What was the sweating sickness in Tudor England?

History Extra

A rather mysterious illness, the sweating sickness hit in a series of epidemics, but was not always fatal.

 Symptoms included cold shivers, headaches, pain in the arms, legs, shoulders and neck, and fatigue or exhaustion. Far from being a disease that raged through the lower classes, many well known individuals of the Tudor court contracted the illness, including Anne Boleyn and her brother and father, George and Thomas, along with Cardinal Wolsey.

The sweating sickness killed numerous nobles and courtiers, including two of the Duke of Suffolk’s sons, Henry and Charles, and Mary Boleyn’s first husband, William Carey.

 Lauren Mackay is the author of Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and his Six Wives through the Life and Writings of the Spanish Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys (Amberley Publishing).

October 9

28 BC The Temple of Apollo was dedicated on the Palatine Hill in Rome.

768 Carloman I and Charlemagne were crowned Kings of The Franks.

1000 Leif Ericson, the great Norse explorer, became the first European to land in North America, which he called Vinland. The date is celebrated as Leif Ericson Day in Norway.

1047 Pope Clement II died.

1390 King John I of Castile was killed in a fall from his horse while riding in a fantasia (equestrian performance) with some of the light horsemen known as the farfanes, who were mounted and equipped in the Arab style.

  1192 Richard the Lionheart left Jerusalem in disguise.

1470 Henry VI of England restored to the throne. 1514 Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.

1529 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was indicted for using his power illegally. His failure to secure the annulment of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is widely perceived to have directly caused his downfall and arrest.

1536 The Pilgrimage of Grace, popular rising in York, Yorkshire, in protest against Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, as well as other specific political, social and economic grievances, began.