The English Sweat in Lübeck and North Germany, 1529

Abstract

Only two of the epidemics of the English sweating sickness have been the subject of modern demographic studies. Robert Gottfried analysed the mortality of the 1485 epidemic by studying probated wills, and John Wylie and Ian Linn, and more recently Alan Dyer, analysed the 1551 epidemic on the basis of parish burial registers.1 The epidemic of the sweat in England in 1528, which is of special interest in the present context since in all probability it caused the epidemic on the European continent in 1529, has not been studied demographically, possibly because burial records did not exist before 1538. Literary sources, however, seem to indicate that this epidemic was severe. In a letter of 30 June 1528, the French ambassador, Jean Du Bellay, wrote that 40,000 people had been affected by the disease in London, and 2,000 had died, and the descriptions in Raphael Holinshed’s chronicle and in Grafton’s chronicle leave no doubt that this epidemic took a heavy toll.2 Since no demographic analysis of the epidemic on the continent in 1529 has been carried out so far, this article focuses on the outbreak of the sweating sickness in north Germany and Schleswig-Holstein because the existence of testamentary records in Lubeck from the period makes such an analysis possible.