the Reign of King Henry VII'. So he was there - no question.
Perhaps we should also revisit our sources for the whole idea that there was sweating sickness in the North before the battle.
Marie
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Mary
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 2016, 20:53
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I don't think this man could have brought the sweating sickness to Nottingham in time for Bosworth because it was so virulent and so contagious that it could not have just hit the King, or escaped the notice of chroniclers. I would be interested in a study of just when it struck southern England, and an attempt to assess the incubation period based on that (assuming the carriers had come from the battle).
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Doug wrote:
I"f, as has been suggested, Northumberland was dissatisfied with his not
being made "Lord of the North" (a position, if not the title, previously
held by his family), I'd think that might be considered a motive. As for why
Northumberland might prefer "an unknown part-Welshman," I think your
description just about says it all. Tudor was unknown and, more importantly, part Welsh; what better assumption for Northumberland to make than that Tudor would need Northumberland to handle the North much more than Richard, who'd spent so much time there, did? That such an assumption proved to be false certainly shouldn't prevent us from considering it; and, in my case, finding it believable."
Carol responds:
It seems as if the most important part of my post got missed in a response to my asides, so I'll repeat it. Could Northumberland have been placed near the wrong Stanley (Lord Thomas, who sat out the battle, perhaps for that reason) rather than close enough to Sir William to stop him? just a thought.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hilary: I don't believe for one moment that Richard was sick that day or around that time of malaria/sweating sicknes or whatever. He fought like a demon that day..as we know fighting manfully in the midst of his enemies and that convinces me he could not have been sick.
Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Marie wrote :
"I don't think this man could have brought the sweating sickness to Nottingham in time for Bosworth because it was so virulent and so contagious that it could not have just hit the King, or escaped the notice of chroniclers. I would be interested in a study of just when it struck southern England, and an attempt to assess the incubation period based on that (assuming the carriers had come from the battle)."
Carol responds:
"Sweating Sickness in a Nutshell" by Claire Ridgway is available on Amazon for less than five dollars (a couple of pounds?). I haven't read the whole thing, only the free sample, but it might be worth looking at. They also have (surprisingly) "The Sweating Sickness: A Boke or Counsell against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate or Sweatyng Sicknesse" available free if you have a Kindle.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I often think too that if Richard had spent a,bad night with all the nightmares etc., he would hardly have made it common knowledge..
I haven't read JAH's war of the roses although I have the mythology book...I was a bit disappointed to tell you the truth....I'm sorry but I still feel it's a bit too much to theorise that Richard could have been suffering from the sweating sickness...I usual enjoy new theories as I feel that one day someone may hit the nail on the head but they have to be plausible which I don't feel this one is...Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On 24 Feb 2016, at 15:10, 'Doug Stamate' destama@... [] <> wrote:
Eileen wrote: Was Thomas at Bosworth or not? Rouse says he was...if that is the case where does that leave the story that Thomas sent a message saying that he was suffering from the sweating sickness...which has led to the speculation mentioned here that the messenger spread the sickness around and Richard has succumbed to it...round and round we go... Doug here:A very interesting question that definitely needs answering! However, the story about Lord Thomas claiming to be suffering from the sweating sickness, and thus unable to join Richard, doesn't automatically prevent his being at Bosworth, it simply places him somewhere other than with Richard. The story about the sweating sickness is, to me, just another attempt to turn the focus away from Richard's opponents by focusing on Richard and his health, rather than those in rebellion against their king. If we're arguing about whether or not Richard may have been suffering from the effects of some illness, then we, and everyone since 1485 seemingly, aren't focusing on the rebels. Neat, huh?FWIW, Wiki has him at the battle but, from the phrasing of the sentence, the impression is left that Thomas and William were both at the same spot some distance from the battle with Sir William intervening and Lord Thomas following along after, scooping up Richard's crown and presenting it to Tudor.The important point, it seems to me, is to accurately locate Lord Thomas; either at Bosworth, presuming he was there or somewhere else, wherever that may be.My understanding of the area where the fighting occurred at Bosworth (I've haven't gotten to all the newer articles/books yet) is that Tudor placed himself in a classic defensive position with his left flank protected by a woods and his right flank by a marsh/bog. If accurate, then Lord Thomas, presuming he wasn't co-located with his brother, would have been on Tudor's right flank somewhere beyond the marsh/bog.Which leads to the question: If, on the morning of 22 August, the forces at Bosworth consisted of Tudor in his defensive position, Richard, Norfolk and Northumberland a short distance to the north and Sir William to Richard's right and Lord Thomas to Richard's left, with both able to intervene whenever they chose, why would anyone conclude that Richard felt his chances of defeating Tudor were worth a try? Besides the forces in front of him, Richard would then also have had a considerable force of undetermined loyalty on either flank, capable of intervening against him as soon as he (Richard) split his forces by sending Norfolk against Tudor. IOW, as soon as Norfolk forces engaged Tudor's, there was nothing to stop the two Stanleys from making a simultaneous attack on Richard's remaining forces.Really?Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Eileen wrote:
"Mary...I'm not too surprised that Richard spent a bad night before Bosworth..I should imagine it would have been hard for anyone to sleep soundly under the circumstances unless they were absolutely exhausted say like the Lancastrian forces before Tewkesbury after their forced march."
Carol responds: On the other hand, the bad night before Bosworth could be just another myth. Wasnt' it first reported by the Croyland continuator, who, as Kendall points out, becomes more and more unreliable as he nears the end of Richard's life? After all, he has *Tudor* charging *Richard,* and we all know what a lie that is!
I also believe that the missed mass in the morning before Bosworth is part of the myth--all to make Richard look like a doomed tyrant deserted by God.
BTW, I think "Treason, treason, treason!" is from Rous. It's not from Shakespeare, who has him crying. "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" Whether he wants to fight or flee is unclear, at least to me.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
'kIng Richerd alone was killed fyghting manfully in the thickkest pressed of his enemyes' ....often shouting out and crying 'Treson, Treson, Treson,,,,'. This from someone who really doesn't like Richard...!
Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I went to the study day in Norwich last
November and we had talks from the professors who examined the bones for both isotope and DNA analysis.
They found the round worm infestation so would there not have been markers if Richard was affected by a virus?
Jess.From: cherryripe.eileenb@... []
Sent: 24/02/2016 22:50
To:
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Mary...I'm not too surprised that Richard spent a bad night before Bosworth..I should imagine it would have been hard for anyone to sleep soundly under the circumstances unless they were absolutely exhausted say like the Lancastrian forces before Tewkesbury after their forced march.
I often think too that if Richard had spent a,bad night with all the nightmares etc., he would hardly have made it common knowledge..
I haven't read JAH's war of the roses although I have the mythology book...I was a bit disappointed to tell you the truth....I'm sorry but I still feel it's a bit too much to theorise that Richard could have been suffering from the sweating sickness...I usual enjoy new theories as I feel that one day someone may hit the nail on the head but they have to be plausible which I don't feel this one is...Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
<<I don't think this man could have brought the sweating sickness to Nottingham in time for Bosworth because it was so virulent and so contagious that it could not have just hit the King, or escaped the notice of chroniclers. I would be interested in a study of just when it struck southern England, and an attempt to assess the incubation period based on that (assuming the carriers had come from the battle).>>
I have always been puzzled by the Stanley sweating sickness claim too. Michael Jones, whatever may be said for his other theories, had a very interesting discussion of the 1485 Sweat for which he used as a source one of Richard's former physicians, Thomas Forestier--who tried, and failed miserably, to ingratiate himself with the new king Henry VII by offering to help with the post-Bosworth outbreak in London.
These are the dates I have; apologies for them being on the vague side:
* August 7 Henry Tudor lands at Milford Haven in Wales
* August 22 Battle of Bosworth; death of Richard III
* August 27 or 28 Henry VII arrives in London
* September 19, 21, or 27 (Forestier said the 19th) outbreak of English Sweat in London ( it carried off two lord mayors and six aldermen )
* [between September and December] Forestier tried to win the favour of Henry Tudor by dedicating to him a treatise on the plague but instead was imprisoned in the Tower of London
* before
the end of October end of the English Sweat in London; killed several
thousand
· * October 30 Henry VII's coronation
Jones discussed the idea of contemporaries viewing the Sweat as a curse on the new reign of Henry VII, and that this was why Henry clapped Forestier in prison for writing about it instead of welcoming his help. Forestier wrote that the sickness "unfurled its banners," which Jones interprets as a tacit acknowledgment that the disease was carried to England by Tudor's foreign army. Whether it actually was may be less important than whether people at the time believed it was. Because that calls into question the usual claims of Henry being showered with welcoming hosannas as a savior and deliverer...
Anyway, I hope this is of some help!
Cathy
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I do think the 'Mythology' book was a missed opportunity. I expected it to be about the mythology of the sources - an update on Annette - not a random collection of tales. We so badly need that. H
From: "cherryripe.eileenb@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 2016, 23:29
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Carol...yes that's correct the story of Richard shouting 'treason, treason ' is from Rous...Historia Regum Angliae page 218. He also turns out to be telling the truth about Thomas being there as now we know,,
'kIng Richerd alone was killed fyghting manfully in the thickkest pressed of his enemyes' ....often shouting out and crying 'Treson, Treson, Treson,,,,'. This from someone who really doesn't like Richard...!
Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Mary
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
From: "cherryripe.eileenb@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Thursday, 25 February 2016, 10:24
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Unfortunately these new theories about Richard being sick at Bosworth may well create a new mythology.....which is frustrating to say the least. As you mentioned Hilary it's been pointed out that Richard was...supposedly ...thirsty...ah so they...I don't knowif this was Jones or JAH ..I'm now beginning to lose the will to live..ah so they say this could mean he was sick...do they make it up as they go along..it was in August ...he was in armour,,it would be hardly surprising if he was thirsty and requested a drink. I put a lot of this nonsense down to the number of books that have been published since the discovery of Richard's remains,,I think they struggle to find something to say that has not been said before and thus they start coming out with stupidness,,,Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
It seems as if the most important part of my post got missed in a response to my asides, so I'll repeat it. Could Northumberland have been placed near the wrong Stanley (Lord Thomas, who sat out the battle, perhaps for that reason) rather than close enough to Sir William to stop him? just a thought. Doug here: My sentences were a bit convoluted, so here's a recap: I didn't know if Lord Thomas had been at Bosworth or not; however, if he had been there, then it seemed likely to me that he had been co-located with, or at least in close proximity to, his brother Sir William. My reasoning was based on the following: If Lord Thomas was at Bosworth, there were only three places he could have been to have had any effect on the outcome (and thus be in a position to benefit). He could have been with Tudor (which would have meant he fully expected a Tudor victory from the start), with Richard (same reasoning applies), or placed somewhere else, off to the sides of the battle, but still in a position to intervene if necessary. According to Marie's post, which makes it close to Gospel, Lord Thomas was at Bosworth, it's just that we don't know exactly where. By a process of elimination we can rule out Lord Thomas being with either Tudor or Richard, otherwise why wasn't it mentioned? That still leaves two possibilities for siting Lord Thomas: with his brother, or in near proximity, or across from his brother on Richard's other flank. My reasoning that places Lord Thomas, if not co-located with Sir William, then at least near him, and roughly on Richard's right flank, is based on Richard's actions, both on 22 August and the previous day. I'm certainly not a military strategist (and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night!), but I simply can't conceive that Richard would even contemplate giving battle when he has a known opponent on his front while both of his flanks are covered by potential enemies! And that was the situation he supposedly faced on 21 August, 1485: Tudor in front of him, Sir William on his right flank and, supposedly, Lord Thomas on his left flank. And remember, Richard wasn't the only one among the Yorkist forces with military experience, there was Norfolk as well. Which means the argument is that both Yorkist leaders were willing to fight a battle, knowing all the time they were liable to be attacked on both flanks! Sorry, but no. Which is why I place Lord Thomas somewhere to Richard's right, even if not exactly in the same place as his brother. Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On 25 Feb 2016, at 10:24, cherryripe.eileenb@... [] <> wrote:
Unfortunately these new theories about Richard being sick at Bosworth may well create a new mythology.....which is frustrating to say the least. As you mentioned Hilary it's been pointed out that Richard was...supposedly ...thirsty...ah so they...I don't knowif this was Jones or JAH ..I'm now beginning to lose the will to live..ah so they say this could mean he was sick...do they make it up as they go along..it was in August ...he was in armour,,it would be hardly surprising if he was thirsty and requested a drink. I put a lot of this nonsense down to the number of books that have been published since the discovery of Richard's remains,,I think they struggle to find something to say that has not been said before and thus they start coming out with stupidness,,,Eileen
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On 25 Feb 2016, at 11:08, maryfriend@... [] <> wrote:
I don't think he is saying it did happen just that it was a possibility or might have happened. I don't think that Richard was ill either. He was betrayed by the Stanleys and possibly Northumberland. They were just self seeking adventurers who didn't care about the country as a whole only their own power.
Mary
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
It did occur to me that another reason some of the more dodgy nobility (and probably judges) didn't like Richard was that you couldn't run rings round him. Petition Edward about something boring like fishgarths and he'd yawn and pass it on. Petition Richard and he'd know all about it and have a view. That couldn't have gone down well! H
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Friday, 26 February 2016, 6:57
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Eileen wrote: Good points Doug..,any thoughts on Richard's orders to have Stanley's son executed if he let him down..if this is true it proves that Richard had serious' very serious doubts about sir Thomas at that stage...of course it doesn't prove/disprove one way or the other the whereabouts of Stanley on that day...only a serious doubt on the part of Richard,,what on earth must it have felt like that day in the Royal camp,,where you have those two slimey individuals..the Stanleys..complete with their armies,,did the truth slowly dawn on them..oh,,why didn't Richard execute Stanley the same day as Hastings,,,!!!! Wondering if all this played a big part in Richard's fatal decision to make that charge....Eileen Doug here: To be honest, I haven't thought much about l'affaire Strange because, to me anyway, it sounds an awful like so much else we hear or see about Richard just another example of the double-standard applied to any of Richard's actions that aren't also applied to his opponents. Holding a person as a guarantor of another person's actions certainly wasn't unknown during this period, the only thing being held against it being its efficacy. I see nothing special about Richard holding the son of Lord Stanley as hostage for his father's actions and, in fact, would find it odd if Richard hadn't done something on that order. Marie places Lord Thomas at Bosworth and I have neither any evidence or beliefs that he wasn't; my only question is where at Bosworth Lord Thomas actually was. I place Lord Thomas on Richard's right flank, somewhere close to his brother, simply because I cannot imagine either Richard or Norfolk thinking they stood any chance of defeating Tudor if they also faced a Stanley on both flanks. I don't buy the idea that one Stanley would hold back until the battle was decided so that a Stanley could intervene on the winning side, whichever it might be. I don't believe that because that implies that one Stanley would enter the battle at the beginning, while the other remained inactive. Really? What happens if the Stanley that intervenes first is in the process of being defeated by Richard's forces? Does that mean the one standing off to the side was then going to enter the battle on Richard's side; you know, to balance the Stanley forces out? Pish tosh! There was only one reason for the Stanleys to be at Bosworth and that was to ensure Richard died. Splitting the Stanley forces so that there was a Stanley on each of Richard's flanks would only have ensured that there wasn't a battle. Neither Richard nor Norfolk would have contemplated initiating a battle when they were already surrounded on three sides. Especially when a delay would only mean a further strengthening of the Yorkist forces. Had Norfolk not been killed there's nothing known about Bosworth that prevents me from presuming that Norfolk wouldn't have been able to defeat Tudor's forces on his own. Norfolk's forces only began to give way after Norfolk's death, until then they had battled the invaders to a stand-still and had apparently inflicted enough casualties so that all that was needed to turn the tide was the introduction of Richard and his knights a total of, what?, a couple of hundred armed men? Because, and this seems to be continually forgotten, until Sir William's forces hit the Yorkists in the flank and rear, Richard was winning! Even with his men being forced to face attack on three sides, Richard still managed to reached Tudor and those guarding him, kill Burley and, seemingly, was going for Tudor when he was forced to turn away and defend himself because Stanley's attack had broken the Yorkists. Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
JessFrom: Paul Trevor Bale bale475@... []
Sent: 26/02/2016 11:42
To:
Subject: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Bit like the Tories then Mary!Paul
On 25 Feb 2016, at 11:08, maryfriend@... [] <> wrote:
I don't think he is saying it did happen just that it was a possibility or might have happened. I don't think that Richard was ill either. He was betrayed by the Stanleys and possibly Northumberland. They were just self seeking adventurers who didn't care about the country as a whole only their own power.
Mary
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
With apologies for any errors. Yahoo is acting strangely and preventing me from editing or formatting my post, I've managed to develop a secondary cataract under the implanted lens that replaced the natural lens after my cataract operation two years ago ("laser procedure" coming up next Wednesday), so my vision is rather blurry.
Carol
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hi,
It isn't true to say that Thomas Stanley "always stated" he met Henry the day after the battle. The idea that he met Henry after the battle (2 days after, in fact) comes from a single source, i.e. the Latin of the evidence Stanley gave to the tribunal held by the papal legate in Jan 1486 to gather evidence for issuing Henry's marriage dispensation. In this - in which the witness statements are brief and repetitious, and no doubt condensed - Henry is said to have stated that he had known Henry *well* (bene) since previous 24th August. But Prior Weston, the other man who claimed to have known Henry since Bosworth, is also recorded as claiming that he had known the King since 24th August. Sounds to me like the clerk simply got the date of the battle wrong.
The grants to Stanley after the battle are quite clear that they were given in thanks for his help there. For instance, he was made Earl of Derby "considering both his most illustrious obedience to us and also his most great defence (praesidium) of us in the battle lately waged, as well by him [i.e. in person] as by all his kinsman, not without the greatest risk to both his life and his status...."
I would say it's hard to argue with that.
Marie
P. S. I'm looking into the sweating sickness references. The claim that Stanley told Richard he had sweating sickness comes from Crowland, which sounds fairly conclusive except that the chronicler was writing after the sickness had spread across southern England and he did think all evils came down from the North. The other reference is supposedly in vol 1 of Raine's 'York Civic Records'. I've finally found a copy I can afford so I'll let you know what it actually says when I receive it.
Evidently the sweat must have come from somewhere, and there's no evidence of it having broken out first along the route of Henry's march (eg in Shrewsbury), so it may very well have been brought south by either Richard's men or Stanley's, but if so then did it perhaps mutate into a more virulent form as it did so? It's just that the sweat that hit London wouldn't have left people lying around in bed issuing letters of excuse for not travelling. He might, if he had survived the disease as we know of it, have written to say he had just had the sweat and was not yet strong enough to travel, but that is a slightly different thing. Also, if it was the sweating sickness that was in York in June, as Raine apparently indicates, then why do we not see the sort of deaths amongst the city oligarchy there that we see in London in the autumn?
We could do with a good virologist on the forum!
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hi Carol,
We get this version of events from Vergil, I think. I would question it simply on the grounds of Henry's treatment of the two brothers. Thomas was the one who was given all the rewards for his help in the battle; Sir William was the one Henry got rid of at the first sign of a wobble.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Richard was betrayed. In hindsight his heroic charge seems reckless to some people but at the time, it was a strategy to rally his flagging men and end the battle by killing Henry Tudor. He almost succeeded. We have seen in the reconstruction evidence of the battle that his scoliosis would not have hindered him on horseback, it may have slowed him after a time on foot, but intensive fighting with sword or axe or other large weapon in 60 pounds of steel in the Summer will take its toll anyway. Had Stanley not betrayed him, Richard, a superior warrior would have killed Henry or he would have fled and the battle would have been won.
I don't believe Richard was ill, however.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hi,
Just to let you all know that Raine's 'York Civic Records' (vol 1) has arrived, and it doesn't provide proof that the sweating sickness was in the city in June. Viz:
On 5 June 1485 it was recorded that there "cam in proper person before Nicholas Lancastre, Mayre, and shewed howe oone Robert Heworth of York, shoemaker, unto whome the said ... stode apprentice, licensed hym for fere of the plage of pestilence that reigned, to depart from his service until his proper frends...." (p. 117)
Raine provides a footnote to "plage of pestilence" (note 2) confidently asserting: "Pestilence; this was the Sweating Sickness."
But there is, as can be seen, nothing in the actual entry to suggest that this was a new disease.
It does seem likely that whatever pestilence Stanley used as an excuse was the same one that was rampaging through York in early June, but it may not have been the sweat. It's perhaps hard to imagine that the sweating sickness would have taken so long to reach the south if it were in York by the beginning of June (Robert Heworth had, when he appeared before the Mayor, already sent off his apprentice on account of the epidemic). There's also the odd claim by Oxford University that they got the sweating sickness first. Croyland refers to Stanley's sickness as 'pestem sudatoriam' but it could possibly be that the monk who copied up notes from the government man added the word sudatoriam himself with the 'benefit' of hindsight, and that the original referred only to plague.
Looking forward to subsequent epidemics, there doesn't seem to have been a particular time of year for them to break, except that it never struck in winter - early August in 1517, early May in 1528, mid April in 1551.
Anybody know a virologist?
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Marie wrote:
//snip//
Looking forward to subsequent epidemics, there doesn't seem to have been a particular time of year for them to break, except that it never struck in winter - early August in 1517, early May in 1528, mid April in 1551.
Anybody know a virologist?
Doug here:
While I must admit I don't know any virologists, as a layman it suspiciously appears as if whatever that disease was, it occurred only during those parts of the year when insects, such as mosquitoes and gnats, could also be about.
Possibly unrelated, but just how many forms of plague are there? I know of the bubonic version, but weren't/aren't there other variants? Unfortunately, I have no idea what their symptoms/vectors are.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
While I must admit I don't know any virologists, as a layman it suspiciously appears as if whatever that disease was, it occurred only during those parts of the year when insects, such as mosquitoes and gnats, could also be about.
Possibly unrelated, but just how many forms of plague are there? I know of the bubonic version, but weren't/aren't there other variants? Unfortunately, I have no idea what their symptoms/vectors are.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
But even then it's not easy. Bubonic plague is easily diagnosed as plague because of the boils, the other forms, outlined so well by Sharon, aren't, particularly as there was this belief that bad things were carried in the air 'miasma' which was actually nearly right. So only age is another indicator - if lots of young people die it could be something like measles. If the vicar himself dies, it's usually bad. From my work in registers there would seem to be some outbreaks in the late sixteenth centuries and certainly during the early 1640s - in Yorkshire in particular and in the Midlands. But the early 1640s were when there was a great deal of troop movement round the country because of the Civil War and certainly one badly hit area in Oxon/Northants is near Edgehill. So, as with the sweating sickness, there is a correlation between soldiers, troop movement and epidemics. Other than that unless we exhume bodies, as has recently been done when they discovered a Black Death burial ground in London, then it's really difficult to say. And of course add to this that mortality was always higher in years of bad harvest because people were not so strong.
Hope this helps a bit. H
From: "'Sharon Feely' 43118@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Saturday, 5 March 2016, 21:26
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
ÿ Doug - the other variants of plague, as well as the more common bubonic, are septicaemic (where it goes straight to the blood stream) and pneumonic, which is by far the most lethal of all 3 variants and, unlike the other 2, is the only form that can be passed from person to person (the others depend on insect bites) through droplits, such as sneezing, which was always a symptom of all 3 versions. Pneumonic struck and killed so quickly that often patients were even unaware that they had it - from going to bed feeling fine, although possibly slightly under the weather, to not waking the following morning. All 3 forms still exist today, and while it is treatable with anti-biotics, the pneumonic version still almost has a 99% death rate due to the speed with which it attacks. Sharon (not a virologist but has had a lifelong obsession with plague, for some reason!) Doug here: While I must admit I don't know any virologists, as a layman it suspiciously appears as if whatever that disease was, it occurred only during those parts of the year when insects, such as mosquitoes and gnats, could also be about. Possibly unrelated, but just how many forms of plague are there? I know of the bubonic version, but weren't/aren't there other variants? Unfortunately, I have no idea what their symptoms/vectors are. Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
This would seem to indicate that its origin was an infectious agent that only the wealthy tended to encounter.
A likely suspect: a heretofore unknown variety of hantavirus, brought in by rats traveling inside a shipment of spices or exotic foodstuffs from the Near or Far East. Since the nobility or rich commoners were the only ones who could store up sufficiently large quantities of food on their premises, they unwittingly harbored the rodents whose droppings and saliva transmitted the disease to humans.
Here's a good article on the topic: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917436/
Tamara
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7680884&fileId=S0022050700111866
H
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Sunday, 6 March 2016, 15:33
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Sharon wrote: Doug - the other variants of plague, as well as the more common bubonic, are septicaemic (where it goes straight to the blood stream) and pneumonic, which is by far the most lethal of all 3 variants and, unlike the other 2, is the only form that can be passed from person to person (the others depend on insect bites) through droplits, such as sneezing, which was always a symptom of all 3 versions. Pneumonic struck and killed so quickly that often patients were even unaware that they had it - from going to bed feeling fine, although possibly slightly under the weather, to not waking the following morning. All 3 forms still exist today, and while it is treatable with anti-biotics, the pneumonic version still almost has a 99% death rate due to the speed with which it attacks. Doug here: Thank you for the information! I guess we can at least eliminate any form of plague as the sweating sickness then! I thought the bubonic form was bad, but pneumonic! Off the top of my head that leaves malaria, influenza and typhoid fever as possible explanations. Interestingly enough, according to the Mayo Clinic, typhoid fever, is caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi and is spread through contaminated food and/or those already infected. Either of which might be found in medieval cities/towns or army camps, perhaps? Also according to the Mayo Clinic, it's rare in industrialized countries, but remains a serious health threat in the developing world. Developing world; IOW places without refrigeration and modern hygiene practices? Which also describes 15th century England. Its' symptoms include: fever, head-ache, weakness/fatigue, muscle aches, sweating, dry cough, loss of appetite/weight loss, abdominal pain, diarrhea *or* constipation (gets you either way, apparently!), rash and/or an extremely swollen abdomen. However, considering all the symptoms to choose from for a name, I'd think something to do with the stomach would be the first choice, not sweating, although I must admit I don't know if suffering from typhoid fever requires one to have all the symptoms. Malaria, again according to the Mayo Clinic, is uncommon in temperate climates, which, I imagine, would is how one would describe the climate of England during this period. If Wiki and other sources are to be believed, the medieval warm period had ended during the previous century, but I don't know if that would preclude malaria-carrying mosquitoes from surviving. Malaria symptoms include: high fever, moderate to severe shaking chills, and sweating. According to the Mayo Clinic, influenza symptoms include: fever, aching muscles (especially back, arms and legs), chills and sweats, head-ache, dry persistent cough, fatigue and weakness, nasal congestion and sore throat. Seemingly we have a symptoms tie in third place for sweating between malaria and influenza, so I don't know how much that's going to help. Of course, as we've discovered nowadays, there can be various types of flu, so perhaps a version where sweating was the primary symptom could still be a possibility? Doug, who tends to lean towards malaria, but only leans.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I remember doing a project with him on "data mining."
He had lists of carbon emissions year by year going back a thousand years. I remember vividly that the only time that emissions went down was at the time of the black death.
Mind you, that kind of information could show a loss of population due to disease, not who caught what and why.
I know typhus or gaol fever was carried by lice, but that would tend to be more linked with poverty and insanitary conditions than the hopefully better conditions enjoyed by the aristocracy.
I suppose a waterborne disease is possible too.
JessFrom: 'Doug Stamate' destama@... []
Sent: 06/03/2016 15:33
To:
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Sharon wrote: Doug - the other variants of plague, as well as the more common bubonic, are septicaemic (where it goes straight to the blood stream) and pneumonic, which is by far the most lethal of all 3 variants and, unlike the other 2, is the only form that can be passed from person to person (the others depend on insect bites) through droplits, such as sneezing, which was always a symptom of all 3 versions. Pneumonic struck and killed so quickly that often patients were even unaware that they had it - from going to bed feeling fine, although possibly slightly under the weather, to not waking the following morning. All 3 forms still exist today, and while it is treatable with anti-biotics, the pneumonic version still almost has a 99% death rate due to the speed with which it attacks. Doug here: Thank you for the information! I guess we can at least eliminate any form of plague as the sweating sickness then! I thought the bubonic form was bad, but pneumonic! Off the top of my head that leaves malaria, influenza and typhoid fever as possible explanations. Interestingly enough, according to the Mayo Clinic, typhoid fever, is caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi and is spread through contaminated food and/or those already infected. Either of which might be found in medieval cities/towns or army camps, perhaps? Also according to the Mayo Clinic, it's rare in industrialized countries, but remains a serious health threat in the developing world. Developing world; IOW places without refrigeration and modern hygiene practices? Which also describes 15th century England. Its' symptoms include: fever, head-ache, weakness/fatigue, muscle aches, sweating, dry cough, loss of appetite/weight loss, abdominal pain, diarrhea *or* constipation (gets you either way, apparently!), rash and/or an extremely swollen abdomen. However, considering all the symptoms to choose from for a name, I'd think something to do with the stomach would be the first choice, not sweating, although I must admit I don't know if suffering from typhoid fever requires one to have all the symptoms. Malaria, again according to the Mayo Clinic, is uncommon in temperate climates, which, I imagine, would is how one would describe the climate of England during this period. If Wiki and other sources are to be believed, the medieval warm period had ended during the previous century, but I don't know if that would preclude malaria-carrying mosquitoes from surviving. Malaria symptoms include: high fever, moderate to severe shaking chills, and sweating. According to the Mayo Clinic, influenza symptoms include: fever, aching muscles (especially back, arms and legs), chills and sweats, head-ache, dry persistent cough, fatigue and weakness, nasal congestion and sore throat. Seemingly we have a symptoms tie in third place for sweating between malaria and influenza, so I don't know how much that's going to help. Of course, as we've discovered nowadays, there can be various types of flu, so perhaps a version where sweating was the primary symptom could still be a possibility? Doug, who tends to lean towards malaria, but only leans.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I've found a good article on the Sweat in the papers library, by Peter Hammond and the medic James R. Carlson. I know the pulmonary hantavirus theory has taken off rather, but I have my doubts about it. Apparently it is not known to jump species as such, ergo no person-to-person infection, and many contemporary descriptions make no mention of the chest pain or breathing difficulties. Also, hanta is a New World virus.
Carlson & Hammond point out that it was a summer illness, and seems to have been associated with exceptionally wet weather conditions. Caius' description of the illness would seem to bear that out, as he describes smelly fogs associated with the areas where it hit. That limits the choice of host animal, and they suggest a tick-borne disease.
C & H also point out that the idea that it sought out the wealthy may not be factually correct - it may rather be that the wealthy didn't manage to avoid it as they managed to with other epidemics and since they were the classes who left records theirs is the perspective we have. Apparently the evidence from the final known epidemic, which postdates the introduction of burial registers, doesn't tend to bear out this claim. One finding of C&H may explain the failure of the upper classes to remove themselves in time, and that is that the incubation period appears to have been extremely short, no more than 3 days.
Caius' description of the course of the illness is basically:
1) During the major course of the illness there is a fever, but no sweat, or alternate fever and cold, which feels much more severe to the sufferer than to bystanders touching them. Other symptoms are:
a) first of all, pain in the back or shoulders, and pain in the arms and legs with what he describes as 'a flushing, or wind, flying in the same' (nerve tremors?)
c) at the next stage, pain in the area of the liver and "nigh stomach" (upper abdomen??), severe headache, with 'madness', and 'passion of the heart' (racing heart?). Other sources suggest vomiting and diarrhoea with it.
e) Next comes extreme weakness, heaviness, and sleepiness, that can't be assuaged.
f) Finally the crisis, coming after anything for 3 days to 2 weeks and lasting no more than 1 day. This is the stage where the really extreme sweating occurred. Caius is quite clear that this wasn't seen at earlier stages of the illness
A continental source also mentions the laboured breathing. Also, foul body odour.
Reading all this, I do agree with C & H that this sounds like an infection that attacked the central nervous system. Everything seems to have started with pain in the back and shoulders, and what sound like neurological pain and tremors in the limbs. At the risk of sounding as though I'm making silly claims, I couldn't help but be struck by the similarity of symptoms to ME/CFS, which I have - evidently just much, much more intense. The back and shoulder pain (and in ME pain at the base of the skull), headaches, heart arrhythmia, alternating feverishness and shivers which aren't associated with much real rise in body temperature, muscle tremors, widespread pain, laboured breathing, and of course the profound, heavy, unremitting fatigue..... ME is classified by the World Health Organisation as a neurological disease, and an interesting recent theory is that the originating virus (and there invariably seems to be one) has infected the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to the heart, lungs and stomach. My guess is that, whatever the sweating sickness was, it took a similar route.
Because of this, I wondered whether survivors of the sweating sickness were ever left with chronic ill health. Caius (I think it was Caius) indeed states that recovery back to full strength was very slow, and only possible with the right care.
Where I'm not sure I go along with C & H is in their choice of culprit. They rather play up isolated reports of haemorrhagic symptoms in order to identify it as a haemorrhagic virus - the one they choose is Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever. I don't believe that bleeding can have been a necessary part of the condition, hidden by bedclothes, as they suggest. Rather it seems to have occurred in some instances..
Perhaps John Swit, who as Henry VII told the Pope in 1487 was struck down by God for making fun of the papal anathematization of Yorkist rebels, and went black and stinky and dropped dead, may have had a haemorrhagic form of the Sweat. If so, then it seems there may have continued to be isolated cases after the autumn of 1485.
So maybe the field is still open with regard to etiology. Any more ideas, anyone?
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Marie wrote:
Because of this, I wondered whether survivors of the sweating sickness were ever left with chronic ill health. Caius (I think it was Caius) indeed states that recovery back to full strength was very slow, and only possible with the right care.
Sharon says:
Anne Boleyn famously was struck down with the Sweat, just about the time that Henry started taking an interest in her and went home to Hever to recover. While it is documented that she was away from court for a while (exact duration I don't think has ever been stated but only seems to have been a couple of months) there never seems to have been any reports that her health after that suffered (until her head was separated from her body that is!), and she had many enemies so someone would surely have picked up on this.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hi Sharon.
I'm not suggesting that everyone who survived the Sweat would have ended up with chronic fatigue, but Caius seems to indicate that to avoid ongoing problems a long period of careful convalescence was necessary. Anne seems to have been accorded this.
Even with ME, the viruses that have been implicated so far are those from which the majority of people recover with no ill effects. It's just that in genetically susceptible individuals these viruses seem to have the potential to cause chronic problems - possibly hiding out in the central nervous system. And, talking of haemorrhagic viruses, a similar trend is now being seen with Ebola:
http://virologydownunder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/post-ebola-syndrome-or-just-chronic.html
It's the same again with septicaemia - a very large minority of survivors end up with post septis syndrome, which seems indistinguishable in terms of symptoms from ME/CFS.
We no longer have the good sense to insist on proper convalescence for serious infections.
Marie
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
This would seem to indicate that its origin was an infectious agent that only the wealthy tended to encounter.
A likely suspect: a heretofore unknown variety of hantavirus, brought in by rats traveling inside a shipment of spices or exotic foodstuffs from the Near or Far East. Since the nobility or rich commoners were the only ones who could store up sufficiently large quantities of food on their premises, they unwittingly harbored the rodents whose droppings and saliva transmitted the disease to humans.
Here's a good article on the topic: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917436/ . Doug here: A very interesting article, indeed! What I found most interesting is that the first recorded outbreak is listed as beginning after Henry became king! Well, that and the fact that the timing of the outbreaks seem to exclude the winter months; exactly the time one would think mice would be entering houses to find food and shelter and, thus, being positioned to spread the virus. It is a puzzlement! Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
From: "'Doug Stamate' destama@... []" <>
To:
Sent: Monday, 7 March 2016, 16:48
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Hilary wrote: You might find this interesting Doug http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7680884&fileId=S0022050700111866 . Doug here: Yes it is! Especially the part about where an investigator noted the Picardy version seemed to appear after flooding had occurred! Whatever it was, virus or bacteria, it seems to have liked moisture... Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Yes, the link with wet conditions seems pretty clear. Apparently there are known to have been massive crop failures due to rain in two of the summers concerned.
There were a few beliefs amongst the chattering classes (ie rich English males) at the time. One is that it only hit the rich; another that it only hit men (Henry VIII tried to persuade Anne Boleyn to return to court because women didn't get it - then she told him she had got it - but was it a diplomatic fever in her case?). A third was that it rarely hit foreigners even when it crossed the Channel, but sought out Englishmen. I suspect a lot of this was egocentric rather than factual.
Thomas Forrestier, who described the 1485 outbreak, wrote about the symptoms of two great ladies who were struck down with it, and the parish register of Biddenden in Kent shows that in the last outbreak there were 38 burials there of which 18 were male and 20 female, though more of the men died earlier.
The registers from the 1551 outbreak apparently show the disease hitting all classes, both sexes and all age groups.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Yes, the link with wet conditions seems pretty clear. Apparently there are known to have been massive crop failures due to rain in two of the summers concerned.
Doug here:
And if the crops failed, the mammals that normally lived in the fields might very well head for wherever they could find food, such as storage barns or pantries (presuming the house wasn't built of stone). If the culprit was some form of Hantavirus, the droppings/urine of the infected animals could be transmitted via contaminated grain. If the disease was insect-borne, on the other hand, the heavier-than-usual rain could produce large amounts of standing water suitable for breeding mosquitoes/gnats.
Topping it off, crop failures likely meant malnutrition, if not outright starvation, which would only worsen the effects of any disease!
Marie continued:
There were a few beliefs amongst the chattering classes (ie rich English males) at the time. One is that it only hit the rich; another that it only hit men (Henry VIII tried to persuade Anne Boleyn to return to court because women didn't get it - then she told him she had got it - but was it a diplomatic fever in her case?). A third was that it rarely hit foreigners even when it crossed the Channel, but sought out Englishmen. I suspect a lot of this was egocentric rather than factual.
Thomas Forrestier, who described the 1485 outbreak, wrote about the symptoms of two great ladies who were struck down with it, and the parish register of Biddenden in Kent shows that in the last outbreak there were 38 burials there of which 18 were male and 20 female,& nbsp;though more of the men died earlier.
The registers from the 1551 outbreak apparently show the disease hitting all classes, both sexes and all age groups.
Doug here:
I would think that the population of an island would, on the whole, be more likely to not develop immunities to diseases endemic to the mainland. An awful lot would depend on the incubation period, wouldn't it? Presuming the infected person would most likely cease traveling once symptoms appeared, that is.
If the disease was some sort of mutated Hantavirus being spread through infected grains, might foreigners, who tended to group together have avoided the worst of it simply because they were eating foodstuffs from their place of origin? I'm thinking of groups such the Hansa merchants mostly.
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Doug wrote:
I" would think that the population of an island would, on the whole, be more likely to not develop immunities to diseases endemic to the mainland. An awful lot would depend on the incubation period, wouldn't it? Presuming the infected person would most likely cease traveling once symptoms appeared, that is."
Marie here again:
Carlson and Hammond indicate that the incubation period seems to have been pretty short as whole groups of people got ill one on top of the other. I thought about whether the disease may have been endemic in mainland Europe, but the people there (and Thomas Forrestier, the 1485 commentator, was a Frenchman who happened to be visiting England) saw it as something with which they were unfamiliar. Continentals definitely saw it as a new English disease, not as an English bad response to a known disease. Given that there was always so much to-ing and fro-ing across the Channel it's actually quite hard to believe it could have been kept confined to mainland Europe for very long.
The short incubation period, if correct, would also mean that it is highly unlikely that some Tudor's soldiers were infected when they came over, since the disease didn't hit until about mid September, and that was in Oxford. They may have brought with them an infected animal or two, from which the disease then jumped species in September.
Doug wrote
"If the disease was some sort of mutated Hantavirus being spread through infected grains, might foreigners, who tended to group together have avoided the worst of it simply because they were eating foodstuffs from their place of origin? I'm thinking of groups such the Hansa merchants mostly."
Marie here:
The Hanse merchants, true enough lived in their own walled enclave, but other foreign merchants were allocated lodgings with English families in London in order to prevent them ganging together. I don't know what the living arrangements were for English merchants in the Low Countries, or how true it is that the host populations were little affected when the Sweat spread into some of those towns from Calais. Caius, lacking the possibility of blaming bacteria or viruses, was fumbling for explanations as to why it hit England and decided it was something about the English diet and lifestyle, so perhaps his claim about immune foreigners was wishful thinking on his part - he was trying to sell his dietary recommendations, after all.
(Apologies for getting on my hobby horse here, but isn't there just *such* a long tradition of blaming the patient for illnesses of unknown aetiology?)
Doug wrote:
"And if the crops failed, the mammals that normally lived in the fields might very well head for wherever they could find food, such as storage barns or pantries (presuming the house wasn't built of stone). If the culprit was some form of Hantavirus, the droppings/urine of the infected animals could be transmitted via contaminated grain. If the disease was insect-borne, on the other hand, the heavier -than-usual rain could produce large amounts of standing water suitable for breeding mosquitoes/gnats."
Marie here:
As I say, I'm not won over by the hantavirus theory despite the fact that the symptoms are a good match. All known strains are native to either the Americas or the Far East. Also, the pulmonary form is apparently rare and it has no known history of spreading from person to person. And it is more of a rural problem - the sweating sickness seems to have had a real liking for urban centres - Oxford, London, Calais, etc. I'm sure the country was normally overrun with rodents - that is after all how the plague kept reappearing. Perhaps it arrived on a ship from some very distant place, but perhaps we should be thinking of a two-prong trigger if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. It needed a chance mutation or two to render it capable of causing havoc in the human population, and then weather conditions that put the human population in harm's way. There are just so many ways that wet summers could have done this, from encouraging the spread of mosquitos, migration of flooded-out animals to centres of human habitation, and of course contamination by human waste of water supplies and flood water in general.
There have been many theories published about exactly what the disease was, but the hantavirus paper is available online so that has become the best known. Carlson and Hammond summarised the theories to date as:
Bacterial: Plague, epidemic typhus, cerebrospinal meningitis
Viruses: Influenza, smallpox, enteroviruses
Viruses transmitted by animals: Lymphocyte choriomeningitis, Argentinian haemorrhagic fever, Bolivian haemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, hantavirus (pulmonary syndrome)
Viruses transmitted by arthropods: Group B tickborne or Russian spring-summer encephalitis, Omsk haemorrhagic fever, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever.
Thing is, as we've seen in our own day, viruses are mutating into new forms all the time, and wholly new viruses are jumping species with alarming rapidity. Perhaps we have accidentally introduced some of these into the human population by using animal tissue to make vaccines, but perhaps it is just par for the course.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
There are diseases like Weils Disease which are spread in rats urine and also tick borne diseases which like damp places but this is a real conundrum.
Pity we can't get some DNA from someone who survived it.
JessFrom: mariewalsh2003
Sent: 08/03/2016 16:49
To:
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Doug wrote:
I" would think that the population of an island would, on the whole, be more likely to not develop immunities to diseases endemic to the mainland. An awful lot would depend on the incubation period, wouldn't it? Presuming the infected person would most likely cease traveling once symptoms appeared, that is."
Marie here again:
Carlson and Hammond indicate that the incubation period seems to have been pretty short as whole groups of people got ill one on top of the other. I thought about whether the disease may have been endemic in mainland Europe, but the people there (and Thomas Forrestier, the 1485 commentator, was a Frenchman who happened to be visiting England) saw it as something with which they were unfamiliar. Continentals definitely saw it as a new English disease, not as an English bad response to a known disease. Given that there was always so much to-ing and fro-ing across the Channel it's actually quite hard to believe it could have been kept confined to mainland Europe for very long.
The short incubation period, if correct, would also mean that it is highly unlikely that some Tudor's soldiers were infected when they came over, since the disease didn't hit until about mid September, and that was in Oxford. They may have brought with them an infected animal or two, from which the disease then jumped species in September.
Doug wrote
"If the disease was some sort of mutated Hantavirus being spread through infected grains, might foreigners, who tended to group together have avoided the worst of it simply because they were eating foodstuffs from their place of origin? I'm thinking of groups such the Hansa merchants mostly."
Marie here:
The Hanse merchants, true enough lived in their own walled enclave, but other foreign merchants were allocated lodgings with English families in London in order to prevent them ganging together. I don't know what the living arrangements were for English merchants in the Low Countries, or how true it is that the host populations were little affected when the Sweat spread into some of those towns from Calais. Caius, lacking the possibility of blaming bacteria or viruses, was fumbling for explanations as to why it hit England and decided it was something about the English diet and lifestyle, so perhaps his claim about immune foreigners was wishful thinking on his part - he was trying to sell his dietary recommendations, after all.
(Apologies for getting on my hobby horse here, but isn't there just *such* a long tradition of blaming the patient for illnesses of unknown aetiology?)
Doug wrote:
"And if the crops failed, the mammals that normally lived in the fields might very well head for wherever they could find food, such as storage barns or pantries (presuming the house wasn't built of stone). If the culprit was some form of Hantavirus, the droppings/urine of the infected animals could be transmitted via contaminated grain. If the disease was insect-borne, on the other hand, the heavier -than-usual rain could produce large amounts of standing water suitable for breeding mosquitoes/gnats."
Marie here:
As I say, I'm not won over by the hantavirus theory despite the fact that the symptoms are a good match. All known strains are native to either the Americas or the Far East. Also, the pulmonary form is apparently rare and it has no known history of spreading from person to person. And it is more of a rural problem - the sweating sickness seems to have had a real liking for urban centres - Oxford, London, Calais, etc. I'm sure the country was normally overrun with rodents - that is after all how the plague kept reappearing. Perhaps it arrived on a ship from some very distant place, but perhaps we should be thinking of a two-prong trigger if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. It needed a chance mutation or two to render it capable of causing havoc in the human population, and then weather conditions that put the human population in harm's way. There are just so many ways that wet summers could have done this, from encouraging the spread of mosquitos, migration of flooded-out animals to centres of human habitation, and of course contamination by human waste of water supplies and flood water in general.
There have been many theories published about exactly what the disease was, but the hantavirus paper is available online so that has become the best known. Carlson and Hammond summarised the theories to date as:
Bacterial: Plague, epidemic typhus, cerebrospinal meningitis
Viruses: Influenza, smallpox, enteroviruses
Viruses transmitted by animals: Lymphocyte choriomeningitis, Argentinian haemorrhagic fever, Bolivian haemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, hantavirus (pulmonary syndrome)
Viruses transmitted by arthropods: Group B tickborne or Russian spring-summer encephalitis, Omsk haemorrhagic fever, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever.
Thing is, as we've seen in our own day, viruses are mutating into new forms all the time, and wholly new viruses are jumping species with alarming rapidity. Perhaps we have accidentally introduced some of these into the human population by using animal tissue to make vaccines, but perhaps it is just par for the course.
[The entire original message is not included.]
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
What I think would be good (and I'm not volunteering - maybe some day) is to get together *all* the eye-witness reports from the various SS epidemics and copy them out in full, and also all the evidence from parish registers for the last outbreaks, evidence for weather conditions and anything else odd people remarked on at the time. Also which areas it hit and which areas were spared. Then we could give that to an epidemiologist and they'd stand the best chance of coming up with the right answer.
But in the real world modern virus hunters find stuff under a microscope. Maybe one day the remains of a known SS victim will be examined and traces of the infective agent found and identified. Until then, it will all be guesswork of course.
What puzzles me is that it arrived in England - part of an island off the NW coast of Europe - out of the blue. If it was an illness endemic in some far-flung part of the globe that had come in by ship then there would have been outbreaks along the path of travel, as with the plague. England's trade contact with such places was not via a single direct saling in those days. And maybe the people who've suggested New World diseases were overlooking the fact that the first outbreak predates Columbus by 7 years.
So maybe it has to be something that spontaneously mutated in the conditions of 1485. And maybe troop movements, or even the carrion on the battlefield, feed into that somehow as well as the weather. But it's by no means a simple problem, as you say Jessie. Perhaps it's something we still have with us in a less dramatic form. Who knows?
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
And it occurs to me that the aerosol transmission theory has a big fat hole in it: namely, the extreme selectivity of the sickness.
If the sweat was transmitted via airborne particles, it wouldn't just be the lords and ladies perishing of it. At a minimum their body servants would have it as well.
But if the body servants didn't have the same meals as did their lords and ladies - and that was generally the case, the nobles having an extra salad course at table for one thing - then that would explain why they were spared.
Bear in mind that salad is a notorious vector for E. coli. Both human and animal poop gets on lettuce leaves (the farmworkers don't always have latrines or can't/won't use them so they end up pooping where they can). The leaves get pooped on and don't always get rinsed clean, hence the warnings to consumers to wash the produce before eating it.
As for the onset times: it depends on what type of syndrome was manifesting. Hantavirus is noted for its variable time between infection and symptoms. It can incubate for days if not weeks before the first signs appear. But when they do, they hit hard, often as not killing the victim with twenty-four hours.
Tamara
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Tamara wrote:
"And it occurs to me that the aerosol transmission theory has a big fat hole in it: namely, the extreme selectivity of the sickness. If the sweat was transmitted via airborne particles, it wouldn't just be the lords and ladies perishing of it. At a minimum their body servants would have it as well. "
Marie here:
Hi. That would be a very fair point if we could believe that the disease literally struck no one below the upper classes. The disease's reputation (amongst the rich) for attacking the rich was, IMO, talked up by the proponent of the hantavirus theory, together with the pulmonary symptoms, in order to get it to fit. It clearly took all classes. The 1551 parish registers show this, and so does Thomas Forrestier's account of the 1485 outbreak, viz (in modernised spelling):
"We saw two priests standing together and speaking together, and saw both of them die suddenly. Also in die proxima [i.e. on day 1] we see the wife of a tailor and suddenly died. Another young man walking by the street fell down suddenly. Also another gentleman riding out of the city [21 Sept] died. Also many others, the which were to rehearse we have known, that have died suddenly.... some in opening their windows, some in playing with children in their street doors...."
Also, didn't Anne Boleyn flee court when one of her attendants came down with the Sweat?
I don't know what it tells us about the virus, but it seems it hit a large number of people in London simultaneously. Also, although Caius doesn't mention it, Forrestier describes what may be haemorrhagic symptoms, viz "some appear red and yellow, as we have seen many... And some had black spots, as it appeared in our Friar Alban, a noble leech, on whose soul God have mercy!"
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
There are diseases like Weils Disease which are spread in rats urine and also tick borne diseases which like damp places but this is a real conundrum.
Pity we can't get some DNA from someone who survived it. Doug here: Your phrase ...whatever it was mutated then we became immune to it... cased me to hit Google up again and look for ague. The symptoms for ague include fever, chills and sweating, so we're OK on that front. Based on the original term for it, which was Middle French, apparently the disease was first noticed in the 1300s. As best I can tell it's classed with malaria as an insect-borne disease, which links it with water. While the symptoms could be severe, it wasn't known as a killer; or at least not in the same class as the various plagues or smallpox, for example. Perhaps a mutated form of the ague? Doug
[The entire original message is not included.]
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
But yes, as you've already mentioned, unless and until we can exhume a grave of a known Sweat victim and test the remains, it's going to be difficult to prove or disprove any hypothesis.
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
"I'm sitting here typing this as I, and three-quarters of my co-workers, are
hacking our lungs out with nasty coughs.
And it occurs to me that the aerosol transmission theory has a big fat hole
in it: namely, the extreme selectivity of the sickness.
If the sweat was transmitted via airborne particles, it wouldn't just be the
lords and ladies perishing of it. At a minimum their body servants would
have it as well.
But if the body servants didn't have the same meals as did their lords and
ladies - and that was generally the case, the nobles having an extra salad
course at table for one thing - then that would explain why they were
spared.
Bear in mind that salad is a notorious vector for E. coli. Both human and
animal poop gets on lettuce leaves (the farmworkers don't always have
latrines or can't/won't use them so they end up pooping where they can). The
leaves get pooped on and don't always get rinsed clean, hence the
warnings to consumers to wash the produce before eating it."
Doug here:
First off, my sympathies! I've noted that I tend to have fewer colds since
I've retired; to the point, in fact, that I really notice when I even get
the sniffles!
The only loophole I can see in your well-thought-out reasoning against
aerosol transmission is an acquired immunity. If, for example, the sweating
sickness was a variation/mutation of some other, well-known and
suffered-from illness (think cowpox/smallpox), might that explain why
aerosol transmission, if that was the method, didn't affect everyone
equally?
In one of her posts, Marie mentioned that the reports of who actually
suffered from the illness may have been class-/social-centric(?), in that
those doing the reporting were more concerned about those of a similar
social/class grouping and just not reporting the effects of the illness on
those of the lower classes. Unfortunately, while we do have a report that
the sweating sickness was considered extremely dangerous; ie, Lord Stanley's
claims, we don't know if that fear was based *solely* on the effects it
could have on the nobles only, or whether the fear was a more general one
concerning the health *all* of those gathered together.
Tamara concluded:
"As for the onset times: it depends on what type of syndrome was
manifesting. Hantavirus is noted for its variable time between infection and
symptoms. It
can incubate for days if not weeks before the first signs appear. But when
they do, they hit hard, often as not killing the victim with twenty-four
hours."
Doug here:
*If* this disease was some mutated form of the Hantavirus, I would think
that the incubation period must likely have been fairly short; otherwise,
why didn't it, usually, spread outside of England/Picardy? If the period
between being infected and onset of the symptoms was very short; say, no
more than a week, then the infected person simply wouldn't have the time to
travel any great distance, but *would* have enough time to get to the next
village/town, even cross the Channel. An incubation period of around a week
might also explain the 1529 outbreak that spread to Northern German (via
merchants?) and then further east.
I guess all the above would boil down to whether or not one could be
infected by *a* Hantavirus and then be immune to a mutated version of that
virus?
Oy!
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
I was thinking of the "mad cow disease" CJD, epidemic that was supposed to be threatening us at one time, maybe it still is, but I believe that in the end they decided that the majority of the population was immune, probably because many of our ancient ancestors were prone to cannibalism.
I think most marshy places were subject to the ague.
Also flu is often caught from domestic animals which at that time would often have shared premises with the human population.
Personally, I would love to know what exactly it was and where it came from.
JessFrom: 'Doug Stamate' destama@... []
Sent: 10/03/2016 13:33
To:
Subject: Re: Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Jessie
wrote:
We really need an
epidemiologist here. This is fascinating. I suspect whatever it was mutated then
we became immune to it, so it died out.
There are diseases like Weils Disease
which are spread in rats urine and also tick borne diseases which like damp
places but this is a real conundrum.
Pity we can't get some DNA from
someone who survived it.
Doug
here:
Your
phrase ...whatever it was mutated then we became immune to it... cased me to
hit Google up again and look for ague.
The
symptoms for ague include fever, chills and sweating, so we're OK on that front.
Based on the original term for it, which was Middle French, apparently the
disease was first noticed in the 1300s. As best I can tell it's classed with
malaria as an insect-borne disease, which links it with water. While the
symptoms could be severe, it wasn't known as a killer; or at least not in the
same class as the various plagues or smallpox, for example.
Perhaps a mutated form of the
ague?
Doug
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
There are known diseases such as Hantaviruses that have very similar symptoms and effects, yet they're not contagious in the way we think the Sweat to have been (though person-to-person Hantavirus transmission has been documented in Peru, it's very rare from what we currently know).
There are diseases that are contagious in the way we think the Sweat to have been, yet they don't have the same features or behaviours.
Whether contagious or borne by some other vector (the link to heavy rains and summertime make some sort of food-contaminating and/or rodent-spread fungus a possibility) its perverse nature - targeting the very people (gentry and clergy) one would think to be safest from it - definitely freaked out the people whose great-grandparents were alive during the Black Death.
By the way: not ten years afterward, in 1494, syphillis made its first appearance in Naples. It was a much deadlier disease then: it smothered its victims' bodies in awful rashes, then caused their flesh to fall off their bodies and killed them in a few months. But fifty years later, it had evolved into a much less deadly disease, one that could be treated after a fashion. One wonders if something similar happened with the Sweat.
Tamara
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Sweating sickness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sweating sickness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sweating sickness, also known as "English sweating sickness" or "English sweate" (Latin: sudor anglicus), was a mysterious and highly contagious... View on en.m.wikipedia.org Preview by Yahoo
John Ashdown-Hill
I was so sad to read that John Ashdown-Hill passed away at the weekend. While I knew he was unwell, I had hoped he would have been with us a bit longer. He was a true Ricardian and a such an inspiration, and I hope other historians will follow his example and keeping digging for the truth. His books really brought the Wars of the Roses to life, and I shall certainly miss them. Requiescat in Pace, JA-H.
Nico
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On Monday, 21 May 2018, 14:29:40 BST, nico11238@... [] <> wrote:
I was so sad to read that John Ashdown-Hill passed away at the weekend. While I knew he was unwell, I had hoped he would have been with us a bit longer. He was a true Ricardian and a such an inspiration, and I hope other historians will follow his example and keeping digging for the truth. His books really brought the Wars of the Roses to life, and I shall certainly miss them. Requiescat in Pace, JA-H.
Nico
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Mary
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Jess.
Sent from my iPhone
On 21 May 2018, at 14:28, nico11238@... [] <> wrote:
I was so sad to read that John Ashdown-Hill passed away at the weekend. While I knew he was unwell, I had hoped he would have been with us a bit longer. He was a true Ricardian and a such an inspiration, and I hope other historians will follow his example and keeping digging for the truth. His books really brought the Wars of the Roses to life, and I shall certainly miss them. Requiescat in Pace, JA-H.
Nico
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
Re: John Ashdown-Hill
On Jun 8, 2018 12:11 PM, "davetheslave44@... []" <> wrote:
John Ashdown's works have been a great help disclosing Richard's piety and myth-debunking, but I'd stick to the usual view that the parading of Richard's body, esp in the way that HVII did it, was nothing more than disrespect and humiliation, also in light of the forensic evidence from the skeletal remains, that one of the buttocks had been stabbed. Given the lies about Richard, Tudor started to spread around like manure, I'd suggest the tale that there was no Battle of Bosworth was very much the case.
