[332] See the document previously cited from Rymer’s Fœdera, vol. xi. p. 635. I quote the following notice from Poulson’s Antiquities of Beverley (London, 1829), vol. ii. p. 773, as an instance of what in all probability not unfrequently took place in these times—viz. the voluntary entrance of lepers into the lazar-houses: “Item, in the year of our Lord 1394, one Margaret Taillor, a leper, came before the twelve governors of the town of Beverley in the Guildhall, and prayed license to have one bed (et petiit licenceam here [habere] unum lectum) in the leper-house without Keldgate bar, which said twelve governors, viz. Nicelas Ryse, William Pollesta, etc., by their common consent have granted.”—Lansdowne MS., No. 896, fol. 116.
[333] Skene alleges that these laws were made by David I., who died in 1152-53. George Chalmers states, that, from allusion to them in a charter to Glasgow, bearing date 1176, they were at least by that time in existence. (Caledonia, vol. i. p. 726.) See further remarks in the Essays of Anderson, Lord Hailes, etc.
[334] Skene’s Regiam Majestatem. The Auld Lawes and Constitutions of Scotland (edit. of 1774), p. 241.
[335] The economical measures generally adopted for the sustenance of the poor lepers are only too significantly shown in the following public statute passed in the Scoon Parliament of 1386. “Gif ony man brings to the markit corrupt swine or salmond to be sauld, they sall be taken by the Bailies, and incontinent, without ony question, sall be sent to the lepperfolke, and gif there be na lepperfolke, they sall be destroyed alluterlie (entirely).”—Acts of Robert III. in the Regiam Majestatem, p. 414.
[336] Transcribed from the “Chartulary of Aberdeen” in Wilkin’s Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ, tom. i. p. 616. Canon lxxii.
[337] See the edicts to this effect of the state and city of Modena, in Muratori’s Antiquitates Mædii Ævi, vol. iii. p. 54; the Synodal Statutes in 1247 of the Church of Le Mans, in Martene and Durand’s Collectio Veterum Scriptorum, vol. vii. p. 1397; ibid. p. 1363, etc.; and also the various laws enacted by the Magistrates of Paris, in Delamarré's Traité de la Police, vol. ii. pp. 636-7, etc. etc.
[338] Regiam Majestatem, Burrow Lawes, chap. 64, p. 241.
[339] Murray’s Acts of the Scottish Parliament, vol. ii. p. 18.
[340] Regiam Majestatem, p. 273.
[341] Records of Prestwick, p. 27.