Some of the Lazar Houses were specially endowed for persons above the lower ranks who happened to become affected with the disease. In 1491, Robert Pigot gave by will to the Leper House of Walsingham, in the Archdeaconry of Norwich, a house in, or near that town, for the use of two Leprous persons “of good families.”
Before considering the Royal Lepers, it will not be out of place to mention the death of S. Fiacre from Leprosy, in 665. He was the reputed son of Eugenius IV., King of Scotland, and is canonised in the Roman branch of the Church Catholic[].
Amongst Royal Lepers, the case of Adelicia or Adelais, daughter of Godfrey, Duke of Louraine, and niece of Calextus II., Bishop of Rome, 1118; the second Queen of Henry I. of England, and afterwards wife of William de Albion, to whom she was tenderly attached; stands first in order of state. Being stricken with leprosy, she left him and entered a convent, where she died of the disease, 1151. This reputed instance, it is right to mention, requires confirmation. The above is mentioned by a contributor to Notes and Queries, 7, S. viii., 174, but no authority is given.
Baldwin IV., King of Jerusalem, a direct descendant like the Royal Plantagenets of England, from Fulk, Count of Anjou and Touraine, died of Leprosy in 1186, leaving a child nephew to succeed him; the consequence being, the loss of the Holy Land, and the triumph of Saladin after eighty-eight years of the Christian kingdom[v].
Henry III. is said to have been a Leper.
Edward the Black Prince, used to bathe in the Holy Well at Harbledon, near Canterbury, for his Leprosy, and Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, had a licence at one time from the King of England to bathe in the waters of S. Lazarus’ Well on Muswell Hill, near where now stands the Alexandra Palace. The well belonged to the Order of S. John, Clerkenwell, a hospital order for Lepers. Three years before his death, he was unable to undertake the command of the army in its descent upon the northern counties of England, by reason of his Leprosy, of which he died in 1329, at the age of 55[w].
Henry IV. King of England, was a Leper without doubt[x].
Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI. of England, is reputed, like her ancestor Baldwin IV., to have died a Leper[y].
Louis the XIV., is said to have died of the disease in 1715. It is also recorded, that in order to effect a cure, recourse was had to a barbarous superstitious custom, once unhappily common in Brazil, that of killing several fine healthy children, eating their hearts, livers, &c.; then washing in their blood, and annointing the body with grease made from the remains. Let us at least hope this impious and inhuman act is but “legend[z]”.