"Some merry at dinner and dead at supper"

Edward Hall, who wrote the Tudor history Hall’s Chronicle, described the plague year of 1523 when, “Suddenly there came a plague of sickness, called the Sweating sickness, that turned all [the king’s] purpose. This malady was so cruel that it killed some within three hours, some within two hours, some merry at dinner and dead at supper.”

It has been fiv…