Archæological Essays, Vol. 2

by James Young Simpson

Again, among the many rules enacted by the Abbot Michaele for the regulation of the hospital of St. Julian, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, I may select the following as characteristic illustrations of the point which we are now considering:—

“Let no one presume to transgress the bounds fixed of old, (metas ab antiquo statutas), of which one is placed in the south, another in the north, as they still remain in view, except the custor of granges and granaries, to whom the charge is committed to the master.

“Let no brother venture to enter the bake-house or brew-house in any manner, with the exception of the brother to whom the charge is assigned, who, when he enters, may not approach the bread and beer, in touching or handling them in any way; since it is not meet that men of such infirmity should handle those things which are appointed for the common use of men.

“Let no one of the brothers attempt to go beyond the bounds of the hospital, namely, in the direction of the king’s road, without his close cape, in going to church or returning, nor stand or walk about in the said street before or after service (nor, indeed, at any hour of the day before or after dinner); but when divine service is finished, let them enter their hospitals with all haste, unless any one wishes to remain in the church, that he may have leisure for prayer and meditation. In like manner, we command that there be no standing in the corridor, which extends in length before the houses of the brothers in the direction of the king’s road; and that no brother hold conversation there (teneat ibi parliamentum) with another; but if any brother wish to hold colloquy with another, let one go to the other in order, as he may wish, through the said corridor, without standing by the way, unless some stranger chance to meet him, with whom he may briefly speak and pass on. But if an honest man and true come there, for the purpose of visiting an infirm brother, let him have access to him, that they may mutually discourse on that which is meet.”[350]

In considering under a previous head the extent of endowment of the British leper hospitals, we have seen that the inmates of many of the poorer institutions depended more or less entirely for their means of subsistence upon the casual alms which they were able to beg from the charitable. In a few favoured cases the lepers were specially authorised to pursue this occupation beyond the district of the hospital. A charter was given by King John to the lepers of St. Lawrence’s Hospital, Bristol, granting them great privileges of this kind. Some of the passages in this charter are curious, as illustrative of the present point. I append a translation of a part of it from the copy of the original document as published by Dugdale:—

“John, by the grace of God, King of England, etc., to the Archbishops, etc., greeting, know ye that we, for the love of God, have granted, and by this charter have confirmed to the lepers near Bristol, a croft beyond the gate of Lacford, on the road to Bath, to dwell there, as the charter which we gave them while we were Count Moreton reasonably proves; know ye also that we have received these lepers into our protection, and therefore desire and command that ye befriend and protect them (quod eos manu teneatis et protegatis), and cause no impediment to them, wherever they shall be asking alms in our lands, as our letters-patent which we granted unto them when Count Moreton rationally testifies,” etc.[351]

Grants and liberties, such as the above, were certainly, however, rare. In general the lepers were restricted as to the districts and places in which they presented themselves to seek for alms. We have already seen the Burrow Lawes ordering that they “sall not gang fra dure to dure, but sall sit at the ports of the burgh, and seek alms fra them that passes in and furth;” and the Scottish Parliament of 1427 enacted that they should not be allowed to sit and beg “neither in kirk nor in kirk-yairdis,[352] nor other places within the burrowes, but at their owne hospital, and at the part of the town and other places outwith the burrowes.” But even in exercising this vocation in these stated places, the unfortunate petitioners seem to have been everywhere obliged to use certain precautions, with the view of prohibiting them from diffusing the disease.

In Scotland, and in various other parts of Europe, they were obliged, for this purpose, to use a “clapper” or rattle, in order that the noise created by it might warn the healthy of the presence of an infected fellow-mortal, whilst, at the same time, they carried a “cop” or receiving dish, into which the charitable might drop their alms.[353] Muratori tells us that in Italy the lepers made their presence known at a great distance (longe positos) by the noise of a certain piece of wood. Marmotrecti describes more minutely the instrument as composed of wood, and formed of two or three tablets of it, which the leper struck together when seeking bread (quas concutit leprosus quaerendo panem).[354]

In the celebrated old Scoto-Saxon poem of Sir Tristrem, composed probably about the middle of the thirteenth century,[355] and valuable (to use the words of an acute critic)[356] “for its pictures of ancient manners” and the customs “of Scotland in the days of Alexander III.,” the hero of the romance is, at one stage of his adventures in Cornwall, represented as assuming for disguise and concealment the appearance of a leper or mesel.[357] In this character the poet provides him with the usual cop and clapper (stanza 80, p. 181).