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88-631: In the 16th century, after suffering from the effects of the Black Death , Europe was in the middle of an economic expansion due in part to increased trade and newly discovered deposits of precious metals from the New World . However, England was suffering with financial difficulty. In the 1540s, Henry VIII began a campaign of excessive overspending of government money on his lavish lifestyle and to pay for wars with France and Scotland . In order to fund these, Henry had already raised great sums through

176-651: A calque : Icelandic : svarti dauði , German : der schwarze Tod , and French : la mort noire . Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin : magna mortalitas , lit.   'Great Death'. The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla , with her mouths "full of black Death" ( Ancient Greek : πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο , romanized :  pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio ). Seneca

264-522: A fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius ; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan , six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I . In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–549 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y . pestis . This

352-509: A London merchant. By his wife he had an only son who predeceased him. He also had an illegitimate daughter who married Sir Nathaniel Bacon ( c. 1546–1622), half-brother of Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans , becoming Anne, Lady Bacon . Gresham died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy , on 21 November 1579 and was buried at St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate in the City of London . Apart from some small sums to various charities, Gresham bequeathed

440-728: A description of the disease modelled on Thucydides 's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens , noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities. Nicephorus Gregoras , while writing to Demetrios Kydones , described the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens. The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400. Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347;

528-458: A human epidemic . Definitive confirmation of the role of Y. pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al. They assessed the presence of DNA / RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y. pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with

616-463: A lower price for them. The introduction of these debased coins caused coins at similar face value but with higher precious metal content to disappear from circulation, in line with Gresham's law . Gold and silver standards continued to drop under Henry VIII: in 1545 gold was reduced to 22 karat and again to 20 karat in 1546. Silver content also dropped numerous times from the previously fine silver (92.5%) to 50% in 1549 and again to 33% in 1546. Copper

704-524: A rue du Pipi. Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris. Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were careless. William E. Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without, received a complaint alleging that "men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of] . . . horse dung and horse piss." One irate Londoner complained that

792-619: A small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact. According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road , and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak. Additionally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death; Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on

880-529: A team led by Galina Eroshenko placed its origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. However more recent research notes that the previous sampling contained East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y. pestis in the Caucasus region previously thought to be restricted to China. There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of

968-512: Is known as the first plague pandemic . In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue." The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan ( Guangzhou ). Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it

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1056-481: Is needed to the range of (especially non- commensal ) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague. Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London, and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person. This theory

1144-557: Is still contested. It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He 's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia , India , and Africa. Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in 14th-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions. Ole Benedictow argues that since

1232-528: Is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic . Academic debate continues, but no single alternative explanation for the plague's spread has achieved widespread acceptance. Many scholars arguing for Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus , smallpox , and respiratory infections . In addition to

1320-567: The Dissolution of the Monasteries , selling off the Crown's land, and by raising taxes; however, more money was still required. In May 1542, Henry issued a secret indenture whereby he ordered that the amount of gold and silver within the country's coinage be secretly reduced and for the previously unsuccessful Testoon coin to be reproduced. For the next two years the newly minted debased coins, including

1408-651: The East Smithfield burial site in England. Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist". Later in 2011, Bos et al. reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y. pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y. pestis . Later genomic papers have further confirmed

1496-634: The Great Famine of 1315–1317 ) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages ), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century. Outbreaks of

1584-526: The Late Neolithic - Early Bronze Age . Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the " Neolithic decline " around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly. This Y. pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara . The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in

1672-835: The Mamluk Sultanate , cultural center of the Islamic world , and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin ; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died. The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th-century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex . The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites ; plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over

1760-506: The Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa , West Asia , and the rest of Europe via Constantinople , Sicily , and the Italian Peninsula . There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague , thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague. In 2022, it

1848-516: The Rialto there, called Saint Mark 's; 'tis but a bauble, if compared to this. The nearest, that which most resembles this, is the great Burse in Antwerp , yet no comparable either in height or wideness, the fair cellarage, or goodly shops above. Oh my Lord Mayor , this Gresham hath much graced your City of London; his fame will long outlive him. In 1544 he married Anne Ferneley, widow of Sir William Read,

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1936-448: The gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves. This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood . Most people died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes, which may have been caused by flea-bites , were identified as another potential sign of plague. Thomas Gresham Sir Thomas Gresham

2024-549: The germ theory of disease . Until then streets were usually unhygienic, with live animals and human parasites facilitating the spread of transmissible disease . By the early 14th century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit". There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as

2112-508: The phylogenetic placement of the Y. pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics—including the third plague pandemic —and the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian . In addition, plague genomes from prehistory have been recovered. DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th-century London showed that plague is a strain of Y. pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013 . Further DNA evidence also proves

2200-404: The poll tax of the year 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy. Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission . In 2018 researchers suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people". The second model claims to better fit the trends of

2288-502: The second plague pandemic . The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history. The origin of the Black Death is disputed. Genetic analysis suggests Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic , with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age . The immediate territorial origins of

2376-555: The weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City of London , also founded by him in 1565. The Faneuil Hall at Boston , Massachusetts , has also borrowed this heraldic device . The Gresham coat of arms is blazoned: Argent, a Chevron Erminés between three Mullets pierced Sable . According to ancient legend, the founder of the family, Roger de Gresham, was a foundling abandoned as a new-born baby among long grass in Norfolk during

2464-457: The 1640s. Nestorian gravesites dating from 1338 to 1339 near Issyk-Kul have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic ; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y. pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death. Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during

2552-649: The Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia , China, the Middle East , and Europe. The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through

2640-512: The Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y. pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages". In 2011 these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in

2728-418: The Black Death in 14th century China. As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day. According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th-century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years. The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until

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2816-506: The Black Death, because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis that became predominant in different parts of the world. Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Death. Another theory is that the plague originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China. Other historians, such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw, believe

2904-506: The Elder ( / ˈ ɡ r ɛ ʃ ə m / ; c. 1519 – 21 November 1579) was an English merchant and financier who acted on behalf of King Edward VI (1547–1553) and Edward's half-sisters, queens Mary I (1553–1558) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In 1565 Gresham founded the Royal Exchange in the City of London . Born in London and descended from an old Norfolk family , Gresham

2992-588: The Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague". In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus : "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" ( Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant ). Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in

3080-652: The Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus . Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj . In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen , al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home. During 1349, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of

3168-457: The Islamic world in 1347–52. However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time. War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them – probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule. Monica Green suggests that other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of

3256-643: The London merchant Sir William Read, but maintained residence principally in the Low Countries , basing his headquarters at Antwerp in present-day Belgium (then the Spanish Netherlands ), where he became renowned for his adept market-play . When in 1551 the mismanagement of Sir William Damsell , King's Merchant to the Low Countries, had caused the English Government much financial embarrassment,

3344-585: The Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making its role in the spread of plague less likely. There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346. Others still favor an origin in China. The theory of Chinese origin implicates the Silk Road, the disease possibly spreading alongside Mongol armies and traders, or possibly arriving via ship—however, this theory

3432-591: The Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', ( Latin : mors atra ) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease. The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" ( febris pestilentialis ) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases ( De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium ). The phrase mors nigra , 'black death',

3520-703: The annual value of which at that time amounted ultimately to about 400 pounds a year. On the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, Gresham fell out of favour at Court for a short time with Alderman William Dauntsey displacing him. But Dauntsey's financial operations proved unsuccessful and Gresham was soon reinstated; and as he professed his zealous desire to serve the Queen, and manifested great adroitness both in negotiating loans and in smuggling money, arms and foreign goods, not only were his services retained throughout her reign (1553–1558), but besides his salary of twenty shillings per diem he received grants of church lands to

3608-615: The authorities called Gresham for advice, thereafter following his proposals. Gresham advocated the adoption of various methods – highly ingenious, but quite arbitrary and unfair – for raising the value of the pound sterling on the Antwerp bourse which proved so successful that in just a few years King Edward VI had discharged almost all of his debts. The Government sought Gresham's advice in all their money difficulties, and also frequently employed him in various diplomatic missions. He had no stated salary, but in reward of his services received from King Edward various grants of lands,

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3696-496: The bacterium Yersinia pestis , is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents , including marmots , in various areas, including Central Asia , Kurdistan , West Asia , North India , Uganda , and the western United States. Y. pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin , a pupil of Louis Pasteur , during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacterium

3784-427: The blockage via regurgitation , resulting in thousands of plague bacteria flushing into the feeding site and infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts , keeping the disease endemic , and a second that lacks resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating

3872-471: The bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic and pneumonic forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms. In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during

3960-618: The bulk of his property (consisting of estates in London and around England giving an income of more than £2,300 a year) to his widow and her heirs, with the stipulation that after her death his own house in Bishopsgate Street and the rents from the Royal Exchange should be vested in the Corporation of London and the Mercers Company , for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven professors should read lectures, one each day of

4048-485: The city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is also likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople , where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347. The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor , John VI Kantakouzenos , who wrote

4136-418: The continent. According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavorable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations, forcing their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean and during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region . Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, pre-existing malnutrition weakened

4224-419: The debased currency of England. However, Sir Thomas never formulated anything like Gresham's law , which was the 1857 conception of Henry Dunning Macleod , an economist with a knack for reading into a text that which was not written. The Gresham family crest is: On a Mount Vert a Grasshopper Or (a golden grasshopper on a green mound); it is displayed by Gresham College , which he founded, and also forms

4312-486: The debasement occurred, gold and silver content in coins fluctuated, as well as the coins' weights. During debasement the following coins circulated. During debasement the silver content of the penny dropped by more than 83%. 1544 the fineness of the silver was steadily debased from the normal .925 fine down to .333 fine. Half-sovereigns were produced in four different standards. Sovereigns like that half sovereigns were also produced in four different standards. By

4400-669: The disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point into northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles . From Italy , the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France , Spain , Portugal, and England by June 1348, then spreading east and north through Germany , Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It

4488-544: The disease. Symptoms of the plague include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints , nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise . Left untreated, 80% of victims die within eight days. Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos ) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio 's description: In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by

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4576-466: The emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg ... From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As

4664-404: The end of 1572. In 1565 Gresham made a proposal to the City of London 's Court of Aldermen to build, at his own expense, a bourse or exchange – what became the Royal Exchange , modelled on the Antwerp bourse – on condition that the Corporation provided for this purpose a suitable location. In this proposal he seems to have had a good eye for his self-interest as well as for

4752-484: The fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347. The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague. Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation. Nonetheless,

4840-456: The first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa , the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea . Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 per cent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370. This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of

4928-487: The following one and a half centuries. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus , and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo . That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon , Syria , Israel , and Palestine , the cities of Ascalon , Acre , Jerusalem , Sidon , and Homs were all infected. In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch . The city's residents fled to

5016-585: The general good of the City's merchants, for by a yearly rental of £700 obtained for the shops in the upper part of the building he received more than sufficient return for his trouble and expense. The foundation of the Royal Exchange is the background of Thomas Heywood 's play: If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody part 2 , in which a Lord extols the quality of the building when asked if he has ever seen "a goodlier frame": Not in my life; yet I have been in Venice ... In

5104-469: The immune response, contributing to an immense decline in European population. The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic , leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople via a single merchant ship carrying slaves. By late summer 1348, it reached Cairo , capital of

5192-576: The north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey. Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa. The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily. Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from

5280-424: The pandemic "the furste moreyn " (first murrain ) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague. The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand. "Black death"

5368-550: The people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive. Geoffrey the Baker , Chronicon Angliae Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. During a protracted siege of the city in 1345–1346, the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg —whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease— catapulted infected corpses over

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5456-408: The period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis. Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y. pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp , no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations. The importance of hygiene was not recognized until the 19th century and

5544-657: The plague likely originated in Europe or the Middle East, and never reached China. Norris specifically argues for an origin in Kurdistan rather than Central Asia. The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire , where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive. ... But at length it came to Gloucester , yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted

5632-476: The plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century. European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia , 'pestilence'; epidemia , 'epidemic'; mortalitas , 'mortality'. In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death". Subsequent to

5720-526: The plague's death toll, as the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, contradicting historical death data. Lars Walløe argued that these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread". Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention

5808-619: The reintroduced Testoon , were stockpiled in Jewel Tower in the Palace of Westminster , while production of coins at the current standard continued. By May 1544, a lack of bullion arriving at the mint prompted the government to issue the secret indenture and allow the debased coins to enter into general circulation. Two months later, in July 1544, merchants of the Low Countries discovered that newly minted silver groats had become debased and begun offering

5896-430: The remainder of his life in London, he continued his business as merchant and government financial agent in much the same way as he had always done. Queen Elizabeth also found Gresham's abilities useful in a variety of other ways, including acting as gaoler to Lady Mary Grey (sister of Lady Jane Grey ), who, as a punishment for marrying Thomas Keyes the sergeant-porter, was imprisoned in his house from June 1569 to

5984-605: The remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death. What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia. According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates

6072-532: The role of Y. pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan . Researchers are hampered by a lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, where estimates of overall population at the start of the plague vary by over 100%, as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and

6160-420: The runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near." In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into

6248-435: The street. Early Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing. According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman , Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago. Later research by

6336-585: The time Elizabeth I came to power in 1558, the quality of England's coinage had already greatly affected both confidence in the monarchy as well as the country's trading relations, with foreign merchants refusing to accept the debased currency as payments. In concert with her advisers William Cecil and Thomas Gresham the queen became convinced that these problems could be solved by restoring England's coinage to its previously high standards, by removing debased currency from circulation. Coins with higher fineness were often hoarded, while debased legal tender currency

6424-434: The week, in astronomy , geometry , physic , law, divinity , rhetoric and music. Thus, Gresham College , the first institution of higher learning in London, came to be established in 1597. Gresham's law (stated simply as: "Bad money drives out good") takes its name from him (although others, including the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus , had recognised the concept for years) because he urged Queen Elizabeth to restore

6512-461: The withdrawn coins melted down and replaced with newly minted coins with high fineness. An estimated £50,000 was gained by the crown in the process. In 1561 milled coinage was introduced into England by French moneyer Eloy Mestrelle replacing the often crude hammer struck coins. Black Death The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It

6600-651: The yearly value of 200 pounds. Under Queen Elizabeth 's reign (1558–1603), besides continuing in his post as financial agent of the Crown, Gresham acted as Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Court of Duchess Margaret of Parma , Governor of the Netherlands , and was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1559 prior to his departure. The unsettled times preceding the Dutch revolt compelled him to leave Antwerp on 10 March 1567; but, though he spent

6688-471: Was a punishment. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks. Due to climate change in Asia , rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease. The plague disease, caused by

6776-464: Was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600. A report by the Medical Faculty of Paris stated that a conjunction of planets had caused "a great pestilence in the air" ( miasma theory ). Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise. For non-believers, it

6864-609: Was concurrently apprenticed in the Mercers' Company to his uncle Sir John Gresham , founder of Gresham's School , while he was still at Cambridge . In 1543 the Mercers' Company admitted the 24-year-old Gresham as a liveryman , and later that year he left England for the Low Countries , where, either on his own account or that of his father or uncle, he carried on business as a merchant whilst acting in various matters as agent for King Henry VIII . In 1544 he married Anne Ferneley, widow of

6952-471: Was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated. The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being

7040-465: Was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy , then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen ). Finally, it spread to northern Russia in 1352 and reached Moscow in 1353. Plague was less common in parts of Europe with less-established trade relations, including the majority of the Basque Country , isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands , and isolated Alpine villages throughout

7128-411: Was made to improve fineness by increasing gold fineness to 22 karat (a standard that became known as crown gold ), at the cost of reducing coin size. Silver content, by contrast, reached a new low of just 25% in 1551. The debasement policy was officially revoked in October 1551, and silver fineness was returned to the pre-debasement standard of 92.5% fine silver. Over the course of the seven years that

7216-469: Was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish : den sorte død , lit.   'the black death'. This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as

7304-411: Was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air. One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the beginning of

7392-419: Was one of two sons and two daughters of Sir Richard Gresham , a leading merchant mercer and Lord Mayor of London , who was knighted by King Henry VIII for negotiating favourable loans with foreign merchants. Gresham was educated at St Paul's School . After that, although his father wanted Thomas to become a merchant, Sir Richard first sent him to university at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge . He

7480-457: Was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission. The mechanism by which Y. pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage starves the fleas, drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour, and causes them to try to clear

7568-444: Was used as a substitute for silver in the coins. Henry's stockpiled testoons were covered in a thin layer of silver which had a tendency to wear off, particularly over the protruding nose of his portrait, revealing the copper underneath, so much so that Henry was nicknamed Old Coppernose. After Henry VIII's death in 1547, nine-year-old Edward VI was crowned king. The debasement policy continued under Edward; however, in 1548 an attempt

7656-563: Was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" ( De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni ), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease. The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about

7744-465: Was used to pay debts, a concept that in the 19th century would be referred to as Gresham's law , though it was not formulated as such by Gresham. In preparation for the removal of debased coinage, the government enacted a law which forbid "good" coinage from entering foreign markets and ended the legal tender status of all debased currency. In 1560, under the instructions from the queen, Thomas Gresham withdrew all debased coinage from circulation and had

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