Lanfranc, Bishop of Canterbury, and the ecclesiastical favourite of William the Conqueror, died, according to the evidence of the Saxon Chronicle in 1089,[109] seven years previous to the first crusade. During his lifetime he founded two hospitals near Canterbury, one a house built of stone (lapideum domum decentem et amplum) for patients affected with various descriptions of diseases (variis infirmitatum qualitatibus), and the second an hospital constructed of houses of wood, and specially set aside for lepers (ligneas domos ad opus leprosorum.)[110] Somner states that this latter institution still exists at Canterbury as a charitable establishment.[111] Other English lazar-houses were probably of as early a date, or at least earlier than the first emigration for the crusades. Brigges alleges that the leper-house of St. Leonards in Northampton, was founded in William I.’s reign,[112] or before 1087; and one at Chatham was, according to Tanner, in existence before the termination of the short reign of his son, William Rufus.[113]
But more than a century even previous to the date of which we speak, leprosy had been made a subject of legislation in Great Britain. In a parliament held by Pepin, King of France in 757 at Campiegne, it was enacted that leprosy in a husband or wife be regarded as a cause of separation, and that the sound party might again remarry.[114] Lobineau, in his history of Brittany,[115] tells us as one of the effects of this law of divorce, that among the higher ranks of the city of Dol, there were a number (quantité) of husbands who had as many as three wives living at the same time. Now among the earliest extant code of laws enacted in any part of Britain, those, namely, of the celebrated Welsh King, Hoel Dha, who died about the year 950,[116] there is a canon to the same effect as that referred to, viz. that a married female was entitled to separation, and the restitution of her goods, provided her husband was affected with leprosy.[117] There is, however, as we shall afterwards see, great reason to believe that the word leprosy was then used as a generic term, including under it many different varieties of cutaneous affections.
I can offer nothing precise in regard to the exact period of the first introduction of Leprosy into Scotland. If, as I have already shown to be highly probable, the term Liberton is merely a conversion from leper town, it would render it likely that the disease was an early visitant of this country; for we know that Liberton is mentioned in various old charters of the reign of David I., who died in 1153.[118] In the Foundation Charter of Holyrood (1128) the mill and chapel “de Libertune”[119] are mentioned, and in the chartulary of Kelso, “William, parsona de Liberton,” signs as witness to some charters dated during the latter half of the twelfth century.[120] At a later date there figures repeatedly, in the ancient and well-known verses of Blind Harry, as an occasional companion of Wallace—
"Thomas Gray, parsone off Libertone,"
a member of the church militant, who in more than one instance seems to have thrown aside his bell and book for the purpose of sharing in the brave struggles and hardy adventures of the Scottish patriot.
But I can adduce much more solid proof than this unstable philological basis affords, for stating that, as far back at least as the latter half of the twelfth century, the disease was not only known in Scotland, but that hospitals were by that time actually erected for the seclusion of the victims of it. The hospital of Auldnestun, in Lauderdale, had, as I have already stated, three carrucates of land granted to it, as appears from the Melrose Chartulary, by Walter, the son of Alan. The date of this grant, as of most others in the old chartularies, is not preserved, but it is a fixed and well-ascertained fact in Scottish history that the donor of it, the first of the illustrious, and afterwards royal line of Stewarts, died himself as a Cluniac monk in Melrose Abbey in the year 1177.[121]
William the Lion, who died in 1214, confirmed, as we have seen, a grant to the leper-house of Aldcambus; and the hospital of Rothfan, near Elgin, was evidently established during, if not prior to, the reign of his son and successor, Alexander II. In the chapter of gifts to this Rothfan hospital, by John Byseth, Alexander is spoken of as the reigning prince, the preamble to the grant declaring that the endowment was bestowed “for the love of charity, for the soul of King William, and for the salvation of my noble lord King Alexander” (pro salute dominis mei Alexandri nobilis Regis).[122] Alexander II. died in 1249, so that by this time the disease was certainly spread to the more northern parts of the kingdom.
All Scottish records of these earlier times are almost, as I have already observed, so entirely lost, that it now seems impossible to ascertain whether any leper-houses existed in this kingdom at a date antecedent to those to which I have thus alluded. That this was the case, however, is not improbable.