they are the only two besides the ancient Matilda’s Hospital in St. Giles’s fields.... Another of the suburban leper-spitals was founded at Highgate by a citizen of 1468, and it is not until the reign of Henry VIII. that we hear of the spitals at Mile End, Knightsbridge and Hammersmith.’[160] Dr. Creighton adds that 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.
The village of St. Giles in the Fields, as shown in the accompanying plan, is of great interest, largely because the place still retains some of its old special features. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Rookery of St. Giles’s was destroyed, and New Oxford Street was built on the site, the lines of its contour were little altered since the Hospital was founded at the beginning of the twelfth century.
The Ordinance of Edward III. (1346), and the swearing of the porters of the city gates that they will prevent lepers from entering the city, are printed in Riley’s Memorials (pp. 230, 384).
Dr. Creighton states that, as far as he knows, the Ordinance of 1346 is the only one of the kind in English history, and adds: ‘The statutes of the realm contain no reference to lepers or leprosy from first to last; the references in the Rolls of Parliament are to the taxing of their houses and lands. The laws which deprived lepers of marital rights and of heirship appear to have been wholly foreign; in England, leprosy as a bar to succession was made a plea in the law courts.’[161]