(iii) INMATES OF SOME LAZAR-HOUSES
(1) Lincoln Invalids.—Near Lincoln is a spot still pointed out as the “Lepers’ Field.” Formerly it was known as the Mallardry or as Holy Innocents’ hospital. p101 Had one visited this place in the days of Edward I, ten of the king’s servants—lepers or decrepit persons—would have been found there, together with two chaplains and certain brethren and sisters. Thomas, a maimed clerk, was one of the staff, but after thirty years he incurred the jealousy of his companions, who endeavoured to ruin his character while he was absent on business. Brother Thomas appealed to the king, and justice was administered (1278). Some time afterwards the household became so quarrelsome that the king issued a writ, and a visitation was held in 1291 to set matters straight. In 1290 William le Forester was admitted to the lepers’ quarters, his open-air life not having saved him from disease. Dionysia, a widow, took up her abode as a sister the same year, and remained until her death, when another leper was assigned her place. An old servant of the house past work was admitted as pensioner, and also a blind and aged retainer whose faithfulness had reduced him to poverty, he having served in Scotland and having moreover lost all his horses, waggons and goods in the Welsh rebellion. But strangest of all the residents in the hospital of Holy Innocents was the condemned criminal Margaret Everard. She was not a leper, but had once been numbered among the dead. Mistress Everard, of Burgh-by-Waynflete, was a widow, convicted of “harbouring a thief, namely, Robert her son, and hanged on the gallows without the south gate of Lincoln.” Now the law did not provide interment for its victims, but it seems that the Knights Hospitallers of Maltby paid a yearly sum to the lepers for undertaking this work of mercy at Canwick.[68] On this memorable p102 occasion, however, the body being cut down and already removed near the place of burial—the lepers’ churchyard—the woman “was seen to draw a breath and revive.” We learn from a Patent Roll entry (1284) that pardon was afterwards granted to Margaret “because her recovery is ascribed to a miracle, and she has lived two years and more in the said hospital.”
(2) The Lancastrian falconer and Yorkist yeoman.—A certain Arnald Knyght, who had been falconer to Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, caused a habitation to be built for himself on the site of the hospital by the Whiteditch, near Rochester, in order that there he might spend his days in divine service. In consideration of his age and of his infirmity of leprosy, Henry VI granted to Arnald and Geraldine his wife not only the building recently erected, but the lands and rents of St. Nicholas’ hospital. Edward IV afterwards granted a parcel of land between Highgate and Holloway to a certain leper-yeoman “to the intent that he may build a hospital for the relief of divers persons smitten with this sickness and destitute.” This man—half-founder, half-inmate—soon succumbed, for a record four years later states that “the new lazar-house at Highgate which the king lately caused to be made for William Pole . . . now deceased” was granted for life to another leper, Robert Wylson, a saddler, who had served well “in divers fields and elsewhere.”[69]
[♦ ] 15. SEAL OF KNIGHTSBRIDGE HOSPITAL
(3) The Mayor of Exeter.—Shortly before 1458, St. Mary Magdalene’s, Exeter, had a prominent inmate in the sometime mayor, Richard Orenge. In 1438 Richard William, p103 alias Richard Orenge, is mentioned as a tailor; he is also described as being a man of French extraction and of noble family. Once he had been official patron of the asylum, but when the blow fell, he threw in his lot with those to whom he had formerly been bountiful. There, Izacke says, he finished his days and was buried in the chapel.
(4) Two Norfolk lepers.—We learn incidentally through a lawsuit that about the year 1475 the vicar of Foulsham, Thomas Wood, was in seclusion in a London lazar-house:—“and nowe it is said God hathe visited the seid parsone with the sekenes of lepre and is in the Spitell howse of knygtyes brygge beside Westminster.”[70] Why the priest came up from the country to Knightsbridge does not appear; it would seem, however, that the Norfolk manor was temporarily in the king’s hands, so that possibly the crown bailiff procured his removal. One of the latest leper-inmates whose name is recorded ended his days at Walsingham. The patron of the Spital-house left it in 1491 to John Ederyche, a leper of Norwich, and Cecily his wife, stipulating that after their decease, one or two lepers—“men of good conversation and honest disposition”—should be maintained there. p104
(iv) SOLITARY OUTCASTS
It must not be supposed that there were no lepers save those living in community. To use the old phrase, there was the man who dwelt in a several house and he who was forced to join the congregation without the camp. To lepers “whether recluses or living together” the Bishop of Norwich bequeathed five pounds (1256). Hermit-lazar and hospital-lazar alike fulfilled the legal requirement of separation. It may be noticed that the service at seclusion implies that the outcast may dwell alone. In early records, before the king habitually imposed “corrodies” on charitable institutions, pensioners are named who were not inhabiting lazar-houses. Philip the clerk was assigned a tenement in Portsmouth, which was afterwards granted to God’s House on condition that Philip was maintained for life, or that provision was made for him to go to the Holy Land (1236). Long afterwards, in 1394, Richard II pensioned a groom of the scullery from the Exchequer, but provided for one of his esquires in a hospital.[71]
In hermitage and hospital alike service was rendered to the leper in his loneliness. The little cell and chapel at Roche in Cornwall is said to have been a place of seclusion for one “diseased with a grievous leprosy.” Since no leper might draw from a spring, his daughter Gundred fetched him water from the well and daily ministered to his wants.