‘To Be Shut Up’: New Evidence for the Development of Quarantine Regulations in Early-Tudor England

Summary On 13 January 1518, a series of ordinances to regulate plague outbreaks were proclaimed in London. These have previously been thought to have been the first set of quarantine measures issued in England; part of an ambitious new social policy led by the King’s chief minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and intended to bring England in line with the leading Renaissance states in Europe. The discovery of two previously unknown documents from the archives of St George’s College, Windsor—which predate the London ordinances—requires a reconsideration of this narrative. The article argues that demands for plague quarantine regulations were driven primarily by Henry VIII’s personal and pronounced fear of infection and considers the factors that may have led to such a fear. In doing so, it introduces new evidence for the death of Henry’s grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, and explores the ways in which medical ideas travelled across Europe.