[184] See the various charters and memorials in Surtees’ History of Durham.
[185] Two of the larger houses for lepers not mentioned in the text were St Nicholas’s at Carlisle and the hospital at Bolton in Northumberland, each with thirteen beds.
[186] By collecting every reference to lepers or lazar-houses in Tanner’s Notitia Monastica or in Dugdale’s Monasticon Sir J. Y. Simpson has made out a table of some hundred leper-houses in Britain (Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. 1841 and 1842). Simpson’s table has been added to by Miss Lambert in the Nineteenth Century, Aug.-Sept. 1884, by the Rev. H. P. Wright (Leprosy etc. 1885), who says at the end of his long list: “There were hundreds more,” and by Mr R. C. Hope (The Leper in England, Scarborough, 1891), whose list runs to 172.
Perhaps the most remarkable development of that verbalist handling of the matter has been reserved for a recent medical writer, who has constructed, from the conventional list of leper-hospitals, a map of the geographical distribution of leprosy in medieval Britain. (British Medical Journal, March 1, 1890, p. 466.)
[187] The Lock was doubtless the house of the “Leprosi apud Bermondsey” who are designated in the Royal Charter of 1 Hen. IV. (1399) as recipients, along with the leprosi of Westminster (St James’s), of “five or six thousand pounds.” (Rotuli Chartarum, 1 Hen. IV.)
[188] Beckett, Phil. Trans., vol. 31, p. 60.
[189] Stow, Survey of London, ed. of 1890, p. 437.
[190] Beckett, l. c. The Knightsbridge house was earlier. See next note.
[191] Survey of London, pop. ed. p. 436. Bequests to lepers occur in various wills of London citizens, in Dr Sharpe’s Calendar of Wills, vol. II. Lond. 1890. In a will dated 21 April, 1349, the bequest is to “the poor lazars without Southwerkebarre and at Hakeney” (p. 3). On 1 July, 1371, another bequeaths money to “the three colleges of lepers near London, viz. at le loke, at St Giles de Holbourne, and at Hakeney” (p. 147). On 7 April, 1396, bequests are made to “the lepers at le loke near Seynt Georges barre, of St Giles without Holbournebarre, and le meselcotes de Haconey” (p. 341). The “lazar house at Knyghtbrigge” appears, for the first time, in a will dated 21 Feb. 1485, along with “the sick people in the lazercotes next about London” (p. 589).
[192] Accounts of the Lord High-Treasurer of Scotland. Rolls series I. 1473-1498, pp. 337, 356, 361, 378, 386.