The sweating sickness in Cromwell's household

The sweating sickness in Cromwell’s household is the 1529 outbreak that kills Thomas Cromwell’s daughters Anne and Grace and comes amid the deaths of his sister Kat Cromwell and her husband, Morgan Williams. The epidemic turns a household decision about whether to send the children away into an intimate family disaster; its aftermath is marked by orphaned relatives, interrupted Christmas customs, and Cromwell’s continued grief for the people he has lost.

Background and the decision to stay

In July 1529, Cromwell makes a will that provides for his children, extended family, servants, poor prisoners, and the repair of roads. When the summer plague returns, he asks Mercy and Johane whether the children should be sent away. They weigh the danger against the hope that the sickness will be less severe after the previous year’s outbreak. Cromwell doubts that the epidemic follows any predictable pattern, but the family decides that the girls will remain at home.

The choice is made against a background of successive bereavements. At Christmas, Cromwell reflects that Kat and Morgan have died as suddenly as his daughters will. Their deaths leave two boys, Richard and the child Walter, without their parents; both are taken into his household. Morgan had been a talkative but shrewd and hardworking man, while Kat had once relied on her brother to teach her practical skills. Her later inability to understand him becomes, in retrospect, a measure of their distance as well as their bond.

Anne’s illness and death

Anne falls ill first. Mercy and Johane try to keep her awake, believing that sleep could be fatal, but she becomes exhausted. As she struggles to breathe, Cromwell takes her hand and tries to still its movement. She later rouses, asks for her mother and for the copybook in which she has written her name, and briefly recognizes her father after her fever breaks. The reprieve is short: her fever rises again, and she no longer responds to him.

Cromwell stays with Anne as she weakens, but Grace has also fallen sick. He leaves the room to see that his younger daughter is put to bed and is absent when Anne dies. When he returns, her face has relaxed, and her hand feels too heavy for him to bear. He remembers that she was already learning Greek. That thought, and the copybook bearing her name, make her loss inseparable from the person she was becoming, rather than only from the fact of her death.

Grace and the family’s losses

Grace dies in Cromwell’s arms. He eases her back onto the bed and thinks that he never truly knew her, despite having been her father. The child’s name had been chosen after her birth: her parents had considered Henry for a boy and Katherine for a girl, but Cromwell said another name when he saw her, and Liz agreed. His reflection that grace cannot be earned or deserved gives the loss a spiritual weight without resolving it.

The deaths compound one another. Anne and Grace are gone; Kat and Morgan are also dead; and Richard and Walter have joined the household as orphans. The outbreak therefore changes not just who lives under Cromwell’s roof, but the structure of the family itself. In a moment of accumulated grief, Cromwell asks the priest whether Anne can be buried with her copybook. The priest has never heard of such a request, and Cromwell is too tired and angry to press the matter.

Aftermath and remembrance

The epidemic remains present in the household after its immediate crisis. Mercy hangs signs of the sickness outside the children’s room, while the family’s practices of cleaning and prayer offer no protection. Anne’s prayer is remembered as an act of determined seriousness, but neither devotion nor careful household precautions can prevent the losses.

At Christmas, the household does not hold its customary songs and plays. Cromwell visits the stored Three Kings’ star, checks the protective canvas sleeves, and leaves the costumes and children’s shepherds’ crooks packed away. He cannot imagine the better years in which the celebration might return, though he preserves its objects. When he tells Johane that he wishes there were a baby in the house, the wish makes the absences plain: the rooms and customs still exist, but the children who gave them life are gone.

Significance

The account sets private loss beside Cromwell’s public life, showing a man who continues to navigate political danger while his family is being remade by illness and death. Its most consequential actions are domestic and limited: deciding whether the girls should stay, trying to care for Anne, leaving her room to attend to Grace, and seeking a burial place for Anne’s copybook. The outbreak’s emotional force comes from these divided acts of care and from the small traces the children leave behind—the name in a copybook, the Greek Anne was learning, and the family celebrations that no one can bring themselves to stage.