“If a person become a surety, and before the termination of the suit he should become leprous, or a monk, or blind, .... he must fulfil his promise while he lives.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 403.)
“There is to be no objection to a pleader, but for having violated his religious profession, and quitting the world, or his becoming a separated leper.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 516.)
“Three sons who are not to have patrimony—The son of a priest, the son of a leper, and the son of a man who had paid his patrimony as blood land. The son of a leper is not to have it, because God has separated him from worldly kin—that is, such son as a leper may have after being adjudged to a lazar-house; and a son a priest shall have after taking priestly orders; and the third has no patrimony, as his father, prior to him, had determined it by law.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 556. See also p. 603.)
“Three persons to whom saraad [fine for insult] is not due—A leper, a natural fool, and an alltud [an alien serf] who is not married to an innate Cymraes: And, nevertheless, there is worth in law attached to each of them, and whoever shall ill-use them and injure them in person and property is subject to a dirwy [fine or punishment].—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 656.)
“Three persons who are not to be invested with the judicial function—An inefficient person, as one that is deaf, or blind, or maimed, or leprous, or insane, or mute,” etc. etc.—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 671.)
“A leper cannot be a pleader.”—(Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 764.)
The Welsh term for leper is Clafwr, obviously an adaptation of the Latin word.
It should be kept in view that the license which the Welsh laws give to the wife to leave a leprous husband is in direct contradiction to the canon law as declared by Pope Alexander III. to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1180:—“Mandamus quatenus si qui sunt in provincia tua viri vel mulieres qui lepræ morbum incurrunt, ut uxores viros et viri uxores sequantur, et eis conjugali affectione ministrent, sollicitis exhortationibus inducere non postponas. Si vero ad hoc induci non poterunt, eis arctius injungas ut uterque altero vivente continentiam servet. Quodsi mandatum tuum servare contempserint, vinculo excommunicationis adstringas.”—(Corpus Juris Canonici, vol. ii. col. 656. Edit. 1747.)
The same Pope, in the same year, decreed that lepers might marry:— “Leprosi autem si continere nolunt, et aliquam quæ sibi nubere velit invenerint, liberum est eis ad matrimonium convolare.” He settled another and more delicate point:—“Quodsi virum sive uxorem divino judicio leprosum fieri contigerit, et infirmus a sano carnale debitum exigat, generali præcepto Apostoli, quod exigitur est solvendum: cui præcepto nulla in hoc casu exceptio invenitur.”—(Corpus Juris Canonici, vol. ii. col. 656. Edit. 1747.)