176 THE HospPiITaAL OF SANQUHAR. 
Home Subjects,’’ points out, these ecclesiastical buildings had 
suffered by neglect in the years preceding 1560, as well as from 
English soldiers in times of invasion. Mr M‘Dowall in his work 
quoted above states that “ at the Reformation, the property being 
secularised, Ross of Ryehill is said to have secured a consider- 
able portion of it.’’ This is, to say the least, very doubtful. 
The last of the Rosses in Upper Nithsdale was Isobel de Ross, 
who married William-de-Crichton about 1350. At the time of 
the Reformation Ryehill was held by a branch of the Crichton 
family. The sick cared for within these institutions were gene- 
rally those afflicted with the terrible scourge, leprosy; which was 
at that early period very prevalent, and which claimed many 
victims. (It was of this disease that King Robert the Bruce died 
in 1329.) The want of cleanliness, of vegetables, of 
fresh meat in winter, but above all the terrible hard- 
ships to which some of our countrymen were exposed concurred 
to make leprosy as common in Scotland then as it is in some 
Eastern countries to-day. At these places, too, travellers who 
needed shelter could rest for the night in something the same way 
as travellers do to-day at the Hospices among the Alps. It cer- 
tainly seems a little strange to us with our modern ideas of 
sanitation and public health that a hospital for lepers should be 
used also as a hotel for travellers, but in those days such things 
do not seem to have troubled our fathers. 
ADDENDUM TO “ OLD PusBLic LiBRARIES,’’ Voi. XVII., P. 39. 
By Mr G. W. Suir ey. 
The Society Library was dispersed by auction in Edinburgh 
on the 15th and 16th March, 1875. Mr W. Macmath, Edinburgh, 
possesses a copy of the sale catalogue, and bought at the sale what 
was believed for long to be the only copy of Burnside’s History 
(Catalogue number, 73, Folio). Mr Macmath now has that copy 
and another similar one which had been in the possession of 
William Bennet, editor of the Dumfries Monthly Magazine. The 
original History by Burnside is now in the possession of the 
Society. 
