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CHAPTER IV THE LAZAR-HOUSE
“For the relief of divers persons smitten with this sickness and destitute and walking at large within the realm.”[23] (Holloway, 1473.)
ON the outskirts of a town seven hundred years ago, the eye of the traveller would have been caught by a well-known landmark—a group of cottages with an adjoining chapel, clustering round a green enclosure. At a glance he would recognize it as the lazar-house, and would prepare to throw an alms to the crippled and disfigured representative of the community.
It is a startling fact that there is documentary evidence for the existence of over 200 such institutions in this country in the Middle Ages, though historians disagree in their conclusions on this subject, as they do on the extent and duration of the disease itself. To some, leprosy is a phantom playing upon the imagination of a terror-stricken nation; to others, an all-devouring giant stalking through the land. One writer surmises that all the British leper-hospitals together did not exceed fifty, for “there might have been a leper in a village here and there, one or two in a market-town, a dozen or more in a city, a score or so in a whole diocese.” Another says that “the number of these lazar-houses, however great, was insufficient to accommodate p036 more than a small proportion of those suffering from the disease. The rest flocked to the high roads, and exposed their distorted limbs and sores, and sought by attracting the notice of travellers to gain alms for their support.”
Speaking broadly, one may say that leprosy raged from the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century, when it abated; that it was inconsiderable after the middle of the fourteenth; that, though not extinct, it became rare in the fifteenth; and had practically died out by the sixteenth century, save in the extreme south-west of England.
It is commonly supposed that leprosy was introduced into this country by returning crusaders. “The leprosy was one epidemical infection which tainted the pilgrims coming thither,” says Fuller; “hence was it brought over into England—never before known in this island—and many lazar-houses erected.” Voltaire makes this satirical epigram:—“All that we gained in the end by engaging in the Crusades, was the leprosy; and of all that we had taken, that was the only thing that remained with us.” This theory, however, is no longer accepted, and Dr. C. Creighton expresses an opinion that it is absurd to suppose that leprosy could be “introduced” in any such way. Geoffrey de Vinsauf, the chronicler who accompanied Richard I, says, indeed, that many perished from sickness of a dropsical nature. He was an eyewitness of the famine which led to the consumption of abominable food, but there is little proof that these wretched conditions engendered leprosy among the pilgrim-warriors. Only once is a leper mentioned in his Itinerary, and then it is no less a personage than Baldwin IV, the young prince who became seventh King of Jerusalem and victor over p037 Saladin. It is, moreover, an undeniable fact that there were lepers in Saxon and early Norman England. The Anglo-Saxon equivalent is found in the vocabulary attributed to Aelfric. Roger of Hoveden tells the story of a poor leper whom Edward the Confessor was instrumental in curing. Aelfward, Saxon Bishop of London, retired into a monastery because of this affliction; and Hugh d’Orivalle, Bishop of London, a Norman, died a leper in 1085. Finally, at least two lazar-houses were established within twenty years of the Conquest, and before the first Crusade.
(a) Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Leprosy was rampant during the Norman period. By a happy providence, charity was quickened simultaneously by the religious movement which illuminated a dark age, so that the need was met. Two leper-houses were rivals in point of antiquity, namely, Rochester and Harbledown, both founded before 1100. These were followed (before 1135) by foundations at Alkmonton, Whitby, London, Lincoln, Colchester, Norwich, Newark, Peterborough, Oxford, Newcastle, Wilton, St. Alban’s, Bury, Warwick. Within the next twenty years hospitals are mentioned at Canterbury (St. Laurence), Buckland by Dover, Lynn, Burton Lazars, Aylesbury, York, Ripon, and Northampton; there were also other early asylums at Carlisle, Preston, Shrewsbury, Ilford, Exeter, etc. The chief building period was before the middle of the thirteenth century. A glance at Appendix B will show how such houses multiplied. Moreover, many not specifically described as for lepers, were doubtless originally intended for them. (Cf. Lewes, Abingdon, Scarborough, etc.) p038