158 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. (3) 



after making due allowance for this, there is no doubt 

 that a great wave of leprosy passed over Europe com- 

 mencing about the 8th century, gradually spreading, 

 developing, and eventually passing away northwards and 

 westwards. 



There is a common belief that it was first brought into 

 England by soldiers returning from the crusades, but 

 though many of them may have come back lepers, they 

 did not introduce the disease, which existed here long 

 before their time. There is a well authenticated case re- 

 ported in Ireland in 432. In 950 the Welsh King, Howel 

 Dda, passed a series of laws permitting the divorce of 

 married persons should the man become a leper. And 

 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1089, six 

 years before the first Crusade, founded, during his lifetime, 

 at least one, and probably two leper-houses at Canterbury. 

 Leprosy did not reach Scotland till somewhat later, but 

 it had practically died out in England, while it was still 

 virulent in the northern kingdom. In 1350 some statutes 

 were drawn up for the leper-house at St. Albans, and it 

 appears then that there were hardly any lepers requiring 

 admission ; but in the same year it was thought necessary 

 to institute a leper-house for Glasgow, and nearly 100 

 years later, in 1427, the Scottish Parliament deemed it 

 proper to legislate on the sul)icct of lepers, though it is 

 curious that the latest leper-house estalilished in the 

 kingdom was one at Highgate, and this was not founded 

 until 1472, at a time when it was officially reported that 

 there were very few lepers left in England. Some years 

 later, in 1540, a Royal Commission was appointed to in- 

 spect the Lazarettos in England, and they reported that 

 among the inmates were very few leprous persons, and 

 yet it is well known that as late as 1693 there were lepers 

 in the Lazaretto at Kingcase. It was long before it became 

 actually extinct in Scotland ; it lingered in the Shetlands 



