APPENDIX.
ADDITIONAL NOTES BY JOSEPH ROBERTSON, LL.D.
Leper Hospital of Glasgow.
Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I. p. 10.—“In 1350, in the reign of David II., the Lady of Lochow, daughter of Robert, Duke of Albany, erected a leper hospital at the Gorbals of Glasgow, near the old bridge.—(Gibson’s Hist. of Glasg. p. 52; Cleland’s Glasg. vol. i. p. 68.)”
There is some mistake here. If the leper hospital was founded by the Lady of Lochow, daughter of the Duke of Albany, it must have been a hundred years after 1350. The dukedom of Albany was not created until 1378, and the first daughter of that house who married a Knight of Lochow was Marjory, the wife of Sir Duncan Campbell, who died in 1453.
The earliest record notice of the hospital which I have observed is in 1494, when William Steward, prebendary of Killern and rector of Glassfurd, endowed a chaplain to serve in the chapel of St. Ninian, which he had lately built, “ad Hospitale Leprosorum degentium prope Pontem Glasguensem.” He provided that yearly, on the anniversary of his death, twenty-four poor scholars should assemble in the chapel of the hospital to perform certain services, for which one penny was to be paid to each of them, along with one shilling to the lepers—“et leprosis non sociatis degentibus in dicto Hospitali xijd.” The lepers were to ring the chapel bell for the Salve Regina every night, and to pray in the chapel for their benefactors.—(Regist. Episcopal. Glasg., vol. ii. pp. 488-490. Edinb. 1843, Mait. Club.) In 1505 we have “pauperibus leprosis in Leprosario Sancti Niniani trans pontem Glasguensem degentibus.”—(Liber Collegii Nostre Domine Glasguensis, p. 259. Glasg. 1846, Maitland Club.) In 1528, James Houston, sub-dean of Glasgow, founder of the Lady College (now the Tron Kirk) of Glasgow, ordered twelve pennies to be distributed yearly, on the anniversary of his death, to the lepers beside the Bridge of Glasgow, and others, who should appear in the churchyard of the Lady College to say orisons for his soul—“leprosis extraneis et commorantibus juxta Pontem Glasguensem comparentibus in cimiterio prefecto Ecclesie Collegiate oraturis Deum.”—(Lib. Coll. Nostre Domine Glasguensis, p. 51.) The Tron Kirk or Ladye College was on the north side of the Clyde, and within the burgh of Glasgow, so that we have here proof that lepers in 1528 were not forbidden to enter the burgh. Contrast this feeling towards them with the feeling shown in the Leges Burgorum and Statuta Gilde of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, printed in the Acta Parliamentorum Scotiæ, vol. i., and with the banishment of all lepers from Glasgow in 1593 and 1594, as instructed by the Kirk-Session Records, abridged in Wodrow’s Biograph. Collect., vol. ii. part ii. p. 41.
Did this difference of toleration arise from some corresponding difference in the intensity or general diffusion of the disease?
Leper Hospital at Stirling.
The existence of a leper-house at Stirling is proved by entries in the Rotuli Scaccarii Regum Scotorum, MS. in the General Register House.