We have little doubt that Dr. Lingard[235] had some sufficient evidence from the records of the times, for stating that Henry had at least “the most loathsome eruptions on his face.” Rapin[236] and Turner,[237] in their histories of England, both refer to Mezeray as their authority for averring that these eruptions consisted of leprosy. I find that Duchesne[238] also describes Henry as weighed down with a severe and grievous affection of leprosy; and Maydestone[239] alleges that it was this last disease, and solemnly considers it as a punishment inflicted on the king for his cruel treatment of Archbishop Scrope. Iohn Hardynge, whose authority is the more valuable from his being himself a contemporary of Henry IV., and a follower of his son, Henry V., describes in his rhyming Chronicles of English History the face of the king as disfigured by leprosy. As a portion of the last personal confessions of the monarch, Hardynge puts into his mouth the following penitent lamentations regarding the changes which the ravages of the disease had wrought upon his frame and face:—
“This wormes mete, this carryon full vnquert,
That some tyme thought in worlde it had ne pere;
This face so foule that Leprous doth apere,
That here afore I have had such a pride
To purtraye oft in many place full wyde,” etc.[240]
These observations are certainly by no means sufficient either decidedly to confirm or controvert the opinion that Henry IV. was affected with leprosy; but they serve at least to show that, at the time at which he lived, rank of the highest kind was not considered as any adequate barrier against an attack of the disease.
In none of these alleged cases of leprosy in the royal family of England is the proof of the actual existence of the disease at all indubitable and complete. The evidence is more certain and satisfactory in regard to the occurrence of the malady, in its genuine form, in other scions of the House of Anjou than those who ascended the throne of England. I allude especially to the case of Baldwin IV., King of Jerusalem, a direct descendant, like the royal Plantagenets of England, from Fulk, Count of Anjou and Touraine. All historians seem to agree in stating Baldwin IV. to have laboured for some years under elephantiasis, and to have ultimately resigned his sceptre in consequence of disability from that disease. He was, says Fuller, when speaking of him under the year 1174, “enclined to the leprosie called elephantiasis.”[241] By the year 1183, “the leprosie had arrested him prisoner and kept him at home. Long” (adds the same historian) “had the king’s spirit endured this infirmity, swallowing many a bitter pang with a smiling face, and going upright with patient shoulders under the weight of his disease. It made him put all his might to it, because when he yielded to his sicknesse, he must leave off the managing of the State; and he was loth to put off his royal robes before he went to bed, a crown being too good a companion for one to part with willinglie. But at last he was made to stoop, and retired himself to a private life.”[242]
The disease, as has been above observed, did not spare the royal family of Scotland. At least two cases of leprosy are alleged to have occurred among the members of it. The first and earliest of these, however, is much more a matter of fable than of fact, and the story, as told us by Hector Boece and Dempster, is, in all probability, due rather to their love of historical romance than their knowledge of historical records. Fiacre, the subject of it, still holds a place as a saint in the Catholic calendars of France and Germany. Among the long list of oaths[243] which Rabelais, in his Pantagruel, long ago put into the mouth of the garrulous Panurge, one is an imprecation “par l’espine de Saint Fiacre.” This Saint Fiacre or St. Fithulk (as he was sometimes termed) was the reputed son of Eugenius IV. King of Scotland. Preferring a cloister to a court, he is said to have retired into France, and to have led the life of a religious solitary in a cell granted to him by Pharo, Bishop of Meaux. After his father was dead and his brother deposed, the Scottish nobles sent a deputation to Fiacre with an offer of the throne of his ancestors. But “quhen (to state the result in Boece’s words) thir ambassatouris was brocht to his presence, he apperit to thair sicht sa ful of lipper, that he was repute be thaim the maist horribill creature in erd” (on earth).[244] Spottiswood fixes the era of his death in the year 665.[245]
The case of King Robert the Bruce is a more recent and a more authenticated instance of leprosy in the royal family of Scotland. All authorities agree in stating that the Bruce suffered under a “lang seknes,” as Wyntoun[246] expresses it. Froissart, who visited the Scottish Court in the reign of his grandson Robert II., describes, in more than one passage, the Bruce as having been afflicted with and died of “la grosse maladie,” “sore greved with ye great sickenes”[247] as Lord Berners has translated it.[248] In their editions of Froissart’s works, Sauvage,[249] Buchon,[250] and Johnes,[251] severally comment upon “la grosse maladie” of Froissart, as signifying the leprosy. I have already adverted to this expression as being quite synonymous in words and meaning with the Saxon term for the disease. Further, that Bruce was really affected with and died of leprosy, seems to be borne out by the evidence of the older historians. Hemingford, a contemporary of Bruce’s, describes him as “lepra percussus;”[252] and Walsingham uses the same language both in his Chronica[253] and in his Ypodigma Neustriæ;[254] Boece speaks of Bruce as dying of leprosy (ex lepra fato concessit);[255] and Buchanan gives to his disease the more unequivocal name of elephantiasis (“nam in elephantiam incederat”).[256] Leland, in the translation which he has given in the first volume of his Collectanea from the famous Scalacronica, speaks of ambassadors being sent from England to “Murrefe (Moray), the guardiane of Scotlande in the nonage of King Davy, whos fader dyed of the Lepre;”[257] “qui mort estoit de lepre,” in the words of the original works.[258] In the old and valuable Chronicle of Lanercost, which has only been for the first time printed within the last two years, the disease and death of the Bruce are mentioned in terms equally precise. In speaking (p. 254) of Randolph and Douglas entering England in 1326, the Chronicle states that the Scottish army was not led by Bruce in person, because “factus erat Leprosus.”[259] His death is thus announced in a subsequent page (264) of these old and probably contemporary records, under the year 1329, “mortuus est Dominus Robertus Brus, Rex Scotiæ, leprosus.”