PART II.

The preceding notices, however brief and imperfect, relative to the first introduction and dissemination of syphilis in Scotland, are not simply matters calculated to gratify mere antiquarian curiosity. They appear to me to be capable of a much higher application, for they offer so many elements tending to illustrate the general history of the first appearance of syphilis in Europe. Besides, we may, I believe, be justified in drawing from the data they afford several not uninteresting nor unimportant corollaries, both in regard to the first origin and mode of propagation of the disease, and the distinction of it from other affections with which it has sometimes been confounded.

_1st Corollary._—These notices tend to corroborate the pathological opinion, that syphilis was a species of disease new to Europe when it first excited the attention of physicians and historians in the last years of the fifteenth century.

Like the numerous list of contemporary authors and physicians quoted by Astruc, Grüner, and Weatherhead, the Aberdeen edict speaks of syphilis in the last years of the fifteenth century as a disease hitherto unknown, “the infirmity come out of France and foreign parts.” The Edinburgh edict mentions it as “_a_ contagious disease callit the grandgore.” If it had been previously known, the definite, and not the indefinite, article would have, in all probability, been employed. And if such a disease had previously existed on the continent of Europe, there is every reason to believe that it would have also existed and been known in Britain. Besides, this reasoning certainly admits of being inverted and changed, in so far that we may probably lay it down with equal justice, that if the disease was new, as it would appear to have been, in Scotland at that time, it was in all probability new also to the other kingdoms of Europe.

_2d Corollary._—But if syphilis was thus new in Britain in the end of the fifteenth century, this shows that it is a species of disease distinct and different alike—1st, from gonorrhœa, and, 2d, from Greek leprosy, with both of which maladies it has, as is now well known, been occasionally confounded; for both these maladies existed, and were abundantly recognised, in this, as in other countries, long before the era of the introduction of syphilis. Gonorrhœa was early distinguished by English authors under the name of “burning,” or “brenning” (_ardor urinæ_, _arsura_, etc.) Thus, Andrew Borde, in his “_Breviary of Health_,” 1546, speaks of it as the “burning of an harlotte.” “Burning of harlottes” is also mentioned in Bulleyn’s _Bulwark of Defence_, 1562. But it is under this same name that reference is made to the same disease in one of the ordinances enacted about 1430, for the better regulation of the eighteen brothels that stood for centuries on the Bankside in Southwark, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. At the above date it was decreed that “no stewholder keep noo woman wythin his hous that hath any sickness of brenning.”[615] This statute was enacted half-a-century before the introduction of syphilis in England; and nearly a century previously, gonorrhœa had been accurately described, among others, by John Arden, surgeon to Richard II., who, writing about 1380, gave a correct summary of the symptoms, pathology, and treatment of this malady. In an old English medical poem, evidently written not later than the last part of the fourteenth century, and published lately by Mr. Stephens of Copenhagen, there is a receipt for “all maner brenninge” (line 294); and then follows a series of cures (line 510, etc.)—

“if ye verge be brente As man of woman may so be schente, Thorow cas yᵗ womā may be his bote Off qwom his sekenesse be gan ye rote.”[616]

There is no doubt, further, that gonorrhœa was well known to the Greek, Roman, and Arabic authors, and is described unmistakably in their writings.

I might also, if it were here necessary, adduce abundant evidence to show that the two diseases, Greek leprosy and syphilis, though sometimes confounded together, were always in general regarded as two entirely different affections; and that, as such, the hospitals severally appointed for the reception of those unfortunates labouring under the diseases in question were kept distinct and separate. Thus, in 1527, the Carmelite monk, Paul Elia, proposed to the burgomaster of Copenhagen a plan for an hospital outside the town for “syphilis, cancer, and other great sores,” similar to the Leper Hospital already existing;[617] for syphilis had, at an early period of its existence, spread itself into Denmark.

When syphilis broke out in Edinburgh, in 1497, those affected by it were not sent to the leper hospital then existing near the town, but they were ordered off to Inchkeith. In the course of the next century, we find in the Kirk Session books of Glasgow the two maladies recognised as distinct, and two separate hospitals devoted to those affected by these two separate diseases. For on the 20th October 1586, the Kirk Session “ordains some to visit the leper folks’ house or spittal beyond the brig, to see how the same, and the dykes of the yards may be reformed, and that nane be received but town’s folks.” But again, in 1592, the same Session directed “that the house beyond the stable-green-port for women afflicted with the Glengore be looked after.”[618]

In a late census of Norway, above two thousand lepers were found in that small kingdom; but the Scandinavian physicians do not confound together syphilis and Greek elephantiasis, and have no difficulty in distinguishing them. Nor have our own colonial professional men in the East and in the West Indies, where both diseases exist, any dubiety, at the present day, in recognising them as two totally different and specific maladies.

_3d Corollary._—As regards the mode or modes in which syphilis was supposed to be so speedily propagated at its first appearance in Europe, the Aberdeen and Edinburgh records are both interesting, though in some respects they offer very opposite testimony on this point.

For some time after syphilis broke out, it was believed, both by medical men and by the non-medical public, that the disease was communicable, and constantly communicated from the infected to the healthy by the employment of the clothes, vessels, baths, etc., used by those already suffering from it, and by the slightest corporeal contact, or even by inhaling the same air with them. I might appeal on this head, if it were necessary, to the individual and general testimony of Schilling, Torella, Brandt, Massa, and almost every other early continental author, historical or medical, who mentions the first outbreak of syphilis. Some even thought that neither the presence of infected persons, nor of fomites, was always absolutely requisite. In his work, _De Morbo Gallico_, published in 1551 (above half-a-century after the disease commenced), Benedict Victorius, of Fienga, like most of his contemporaries, still maintained that “the state of the air” (to use his own words), “together with that of the putrid humours, are sufficient to beget the affection;” and in strong confirmation, he adds, “I myself happened once to know some honest and religious nuns, who were confined in the strictest manner, and yet contracted the venereal disease from the peculiar state of the air, together with that of the putrid humours, and the weakness of their habit of body.”

The same belief in the easy contagion of syphilis without contact or intercourse extended to our own country. It was, in particular, strongly believed that the malady could be propagated from the sick to the healthy by the medium of the breath. One of the gravest articles of guilt brought against the celebrated Cardinal Wolsey, when he was arraigned before the English House of Lords in 1529, was the allegation that (to quote the _ipsissima verba_ of the indictment, as laid before Henry VIII.), “whereas your Grace is our Sovereign Lord and Head, in whom standeth all the surety and wealth of this realm, the same Lord Cardinal, knowing himself to have the foul and contagious disease of the great pox, broken out upon him in divers places of his body, came daily to your Grace, rowning in your ear, and blowing upon your most noble Grace with his perilous and infective breath, to the marvellous danger of your Highness, if God of his infinite goodness had not better provided for your Highness. And when he was once healed of them, he made your Grace believe that his disease was an impostume in his head, and of none other thing.”[619]

The notion that the breath of persons having the venereal disease was infectious seems to have prevailed as late as the reign of William and Mary. Dr. Oates, in his _Picture of the late King James_ (1696), says,—“Tom Jones, your quondam chaplain, was afraid to go to old Sheldon, for fear he should give him the pox by breathing on him.” (Part II. p. 106.)

The Edinburgh regulations of September 1497 are evidently framed upon the idea that “the contagious plage callit the grandgore,” as they term it, was propagated by simple contact, and personal intercourse, or probably even by the air. Hence their strict injunctions for the removal and detention of the “infectit, or that hes bene infectit and incurit,” to their secluded position upon the island of Inchkeith, for “the eschewing” (to cite again the words of the edict) “of the greit apperand danger of the infectioune of the lieges.” Indeed, it seems to have been believed that the disease might be communicated through medical attendants, or intermediate individuals who were themselves unaffected. This is at least the natural, or, indeed, the only interpretation of that part of the edict which enjoined that all persons who take upon them “to hale the said contagious infirmitie,” go with their infected patients to Inchkeith; and if they attended and treated such cases within the city, they did so at the peril of being themselves cauterised on the cheek with the “marking iron,” and banished without favour (banisht but favouris) out of the town.

The anxiety of the authors of the Edinburgh regulations to prevent this supposed medium of communication through a third person is further displayed in the severity of the punishment—(the application, namely, of the actual cautery to the face)—denounced against the medical attendants who should infringe the above edict by not passing to, and remaining on, Inchkeith. “Lykwayis the saidis personis that takis the said cure of sanitie vpoun thame, sal be byrnt on the cheike with the marking irne that thai may be kennit in tyme to cum.”

For some time after the first outburst of the disease, sexual intercourse with the infected does not seem to have been suspected as the source and means by which the syphilitic contagion was propagated. Nor was the local primary affection of the sexual organs generally noticed by the authors of these times as either a constant or marked symptom. They were acquainted with, and described, only the secondary symptoms of the malady—the hideous eruptions on the skin—the ulcers of the throat—the nocturnal pains in, and lesions of, the bones—while they mostly all pass over the genital organs, as if they remained unaffected. So much so was this the case, that we find Montagnana, in 1498, advising not as a means of infection, but rather as a means of cure, moderate coition; for, in laying down various rules of treatment to a sick bishop under his care for syphilis, he inculcates, among other items “coitus vero sit temperatus.”[620]

When treating of this subject, and when speaking of both the usual mode of the infection of syphilis and its primary local symptoms generally escaping notice at the era of the first appearance of the disease, Swediaur observes,—“It is worthy of remark, that although many authors, since the year 1500, make mention of the genital organs, and say that syphilis may more generally (ut plurimum) be communicated by coition; not one before that time (1500) points out the (primary) affection as essential or characteristic of the disease. All (Swediaur adds) look upon it as a disease pestilential and contagious without coition, and even without any direct contact” (vol. i. p. 36). The observations of Astruc and Girtanner, and other authors on this point, are nearly to the same effect.

In relation to this question, that of the actual mode and means of propagation of syphilis, the edict of Aberdeen, in 1497, is particularly remarkable and interesting, and most fully maintains the character of the capital of the north for that native shrewdness and sagacity which the poet Dunbar long ago solemnly assigned to it. We have just now referred to Swediaur, etc., stating that up to 1500 all European writers looked upon syphilis as spreading, pestilentially and contagiously, without coition. Three years earlier, the aldermen and town-council of Aberdeen seem to have arrived at more just ideas of its laws of propagation, and to have distinctly suspected impure sexual intercourse as the mode of communication of the malady. This seems to be fully borne out by their ordering, “for the eschewing of the infirmitey,” that (to use the words of the edict) “all licht weman be chargit and ordanit to desist fra thar syne of venerie;” and we have the usual glowing and earnest threat of the application of the actual cautery, or “ane key of het yrne (hot iron) to thair chekis,” in case of disobedience. The later Aberdeen edicts of 1507, which we have already quoted at length, show, however, that the rulers of the burgh had been subsequently led to adopt the erroneous idea of the leading authorities of the day, that the disease might be transmitted also in the way of common contagions, and even, perhaps, by the medium of a third person.

_4th Corollary._—The early notices that I have adduced of the appearance of syphilis in Scotland are curious as proofs of the rapidity with which the disease travelled, at its first outbreak, over the kingdoms of Europe. The new malady was, as I have already stated, first distinctly recognised during the period that Charles VIII. of France occupied the city of Naples, or rather immediately after he left that place. The cases of the disease that had appeared previously were not, at least, anywhere in such numbers, or in such severity, as to excite any marked and decided degree of attention from physicians or from the public. That Naples was the locality in which the contagion first burst forth so extensively and overtly as to be considered almost the source and cradle of the new epidemic; and further, that this happened at the precise date of the visit of the French army, seems, as has been suggested by various authors, to be shown by the very designations respectively conferred at the time upon the new affection by the Neapolitans and French. For whilst, as already alluded to, the French, as is well known, designated it at its first commencement among them the Neapolitan disease, alleging it to have been communicated to them by the inhabitants of Naples, the Neapolitans, on the other hand, termed it the French disease, believing that it had been brought to them by the victorious army of France. Now the date of Charles’s sojourn in Naples is well known. His army, in their march through Italy, arrived at Rome on the 4th December 1494, and entered Naples on the 21st or 22d February 1495; and after remaining three months, they vacated the city on the 20th May. On the 24th of the same month the renowned Spanish general Cordova landed in Sicily; on the 6th July the battle of Fuornovo was fought, and next day King Ferdinand returned to Naples; but the last remains of the French army did not reach France till the end of the following year. The Aberdeen edict, however, was issued within less than two years after Charles commenced his march homeward. Or, we may state the matter otherwise. Columbus arrived at Palos, in Andalusia, after his first voyage to the New World, on the 15th March 1493, having previously landed at Lisbon on the 6th, and visited the Portuguese King at Valparaiso: while Pinzen, the commander of the other remaining caravel of Columbus’ tiny fleet, was, about the same date, driven northward into the French port of Bayonne. Possibly one focus or centre for the future spread and dissemination of syphilis was left in this French port by Pinzen’s crew, if they brought the infection with them; but I have nowhere found any allusion to this question. Columbus reached Spain, from his second voyage, in April 1496. The edict of the Aberdeen aldermen and council was passed on the 23d April 1497, or exactly four years and thirty-eight days from the date of Columbus’ first return to Spain; while the famous ordinance of the Parisian authorities regarding syphilis was issued on the 6th March 1497, only forty-eight days before that of Aberdeen.[621]

In reference to the rapidity with which syphilis spread from the south and middle of Europe to this small and isolated kingdom of Scotland, it is necessary to remember that in the last years of the fifteenth century, and during the reign of James IV., the intercourse of this country with “France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Flanders was (to quote the words of the Scottish historian, Mr. Tytler) as regular and uninterrupted, not only in the more solemn way of embassies, but by heralds, envoys, and merchants, as that carried on with England.”[622] There was in actual operation, also, at that very date, another medium by which such a disease was very likely to be carried from the Continent to our shores, and diffused among the population of the larger towns. In November 1495, Perkin Warbeck, under the title of Prince Richard, Duke of York, arrived in Scotland, and was received with regal honours by King James, who bestowed upon him in marriage his cousin, the Lady Catherine Gordon. This pretended claimant to the English throne remained in Scotland till July 1497. He was preceded, accompanied, and followed to this country by gay and reckless “soldiers of fortune” from the Continent, Ireland, England, etc.—the men of all others most likely to transmit and diffuse such a disease as syphilis. These adventurers appear to have been quartered by the Scottish King upon various towns. Thus, the town-records of Aberdeen show that, as early as the 5th July 1495,—some months before Warbeck himself arrived in Scotland,—a burgh tax was imposed “to the sustentacioun of aught Inglismen of the Duk of Yorkis, direkit to the toune by our souerane lordis hiennes, and his letteris therapone.”—(_Spalding Club Extracts_, vol. i. p. 57.)

The speed, however, with which the disease thus travelled from the south of Europe to its western confines has been often employed as an argument to show that the contagion of syphilis was propagated at its first introduction by laws different from those which now regulate its communication. In other words, it has been often alleged that the disease was then spread from kingdom to kingdom, and from city to city, by epidemic influences and by general contagion, and not merely by the slower medium of impure sexual connection. We have just seen such a doctrine so far belied by the sagacious regulations of the magistrates of Aberdeen; and when we look to the then existing state of Society, both on the Continent and in our own country, to the loose manners and licentious lives of these times, we shall probably find a sufficient solution of the, at first sight, difficult problem of the rapid dissemination of the new malady. The morals of the general mass of the people are ever found to be principally regulated by the example set before them by the aristocracy and clergy. At the date of the introduction of syphilis into Europe, the notorious habits of the two latter ruling bodies were assuredly such as to expedite greatly the diffusion of the new scourge that had sprung up among them; and hence, at its first outbreak, we find the disease fixing itself upon several of the highest members of the continental courts, and of the church. The Emperor Charles V., and Pope Alexander VI., kings and cardinals, princes and bishops, peers and priests, are openly and publicly recorded among its victims by those who personally watched and described the first ravages of syphilis. In fact the disease was then scarcely, or indeed not at all, looked upon as conferring any degree of infamy.

In his tract on the malady,[623] published at Rome in the year 1500, Peter Pinctor mentions by name, and without any reticence, three of the more illustrious patients whom he had treated for this new disease—namely, the Prebendary Centez, the Cardinal of Segovia, and his Holiness the reigning Pope. Writers thought it no imputation on their own characters to publish an account of the disease as it occurred in their own persons. The physician Joseph Grunbeck of Burkchausen, in his essay “De Pestilentiali Scorra sive Mala de Frantzos” (1496), tells his readers how he himself caught the disease from the atmosphere, when walking in some fields near Augsburg. One of the earliest adherents and fiercest champions of the Reformation in Germany was Ulric Hütten, “the poet and valiant knight of the sixteenth century,” as Merle D’Aubigné designates him. In 1519, Hütten, though bred to arms, and not to physic, published a treatise—_De Guiaci Medicina, etc., Morbo Gallico_. In this treatise he details his own case and sufferings from the disease, how he had been “utterly vexed with the sycknes,”—had been eleven times salivated for it, and was at last cured by guiacum. This treatise, written, as the preface bears, by “that great clerke of Almayne, Ulrich Hütten, Knycht,” was translated by Thomas Paynell, Chanon of Marten Abbey, and published in England in 1539. The disease was, in Hütten’s opinion, produced “throughe some unholsome blastes of the ayre.” His polemical antagonist, Erasmus, in his _Colloquy of Gamos and Agamos_, denounced fiercely the character of this reforming and literary knight:—“Qualis eques (he exclaims) cui per Scabiem vix in sella sedere liceat!”

In order to show how swiftly a disease, propagated in the way syphilis is, might overrun the society of continental Europe towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, it is only necessary to allude to the dire and deplorable state of morals among those that ought to have set an example to the community—namely, the clergy of these days, as painted by the tongue and pens of their own writers. In an official sermon published by Martene (tom. ii. p. 1758), and preached in St. Peter’s at Rome by the Apostolic Auditor prior to the election of the Pope in the year 1484, the corrupt morals and dishonesty of the whole church are denounced; and it is added that many do not merely commit, but triumph even in, such sins as the subversion of chastity and other virtues (de pudicitia, cæterisque virtutibus subversis, triumphantes). The frightful licentiousness and obscene orgies of the reigning pontiff, and of his family and court, which speedily followed, formed a hideous practical commentary upon this text. A high Romanist who had the honour of refusing a cardinal’s hat, Claud D’Espence, Rector of the University of Paris, after exposing the infamy of the taxes of the apostolic chancery, with its list of “filthy and horrid iniquities” (fœdorum tamque horrendorum scelerum)—a license for any and all of which could be purchased—adds, “You shall say we ingenuously confess that God permits this (Lutheran) prosecution to come upon his church on account of the sins of men, chiefly of priests and prelates, from whose sins the Scriptures cry out that the sins of the people are derived.... Is it wonderful if the malady descend from the head to the members, from the supreme Pontiff to others?[624] Where under heaven is there a greater license of all evils (infamia, impudecentia, etc.)?... Truly (adds D’Espence, and he had personally visited Rome), evils such and so great that no one can believe but he who has seen, and no one can deny but he who has not seen....

Vivere qui cupitis sancte, discedite Roma; Omnia cum liceant, non licet esse bonum.”[625]

Previously another orthodox Roman ecclesiastic, Nicolas de Clemangis, Archdeacon of Bayeaux, had, in indignant, and, let us hope, in too sweeping terms, denounced the continental nunneries of these dark days as little better than brothels, and the taking of the veil as almost synonymous with a profession of public prostitution:—“Nam quod aliud sunt puellarum monasteria nisi quædam non dicam Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda postibula. Sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula ut idem hodie sit puellam velare, quod et publice ad scortandum exponere.”[626] Truly in these pre-Reformation days there was, as Cardinal Bellarmine confesses and laments, “almost no religion left.”[627]

As far as regarded the predisposing habits and influence of the clergy, matters were not better in Britain than on the Continent, when the disease first reached this country. We have already seen Cardinal Wolsey, the primate of England, publicly accused in Parliament of labouring under the disease. We can, however, wonder the less at the disease attacking such a high dignitary, when we recollect that, according to some writers,[628] there was openly inscribed over the doors of a palace belonging to this prelate—“_Domus Meretricium Domini Cardinalis_.” Polydore Vergil, the sub-collector of the Pope’s revenues in England, speaks, perhaps in exaggerated terms, of the orgies in the residence of Wolsey, by which he allured at first the young King Henry VIII. “Domi suae voluptatum omnium sacrarium fecit quo regem frequenter ducebat. Sermones leporis plenos habebat, etc.”[629] The manners of the inferior dignitaries of the church offered only too close an imitation of those of its primate. The commissioners appointed by Henry VIII. to visit the monasteries of England have recorded a sad, and (even setting aside the influence of prejudice) probably only too true a picture of the moral degeneracy of the great mass of the regular clergy of the time. With some few cheering and honourable exceptions, they found the occupants of most of the monasteries following lives of degraded vice and licentiousness, instead of religious purity and exemplary rectitude. When the visitors received their commissions and instructions, they were despatched into different parts of the kingdom, at the same time, that the monks might have as little warning of their approach as possible. They executed, says the historian Henry,[630] their commissions with zeal and diligence, and made some curious discoveries almost in every house, not much to the honour of its inhabitants. Accounts, he adds, of their proceedings were transmitted by the visitor to the vicar-general, and they contained sufficient materials to render the monasteries completely infamous,—for their gross, absurd superstition, their shameful impositions, their abandoned unnatural incontinency, etc. etc. Some of the old abbots and friars did not attempt to conceal their amours, because they knew it was impossible. The holy father, the prior of Maiden Bradley, assured the visitors that he had only married six of his sons and one of his daughters out of the goods of the priory as yet; but that several more of his children were now growing or grown up, and would soon be marriageable. He produced a dispensation from the Pope, permitting him to keep a mistress; and he asseverated that he took none but young maidens to be his mistresses, the handsomest that he could procure; and when he was disposed to change, he got them individually provided with very good lay husbands.[631] “These be the men” (exclaimed Simon Fish, in one of his celebrated public sermons which he delivered at the period we speak of), “these be the men that corrupt the whole generation in your realm, that catch the pox of one woman, and bear it to another; that be burnt with one woman, and bear it to another.”[632]

Clerical morals and manners were not in a much healthier state on the Scottish side of the Border. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, we have not on record any such obscene scandal as was detailed in a previous century in the _Chronicle of Lanercost_ regarding Priest John, who is alleged to have publicly celebrated phallic orgies among the young inhabitants of his parish of Inverkeithing,[633] a town which was certainly a place of no small note and importance in these early days. But clerical morals were still confessedly in a sad state about the time that syphilis first appeared in this part of the island. The _General Satyre_ of Scotland, written, as I have already stated, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, stigmatises amongst other things—

“Sic pryd with prellatis, so few till preiche and pray, Sic haunt of harlettis with thame, baythe nicht and day.”[634]

Queen Mary would seem to have regarded the health of the high Roman church dignitary who baptized her son James VI. with considerable suspicion, perhaps, however, only in as much as he was one of a class with a very bad character in that respect. King James, in “A Premonition to all most mightie Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendome,”[635] thus refers to it:—“For first, I am no apostate, as the Cardinal (Bellarmine) would make me, not onely having ever been brought up in that religion which I presently professe, but even my father and grandfather on that side professing the same: and so cannot be properly an Heratike, by there own doctrine, since I never was of their church; and as for the Queene my mother of worthy memorie, although she continued in that religion wherein she was nourished, yet she was so farre from being superstitious or Jesuited therein, that at my Baptisme (although I was baptized by a Popish Archbishop) she sent him word to forbeare to use the spettle in my baptisme; which was obeyed, being indeed a filthy, and an apish trick, rather in scorne than in imitation of Christ; and her owne very words were, that ‘She would not have a pokie priest to spet in her child’s mouth.’”

Of the dissolute lives of the Scotch, like the other clergy of these times, we may find ample proof in some of the contemporaneous medical works. We know, for example, from an old medical author, something of the inner life of the identical “pockie priest” who baptized James VI. In 1552, Dr. Jerome Cardan, the famous Italian physician, came from Milan to Edinburgh to visit professionally the high ecclesiastic in question—namely, John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews—who was suffering under severe and recurrent attacks of asthma. He travelled with all possible expedition, and in these “good olden times” the part of his journey from London to Edinburgh only took twenty-three days. Cardan has left us in his works a copy of the lengthy and very minute medical and hygienic directions which he drew up for the behoof of the archbishop. Besides giving him innumerable medical prescriptions, he lays down for him excellent rules regarding his food, drink, exercise, sleep, etc., down to the materials of which his bed and his pillows should be composed. He adds for the Archbishop’s guidance the following rule—“De Venere. Certe non est bona, neque utilis: ubi tamen contingat necessitas, debet uti ea inter duos somnos, secilicet post mediam noctem, et melius est exercere eam ter in sex diebus pro exemplo, ita ut singulis duobus diebus semel, quam bis in una die, etiam quod staret per decem dies.”[636]

The quiet and matter-of-course style in which these rules are laid down and published proves only too strongly the dissolute life of some of the highest clergy in our land; and in order to appreciate the full force of this observation, it is necessary to remember that Cardan’s patient was the living head of the Scottish Roman Catholic church of that day—the Primate and Metropolitan of Scotland.[637] Perhaps still more unequivocal evidence of the scandalous profligacy of the Scottish clergy of these times is to be found in their own statutes, and in the legal documents of the country.

In a provincial council of the Scottish clergy, held at Edinburgh in 1549, the circumstance that there had come very grave scandals to the church from the incontinence of ecclesiastics (ex clericorum incontinentia, gravissima ecclesiæ scandala esse exorta) was taken into consideration, and the edict of the Council of Basle “De Concubinariis” put in force. Another edict was passed by this Edinburgh synod “exhorting” both the prelates and inferior clergy not to keep their own illegitimate children in their company, prohibiting their promotion of them in their churches, and forbidding the endowment of them with baronies out of the church’s goods.[638] But perhaps the dissolute and depraved state of the Romish church in Scotland is more clearly photographed in a subsequent edict, which they passed in a large synod held at Edinburgh in 1558-9. This edict does not “exhort” against incontinence on the part of the priests, but it simply and shamelessly restricts, and lays down a legal limit to, the amount of property which they might unsacrilegiously abstract and purloin from the pious endowments belonging to the Church (de patrimonio Christi) for the marriage portions of the bastard daughters of their concubines; the synod enacting that neither prelates nor any other ecclesiastics should directly or indirectly give with their illegitimate daughters, in marriage to barons or other landowners, any greater sum than one hundred pounds yearly of the Church’s patrimony.[639]

The legitimation of bastard children was necessary before they could inherit or dispose of property, and exercise other legal rights. The Privy Seal Records of Scotland for the earlier years of the sixteenth century have been preserved, and are full of entries of legitimation of the bastard children of Scottish prelates and priests. Lord Hailes gives us some sad information regarding the numbers of the illegitimate children of the Scottish bishops, abbots, and monks of these times.[640] Among others, he states that David Bethune, the immediate predecessor of Hamilton in the archbishopric of St. Andrews and primacy of Scotland, had three bastards legitimised in one day; and afterwards, Patrick Hepburn, Bishop of Moray, had seven—five sons and two daughters—all acknowledged in one day. John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, himself the illegitimate son of an official in the diocese of Moray—viz. of Gavin Leslie, parson of Kingusie, was the father of several illegitimate children; and it is, says the learned author of the _Book of Bon Accord_, sufficiently amusing to find his name among those of the other members of the chapter of Aberdeen who solemnly counselled their ordinary to “caus the lay kirkmen within their diocie to reforme thameselfes in all thair slanderous maner of lyving, and to remove thair _oppin_ concubins.”[641]

Concubinage among the lower clergy, provided it was not slanderously open and avowed, would almost seem to have been overlooked and connived at by the church dignitaries of those degenerate times.[642]

The remains of the old chapel of St. Ninian, at Leith, still exist in the vicinity of Edinburgh. The spire of the church is, even at the present day, a conspicuous object above the second harbour bridge, though the chapel itself and its prebendary are degraded to common dwellings. This chapel was founded by Robert Bellenden, Abbot of Holyrood, and endowed for two chaplains. In the charter of foundation, which is dated 1493 (four years before syphilis broke out in Edinburgh), it is—in accordance with a common formula in these deeds—ordained that if “either of the aforesaid chaplains keep a lass or concubine, in an open and notorious manner, he shall be degraded; which seems,” as the historian Maitland pertly observes, “to imply this, that they or either of them might keep a miss or misses provided it were not publickly known.”[643]

Nor was poverty on the part of a portion of the priesthood apparently any great obstacle to such, as well as to less sinful indulgences. For, according to the testimony of honest George Marjoribanks (see his _Annals of Scotland_, p. 5), “In the yeir of God 1533 Sir Walter Cowpur, Chaiplaine in Edinburgh, gate a pynte of vyne, a laiffe of 36 unce vaight, a pock of aite-meill, a pynte of aill, a schiepe-hede, ane penny candell, and a faire woman for ane xviii^d grote.”

Very shortly before the commencement of syphilis, the dissolute manners of the English clergy, especially of the regulars, created such noise and commotion among the laity, that Pope Innocent VIII. sent in 1490 (a few years before the actual appearance of the disease) to Archbishop Merton, authorising him to admonish his abbots and priors that “by their lewd and dissolute lives they brought ruin upon their own souls, and set a bad example to others.” In obedience to this bull, the Primate sent monitory letters to the superiors of all convents and religious houses in his province, admonishing and commanding them, by the authority he had received from the Pope, to reform themselves and their subjects from certain vices, of which they were said to be guilty. The monitory letter that was sent on this occasion to the Abbot of St. Alban’s is published in Wilkins’s _Concilia_, vol. iii. p. 632. If that Abbot and his monks were stained with all the odious vices of which the Primate openly accuses them in this letter, they stood much in need of reformation. Some of these vices, says Dr. Henry, were so detestable that they cannot so much as be named in history. “You are infamous,” writes the Archbishop to the Abbot, for “simony, usury, and squandering away the possessions of your monastery, besides other enormous crimes.” One of these crimes was, that the Abbot had turned all the modest women out of the two nunneries of Pray and Sapwell (over which he pretended to have a jurisdiction), and filled them with prostitutes; that these nunneries were esteemed no better than brothels, and that he and his monks publicly frequented them as such. His Grace seems to have been well and accurately informed, for he even names some of these infamous women and their gallants. The monks, too, were at least as profligate as their Abbot, for they also kept their concubines both within and without the monastery.

When such was the scandalous life led by some of the clergy, we cannot wonder that, before the introduction of syphilis, Rabelais (himself at one time a monk) should apply to the gonorrhœal disease the very significant term of “rhume ecclesiastique;” or that, after the appearance of syphilis, this latter and greater malady should have spread speedily among all ranks, down from the clergy to the laity, and from the king to the churl, and should have become diffused by such stealthy but rapid steps over the countries of Europe, as to have at first been mistaken for a malady spreading itself, not by impure intercourse, but by general epidemic influences. And when we advert to the existing state of society in that age, and couple it with such notices as we have found in the Aberdeen records, we may surely (in despite of all that has been written to the contrary, both in ancient and modern times) reasonably doubt whether the laws regulating the propagation of syphilis in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were in any degree different from what we know them to be in the nineteenth century. The Aberdeen edict shows that three hundred and sixty odd years ago, or in 1497, the common mode of infection of the disease was precisely the same as all acknowledge it to be at the present day.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From the _Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal_, No. 149.

[2] _Study of Medicine_, vol. i. pref. p. xxiii.

[3] See some learned notices regarding this strange species of mania (the wolf-madness or wehrwolf of the Germans) in Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (edit. of 1804), vol. i. p. 13, and Heinrich Hase’s late work on the _Public and Private Life of the Ancient Greeks_, p. 17. Ploucquet, in his _Literatura Medica_, gives references to a number of articles and monographs on the subject under the word “Lycanthropia,” vol. i. p. 510.

[4] See particularly the Canon De Leprosis of Pope Alexander III. in the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 365; and Semler’s _Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ Selecta Capita_, tom. iii. p. 170.

[5] The terms employed by Matthew Paris are quite precise. “Habent insuper _Templarii_ in Christianitate novem millia Maneriorum; _Hospitalarii_ vero novemdecim.” _Anglor. Historia Major_ (ed. of 1644), p. 417. In referring to the subject under the word “Leprosaria,” Ducange states, “Dominus Matthæus Paris, _Hist. Angl._ p. 63, affirmat suo tempore fuisse Leprosarias 1900 (19,000?) in toto orbe Christiano.” See his _Glossarium, Med. et Inf. Latinitatis_, tom. iv. p. 126. At p. 63 of the Appendix to Paris, the institution of one hospital at St. Alban’s is referred to; but neither here nor elsewhere in his work can I find any allusion whatever to the existing number of leper hospitals in England, or in Christendom in general.

[6] Velley, Villaret et Garnier, _Histoire de France_, tom. ii. (ed. of 1770), p. 291.

[7] Velley, etc., _Histoire_, ii. p. 292.

[8] Mezeray, _Histoire de France_, tom. ii. 1645, p. 168. “Il n’y avoit n’y ville, n’y bourgade, qui ne fust obligée de bâtir un hospital pour les (Lepres) retirer.”

[9] _Antiquitates Italicæ Medii Aevi_, tom. iii. p. 53. “In Italia vix ulla erat civitas quæ non aliquem locum, Leprosis destinatum, haberet.”

[10] _Acta Sanctorum a Patribus Soc. Jesu Antuerpiæ Collecta._ Holst in his Work on Radesyge (_Morbus quem Radesyge vocant_: Christianae, 1817), refers to the works of Smid and Petersen, as showing that Denmark formerly suffered much from leprous diseases (morbis Leprosis olim graviter vexatam fuisse), p. 90.

[11] For reference to the prevalence of leprosy and leper hospitals in Ireland, see Ledwich’s _Antiquities of Ireland_ (Dublin, 1804), p. 370.

[12] Terms manifestly (according to Junius, Johnson, Richardson, etc.) mere corruptions of the word hospital.

[13] _Manuscript Chartulary of the Priory of Coldingham_, p. 25. Advocates Library, Edinburgh. In the above Latin extract the original orthography is preserved.

[14] _Liber de Sanctæ Mariæ de Melros._ Presented by the Duke of Buccleuch to the Bannatyne Club, Edin. 1839, tom. i. p. 70. See also Morton’s _Monastic Annals of Teviotdale_, 1832, p. 265.

[15] _Stat. Ac. of Scotland_, No. xvi. p. 75.

[16] _Registrum Monasterii de Passelet_, 1163-1529. Presented by the Earl of Glasgow to the Maitland Club, tom. i. p. 21. I am indebted to Mr. E. Thomson of Edinburgh, and formerly of Ayr, for pointing out to me the fact and inference in the text.

[17] See Chalmers’ _Caledonia_, vol. iii. p. 496; and _Records of the Burgh of Prestwick, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century_. Glasgow, 1834, p. 127.

[18] _The Lord of the Isles._ Canto v. Note vii.

[19] _Session Papers_, Advocates’ Library, vol. xxix. Petition of Colonel Fullarton to the Lords of Council and Session, Jan. 18, 1798, for the patronage, etc., of Kingcase.

[20] _Geographiæ Bleauvianæ_, vol. vi. p. 60.

[21] _Gibson’s History of Glasgow_ (1778), p. 52. _Cleland’s Glasgow_, 1816, vol. i. 68.

[22] _Burgh Records of Glasgow, from 1573 to 1581_ (printed 1832), p. 1.

[23] _Ibid._ p. 52.

[24] _Ibid._ p. 127.

[25] _Memorabilia of Glasgow_, selected from the Minute Books of the Burgh, 1588 to 1750 (printed 1835), p. 55.

[26] _Manuscript Records of the Town-Council of Edinburgh_, vol. vii. p. 168. There would seem to have been a Leper-hospital belonging to Edinburgh antecedent to that built at Greenside. At least in the _City Council Records_ for 30th September 1584, I find a missive for Michael Chisholm and others, to inquire into “the estait and ordour of the _awld_ (old) fundatioun of the Lipperhous besyde Dyngwall.” The Castle of Dyngwall, the residence of the Provost of the adjoining Trinity College, formerly stood on the site of the Orphan Hospital, behind Shakespeare Square.

[27] _Manuscript Records of the Town-Council_, vol. ix. pp. 9 and 12.

[28] _Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 123.

[29] Pennecuik’s _Historical Account of the Blue Blanket or Craftsmen’s Banner_. Edinburgh, 1722, p. 135.

[30] _Manuscript Records_, vol. xvii. p. 298.

[31] _Ibid._ vol. xix. p. 210.

[32] _Book of Bon Accord_, 1839, p. 341.

[33] _Book of Bon Accord_, 1839, p. 312.

[34] Kennedy’s _Annals of Aberdeen_, vol. ii. p. 82, and vol. i. p. 168.

[35] _Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis_, Edinb. 1837, pp. 77-78. Sir John G. Dalyell’s _Brief Analysis of the Records of the Bishopric of Moray_, Edinb. 1826, p. 34.

[36] Rhind’s _Sketches of Moray_ (1840), p. 114.

[37] _A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland Frith_, etc. Edinb. 1701, p. 72.

[38] _View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands_, vol. ii. p. 103. Edinb. 1809.

[39] Vol. ii. pp. 7, 88.

[40] See _Transactions of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 295.

[41] Boece gives with great gravity the following extravagant account of the holy origin of the oily well of Liberton:—“Nocht two milis fra Edinburgh (says he) is ane fontane dedicat to Sanct Katrine, quhair sternis of oulie springis ithandlie (where drops of oil rise constantly) with sic abondance, that howbeit the samin be gaderit away, it springis incontinent with gret aboundance. This fontane rais throw ane drop of Sanct Katrinis oulie, quhilk was brocht out of Mount Sinai, fra hir sepulture, to Sanct Margaret, the blessit Queene of Scotland; and als sone (as soon) as Sanct Margaret saw the oil spring ithandlie, be divine miracle, in the said place, she gart big ane chappell (made be built a chapel) there in the honour of Sanct Katherine.”—_Bellenden’s Translation of Boece’s Hystory and Chroniklis of Scotland_, p. xxxviii.

[42] _Memorial of the Rare and Wonderful Things in Scotland_, at the end of his _Abridgement of the Scotch Chronicles_. London, 1612.

[43] _Dyet of the Diseased_, book iii. cap. 19.

[44] _Trans. of the Society of Antiquaries_, vol. i. p. 324.

[45] _The Oily Well; or a Topographico-Spagyrical Description of the Oily Well at St. Catherine’s Chappel, in the Paroch of Liberton._ Edinburgh, 1664.

[46] Sir Thomas Murray’s edition of _The Acts of Parliament made by James the First_, etc. (Edinburgh 1681), p. 18; or T. Thomson’s edition of _The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_ (1814), vol. ii. p. 16.

[47] Surtees’ _Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham_, vol. i. p. 127.

[48] Nicolson and Burns’ _History of Westmoreland and Cumberland_, vol. ii. p. 250.

[49] Dugdale’s _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 458. Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_ (fol. edit.), p. 395.

[50] It may be proper to state that the references made to the _Monasticon Anglicanum_ throughout the present paper, apply always to the first edition of that great work, unless when it is otherwise specified.

[51] In the index to Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_ (Nasmith’s folio edition), 509 hospitals, leper-houses, and Maisons dieu are referred to as having existed in England previously to the Act for their suppression by Henry VIII. (See a table in Taylor’s _Index Monasticus_, p. xxv.) We have no collection of data on which to form any similar general calculation for Scotland. In Chalmers _Caledonia_ (vol. ii. p. 347) nine hospitals are stated to have existed in the county of Berwick alone. In the Scottish Parliament of 1424, an Act was passed regarding the hospitals “uphaldane to pure folks and seik” (poor people and sick) throughout the kingdom, and empowering the chancellor and bishops to “reduce and reforme tham to the effec of thair first fundacione” (see Thomson’s edition of the _Scotch Acts of Parliament_, vol. ii. p. 7). Some of the hospitals in these early times were founded for the reception of the sick and infirm, others for lepers, many for the poor and aged, and a considerable number for the gratuitous entertainment of pilgrims and travellers. Among the whole long English list I have only found four endowed as lunatic asylums. A few were instituted for purposes which sound strangely in the ears of the present generation. Thus the hospital of Flixton, or Carman’s Spittle, in the parish of Folketon, Yorkshire, was founded in the time of King Athelstane, to preserve travellers from being devoured by the wolves and other voracious and forest beasts of the districts (“pro conservatione populi inde transeuntis, ne populus ille per lupos et alias bestias voraces et sylvestres, inibi existentes, devoretur”). See the renewed charter of Henry VI. in the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 372.

[52] Bloomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, continued by Parkin.

[53] Taylor’s _Index Monasticus to the Diocese of Norwich_, p. 52, seq.

[54] _Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials in Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 29.

[55] _De Secretis Naturæ_ (Amsterdam ed. of 1790), p. 241.

[56] _British Monachism, or Manners, etc., of the Monks of England_, p. xv.

[57] _Historiae Ecclesiasticae Selecta Capita_, tom. iii. p. 170.

[58] On the north-west side of the ruins of the Kingcase Hospital Chapel, Ayr, the burial-place of the leper bedesmen is still pointed out, but the numerous and marked “undulations of the green sward” are their only tombstone.

[59] _MS. Records of the Town-Council of Edinburgh_, vol. ix. p. 123.

[60] _Ancient Records of the Burgh of Prestwick._ Glasgow, 1834, p. 40.

[61] Surtees’ _Durham_, vol. i. 128.

[62] _Index Monast._ p. 55.

[63] _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 390.

[64] Paris, _Historia Anglor._ edit. of 1644, Additam. p. 169.

[65] As in the hospital of St. Laurence, Canterbury, which contained lepers of both sexes. See Strype’s _Life of Archbishop Parker_, 1791, vol. i. p. 224.

[66] Surtees’ _Durham_, vol. i. p. 286.

[67] In a passage breathing the very spirit and prejudices of the middle ages, Mezeray states that during all the twelfth century, two very cruel evils (deux maux tres cruels) reigned in France, viz. _leprosy_ and _usury_; one of which (he adds) infected the body, while the other ruined families.—_Histoire de France_, tom. ii. p. 169.

[68] _Historia Anglor._ etc., Appendix, p. 164.

[69] _De l’Origine de Chevalrie_, chap. ix. p. 126.

[70] _Le Histoire du Clerge Seculier_, etc. See Table from it in Taylor’s _Index Monasticus_, p. xxvii.

[71] Helyot’s _Histoire des Ordres Religieux_ (edit. of 1792), vol. i. p. 257.

[72] Rivius’ _Historia Monast. Occident._ (1737), p. 223.

[73] _History and Antiquities of Leicester_, vol. ii. p. 72.

[74] There was in England at least one alien cell of Lazarites, at Lokhay, Derbyshire, subject to a French house. Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_, p. 83.

[75] _Monasticon Anglicanum_, 2d ed. vi. p. 632. _Notitia Monastica_, p. 239.

[76] _MS. Chartulary of Newbottle Abbey_, p. 205, Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. Since writing the above I find that Maitland, in his _History of Scotland_, includes, but without any references or details, the institution of Lazarites at Linlithgow, among his meagre list of Scottish Hospitals, vol. i. p. 269.

[77] _Histoire des Ordres Religieux_, tom. i. p. 264.

[78] _Historical Account of the Blue Blanket_, etc., containing the fundamental principles of the Good Town (Edin. 1722), p. 6. Probably the Lazarites are here confounded with the Hospitallers or Knights of St. John.

[79] Geddes’ _Tracts_. View of all the Orders of Monks and Fryars in the Roman Church. London (1794), p. 46.

[80] Helyot, tom. i. p. 262, and Moehsen’s _Commentatio Prima de Medicis Equestri dignitate Ornatis_ (1750), p. 56.

[81] _Bul. Rom._ tom. ii. Const. 95, Pii iv. § 4.

[82] _Abrégé Hist. de l’Ordre de Notre-Dame_, etc., or Helyot, tom. i. p. 397.

[83] _Testament of Cresseid_ (Bannatyne Club edition, 1824), p. 20.

[84] _Edinburgh Town-Council Records_, vol. ix. p. 123.

[85] See a copy of the charter in Kennedy’s _Annals_, vol. i. p. 167.

[86] Taylor’s _Index Monasticus_, p. 12.

[87] _Ibid._ See instances at pages 57 and 60.

[88] _Monast. Anglic._ tom. ii. p. 365, and _Hist. Angl._ Scripta edit. Lond. 1652. Coll. 1450, l. 4.

[89] _Life and Acts of Matthew Parker_, by J. Strype, 1791, vol. i. p. 224-26.

[90] Taylor, ut supra, p. 127, _Table of Revenues_.

[91] Dugdale’s _Mon. Anglic._ 2d ed. vol. vi. p. 652.

[92] _Ibid._ p. 637.

[93] _Val. Ecclesiast. Temp. Henr. VIII._, tom. v. 1825, p. 308.

[94] _Ibid._ p. 645.

[95] _Itinerary through England_, etc. (by order of Henry VIII.), Hearne’s edit vol. v. p. 105.

[96] _Monast. Anglic._ vi. p. 632; or Thoresby’s _History and Antiquities of Leicester_, vol. iii. (1790), p. 175.

[97] Paris’ _Historia Anglor._ etc. Additamenta, p. 163.

[98] Sed bene cavendum quod nec putridum, nec corruptum, vel morticinum illis rogetur.

[99] Surtees’ _History of the County of Durham_, vol. i. pp. 129 and 286.

[100] _Chronicon de Lanercost_ (Edinburgh 1841), p. 241. _Chronica Th. Walsingham_ in Camden’s _Anglica_, etc. (1603), p. 113. Hume’s _History of England_ (ed. of 1792), vol. ii. p. 370.

[101] _Histoire de France_, Mezeray, tom. ii. p. 72. Velley, etc., tom. ii. p. 292.

[102] _Ordonnances des Roys de France de la Troisieme Race_ (1723), tom. i. p. 814.

[103] _Ib. loc. cit._ This Ordonnance is dated Crecy, 16th August 1321.

[104] Velley, Villaret, etc. _Histoire de France_, vol. vi. p. 239.

[105] _De Morbis Veneriis_, ed. of 1740, p. 7.

[106] Letter to Von Troil, in his work on Iceland, p. 323.

[107] _History of the Holy Warre_ (1647), p. 254.

[108] _General History of Scotland_ (1794), vol. ii. p. 266.

[109] Ingram’s Edit. of the _Saxon Chronicle_, 1823, p. 302. See also Wharton’s _Anglia Sacra_, tom. i. p. 264—and Gervase, in Leland’s _Collectanea de Rebus Britannicis_ (Hearne’s Edit.), tom. i. p. 263. Dr. Lingard, in his _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 44 of 2d edit., states on the authority of Ordericus Vitalis, etc., the date of Lanfranc’s death as 1079, which, if correct, and not a mere misprint, would only add to the force of the argument in the text.

[110] _Antiquities of Canterbury_, vol. i. p. 42, and vol. ii. p. 169.

[111] _Eadmeri Historia Novorum sive Sui Seculi_, p. 9.

[112] _History of Northampton_, vol. i. p. 363.

[113] Bishop Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_, edit. of 1744, p. 211.

[114] Ruel and Hartmann’s _Collectio Conciliorum Illustratorum_, 1675, tom. iv. p. 100. The Lombards had a similar law, see Lindenbrog’s _Codex Legum Antiquarum_, 1613, p. 609.

[115] _Histoire de Bretagne_, Paris, 1707, tom. i. p. 204.

[116] Wharton’s _Anglia Sacra_, tom. ii. pref. p. 32.

[117] _Cambro-Briton_ and _Celtic General Repository_, vol. iii. p. 199.

[118] Chalmers’ _Caledonia_, vol. ii. 789.

[119] _Liber Cartarum Sancté Crucis de Edwinesburg_ (Bannatyne Club edit. 1840), p. 6.

[120] _Transactions of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol. i. p. 299.

[121] _Chronica de Mailros_, a cod. unico in Bibl. Cott. servato. Bannatyne Club edition, Edinburgh, 1835, p. 88. Crawford’s _Genealogical History of the Family of the Stewarts_, 1710, p. 5. Lord Hailes’ _Annals of Scotland_, ed. of 1797, vol. i. p. 327. Fordun gives the year as 1178, probably from a difference in the style of reckoning; see his _Scotichronicon_, Goodall’s edit. 1759, tom. i. p. 475.

[122] _Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis_, p. 77.

[123] Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica Huntingdonshire_, ii. 3. _Monast. Anglicanum_, tom. ii. p. 417.

[124] Paxton’s _Account of the Hospital and Parish of St. Giles in the Fields_. Stowe in his _Survey of London_ (Strype’s edit. 1720, vol. ii. book iv. p. 74), says it was founded about 1117 (the year preceding Matilda’s death).

[125] _Anglor. Historia Major_, Append. p. 161.

[126] _Monasticon Anglicanum_, 2d ed. vol. vi. p. 620.

[127] _Ibid._ vol. vi. p. 630.

[128] _Book of Bon-Accord_, p. 342.

[129] _Records of Prestwick_, p. 91.

[130] Was it used as a preventative or disinfecting agent? In some districts in Scotland at the present day all the attendants upon a funeral are regularly provided with tobacco and pipes at the expense of the relatives of the dead person.

[131] Sinclair’s _Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol. xii. p. 346.

[132] _Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Isles_, vol. ii. p. 102.

[133] _Bartholini De Morbis Biblicis Miscellanea Medica_ (1672), p. 41.

[134] _Faeroae et Faeroa Reserata_, etc. (London, 1659), pp. 101 and 311, and _Acta Medica_, etc. _Hafn._ Tom. i. p. 98.

[135] _Memoires de Medecine for 1782-3_, p. 200.

[136] _Voyage to Iceland_ (1770), p. 172.

[137] _Letters on Iceland_ (1780), p. 121.

[138] _Dissert. Inauguralis de Morbis Islandiae_ (Edinb. 1811), pp. 12-17.

[139] _Iceland, or the Journal of a Residence in that Island_ (Edinb. 1818), vol. i. p. 295.

[140] _Voyage en Islande et au Groënland_, etc., livr. 11, 12, 14, 15, etc.

[141] _Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal_, vol. xviii. p. 102, or _Amoenitates Academicae_, tom. vii. p. 97.

[142] _Ibid._ No. 132, p. 119. See also Dr. Charlton’s “Observations on the Norway Hospitals,” _Ib._ p. 105.

[143] _Die Radesyge oder das Scandinavische Syphiloid_ (Leipzig, 1828), p. 57.

[144] _Abrégé Pratique des Maladies de la Peau_ (1828), par MM. Cazenave et Schedel.

[145] _Practical Synopsis of Cutaneous Diseases_ (edit. of 1829), 411, 412.

[146] _Library of Medicine_, edited by Dr. Tweedie, vol. i. (London, 1840), p. 418. Among his list of Synonyms, Dr. Schedel gives “The Tsarath of Moses; Lepra Hebræorum; Lepra Egyptica; Lepra; Lardrerie,” etc.

[147] “Morbus contagiosus, cutis crassa, rugosa, aspera, unctuosa, pilis destituta; extremis artubus anæsthesia; facies tuberibus deformis; vox rauca et nasalis.” _Synopsis Nosologiæ Methodicæ_ (1772), p. 369.

[148] Class III., Order IV., Genus VIII. _Elephantiasis_; (1) Skin thick, livid, rugose, tuberculate; (2) Insensible to feeling; (3) Eyes fierce and staring; (4) Perspiration highly offensive. Species I. (Tubercular or Arabian Leprosy of authors.) “(1) Tubercles chiefly on the face and joints; (2) Fall of the hair except from the scalp; (3) Voice hoarse and nasal; contagious and hereditary.” Good’s _Physiological System of Medicine_ (1817), pp. 257, 258.

[149] _De Causis et Signis Morborum_, p. 69. (Leipsic, edit. of 1735).

[150] The disease is still designated in different parts of Asia and Africa by the same terms, more or less slightly changed. In his Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria (p. 332), Browne speaks of elephantiasis under the local designation of _dzudham_; Niebuhr says it is still named in Arabia and Persia _dsjuddam_ and _Madsjuddam_. (Pinkerton’s _Collection of Voyages and Travels_, vol. x. p. 170.) In Morocco it is called at the present day _Jeddem_ and _Murd Jeddem_. (Jackson’s _Account of the Empire of Morocco_.)

[151] The remark in the text applies to nearly all the numerous Latin versions made from the Arabic. It is proper, however, to add, that the translator of the works of Haly Abbas has so far avoided the error alluded to, by translating the Juzam of his author by elephanta. With this single exception, the error might otherwise, I believe, be called universal.

[152] The Arabians (_i.e._ the Latin translators from the Arabians), and their expositors, as was long ago remarked by Eustachius Rudius, and as has been often repeated since, “per Lepram nil aliud intelligunt præter Elephantiasim.”—_De Affectibus Externarum Corporis Humani Partium_, Venet. 1606, p. 24.

[153] See Bostock’s _History of Medicine_ (New York edition of 1836), pp. 43 and 47, or chapters vi. and vii.

[154] This appropriation of the single term “lepra” for the designation of Greek elephantiasis is still adhered to by some modern authors. Thus Plenck, in his celebrated _Nosology of Cutaneous Diseases_, denominates (after the example of the translators from the Arabic) the Barbadoes leg “Elephantiasis,” and applies to the Greek elephantiasis the simple term “Lepra.” Hence he defines lepra to be “that disease in which the skin, particularly of the face, becomes rugose and irregular (_aspera_), and is deformed with large reddish-livid and chinked tubercles (_rimosis tuberibus_), along with insensibility of the extremities, and the voice raucous and nasal.”—_Doctrina de Morbis Cutaneis, quâ hi morbi in suas Classes, Genera, et Species rediguntur_ (1783), p. 67. See also Schilling in his _Commentatio de Lepra_ (1778), p. 2. etc.

[155] As in the works on Cutaneous Diseases by Turner (_Treatise of Diseases incident to the Skin_, 1736), p. 2; and Lorry (_Tractatus de Morbis Cutaneis_), p. 376, etc. etc.

[156] _Memoires de la Societé Royale de Medecine_ for 1782-3, p. 170. Alibert employs this term in his _Monographie des Dermatoses_ (1835), tome ii. p. 270.

[157] “_Elephantiasis_ a vulgo Medicorum _Lepra_ vocata et quibusdam _Sancti Lazari morbus_.” “Elephantiasis quam vulgus male Lepram appellitat.” See pp. 680 and 716 of the “Libri quinque Institutionum Chirurgicorum Joannis Tagaultii,” in _Uffenbach’s Thesaurus Chirurgiae_ (Francof. 1610).

[158] “Chirurgia secundum Medicationem Hugonis de Luco” (_in Arte Chirurg. Scriptorum Collect._; Venice, 1546), p. 175.

[159] “Chirurgia Magna et Parva.” In the same collection of Surgical works, p. 207, 208.

[160] _Breviarium practicae a Capite ad plantam Pedis._ Brev. ii. cap. 46.

[161] _Philoneum Pharmaceuticum et Chirurgicum de medendis corporis affectibus_; Frankfort, 1599, p. 659.

[162] “Lilium Medicinæ inscriptum de Morborum prope omnium curatione,” vide _Opera Medica_ (Lugd. 1574), p. 49, _sqq._

[163] _Chirurgiae Tractatus_ vii. (Lugd. 1572), p. 307, _sqq._

[164] _Pro conservandâ Sanitate_, etc., _Liber utilissimus_ (Mogunt. 1531), c. 202.

[165] _Chirurgiae Libri Sex._ (Venet. 1533), lib. v. 23.

[166] _Selectiorum operum, in quibus Consilia_, etc. _continentur_ (Lugd. 1525), Consil. 299.

[167] _Consilia secundum viam Avicennae ordinata_ (Lugd. 1535), Consil. 299.

[168] _Les Oeuvres d’Ambrose Paré_ (Lyons, 1652), p. 476, etc.; or Uffenbach’s _Thesaurus Chirurgiæ_ (Frankfort, 1610), p. 428, etc.

[169] _Joannis Fernelii Ambiani Universa Medicina_ (Geneva, 1680), pp. 579 and 517.

[170] _Julii Palmarii Constantini, Medici Parisienis, de Morbis Contagiosis Libri Septem_ (Frankfort, 1601), pp. 257-326.

[171] _Opera Observationum et Curationum quæ extant Omnia_ (Frankfort, 1646), p. 973.

[172] See in Gesner’s Collection _De Chirurgiâ Scriptores_, etc. (Tiguri 1555), a tract entitled “Examen Leprosorum.” Gregory Horst, _Operum Medicorum_, tom. ii. (Norimberg, 1660), p. 127. Franciscus de Porta, _Medicæ Decad._ cap. xxx. lib. 4. Von Forrest’s _Observationes Medicæ et Chirurgicæ_, lib. iv. p. 103. Schenckius, _Observationum Medicarum Rariorum Libri Septem_ (Frankfort, 1665), p. 803.

[173] Several of the authors quoted above, divide the _species_ Lepra into four modifications or varieties: the Lepra Leonina, Lepra Elephantia, Lepra Alopecia, and Lepra Tyria. This division, which some of them freely allow to be founded more in theory than in nature, seems to have been first proposed by Constantinus Africanus. (_De Morborum Cognitione_, chap. 17.) Like the fanciful fourfold subdivision of other diseases, it was made in correspondence with the Hippocratic and Galenic doctrine of the four humours. Theodoric, Arnald, Gilbert, and the other authors who, in accordance with the pathological creeds of the time, were led to adopt it, attribute each particular variety to the operation and predominance of a particular humour. John of Gaddesden has attempted, in his _Rosa Anglica_, to dress up different medical doctrines in rude Latin hexameters, and amongst others, he announces the doctrine in question in the five following lines:—

Sub specie tetrâ deturpat corpora LEPRA; TIRIA prima datur, de _flegmate_ quae generatur; Turpe pilos pascens ALOPICUS, _sanguine_ nascens; Fitque LEONINA, _colera_, fervente canina; De _Mel_ _(Melancholia)_ fit tristis ELEFANTIA, tristior istis.

[174] The _History of Physick_, 5th edit. 1758, vol. ii. p. 263.

[175] Freind, p. 262.

[176] Sprengel, vol. ii. p. 448.

[177] _Bernhardi Gordonii Opera Medica_, Lugd. 1542, pp. 48 and 49.

[178] _Ib._ p. 54.

[179] See Freind, Sprengel, Eloy, etc.

[180] In the _Biographie Universelle, ancienne et moderne_, Paris, 1813, tom. viii. p. 293, a third Pope, Innocent VI., is added to this list.

[181] _Chirurgiae Libri Septem_, Lugd. 1572, p. 307, _sqq._

[182] _Gilberti Anglici Compendium Medicinae, tam morborum universalium quam particularium, non solum medicis sed et chyrurgicis utilissimum._ Vienna, 1510.

[183] Eloy’s _Dictionnaire Historique de Medecine, Ancienne et Moderne_, 1778, tome ii. p. 349. Aitkin’s _Biographical Memoirs of Medicine in Great Britain_, 1780, p. ix.

[184] Freind’s _History of Medicine_, 5th edition, vol. ii. p. 268.

[185] _Compendium Medicinæ_ (ut supra), p. 340.

[186] _Nosologia Methodica_, tome v. p. 229. Before citing Gilbert’s description, Sauvages observes, “Plures hujus morbi (Elephantiasis) varietates sunt quarum nomina et signa ex Gilberto Anglo mutuabimur, loco Leprae Elephantiasin nominando.”

[187] _Memoires de Medecine et de Physique Medicale tirés des Registres de la Societé Royale de Medecine_, Années 1782-83, p. 200. Speaking of the Greek elephantiasis, or elephantiasis legitima of Sauvages, they observe “on ne trouvoit nulle part, pas même dans Arétée de Cappadoce, une exposition plus claire que celle qui a été donnée par Gilbert, Medecin Anglois du seizieme (?) siecle.”

[188] Sprengel’s _Histoire de la Medecine_ (Jourdain’s translation). Tome ii. p. 404.

[189] Anthony Wood’s _Athenae Oxonienses_, p. 87.

[190] Wood gives his name as entered in an old College Catalogue in 1320. He compiled his book between 1305 and 1317: Freind, vol. ii. p. 277; and Eloy, vol. ii. p. 287. See also Hutchison’s _Biographia Medica_, vol. i. p. 323; and Aitkin’s _Biographical Memoirs_, p. ix, etc.

[191] Guy de Chauliac entitles Gaddesden’s book (probably with more truth) “una _fatua_ Rosa Anglica.”

[192] _Rosa Anglica quatuor Libris distincta_ (Papiae, 1492), lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 55; or _Joannis Anglici Praxis Medica, Rosa Anglica dicta_ (Schopf’s edit. 1595), p. 1076, _sqq._

[193] _Rosa Anglica_, p. 1079. The editor, Schopf, appends to this passage a rubric, stating the above sound counsel as “Decretum Joannis Angli de Leprosis.”

[194] Pitt places him about 1360: Eloy, vol. ii. p. 354; Freind, vol. ii. p. 293.

[195] From the old translation of Glanville’s work, _De Proprietatibus Rerum_, by John Trevisa, Vicar of Barkley. See _Phil. Trans._ vol. xxxi. p. 59.

[196] _Eccles. Dunelm. Hist._ l. liii. f. 56, a; vide _Monasticon Anglicanum_, tom, ii. p. 437, a.

[197] Bernhard Gordon of Montpellier, whose description of the disease I have already quoted, has been sometimes alleged to be a native of Scotland, see Sprengel’s _Histoire_, ii. p. 447; but without any other evidence whatever than that derivable from his Scottish surname.

[198] _The Testament of Cresseid_, compylit be M. Robert Henrysone, Sculemaister in Dunfermeling. Imprentit at Edinburgh, 1593. Reprinted by the Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1824. The poem has been published, without the name of the author, in Godfray’s and most other later editions of Chaucer’s Works.

[199] This complication was not so common as to be regarded as a constant and pathognomonic sign of Greek elephantiasis, but it is noted as an important and frequent one, by various authors, both ancient and modern. Hally-Abbas tells us, in our diagnosis of a case of the disease, to be particular in examining “album oculorum ne forte turbatum est” (Lib. i. cap. xxiv.); Rhazes attributes great value as a diagnostic mark of his Juddam or elephantiasis to the “conturbatio albedinis oculorum” (Lib. v. cap. cxx.); Avicenna, among his incipient signs, states “et apparet in oculis obfuscatio ad rubedinem declivis” (Lib. iv. Fen. iii. Fr. 3, cap. ii.) Not to multiply examples, I may merely mention that Theodoric, in the thirteenth century, places early among his list of signs “oculorum in albedine lividitas” (Lib. iii. cap. lv.); see also Lanfranc (Doct. i. Tr. iii. c. 7, albedo oculorum obfuscator); Arnald of Villeneuve (Brev. ii. c. 46, multum rubeae); Gilbert (Lib. viii. oculi circulos habent rubros), etc. Dr. Heberden, in his account of the tubercular leprosy in Madeira, states, in regard to a case, “that the confirmed elephantiasis was attended with _livid_ and scirrhous tubercles, which had overspread the face and limbs; the whole body was emaciated; the eyebrows inflated; the hair of the eyebrows fallen off entirely; the bones of the nose depressed; the _alae nasi_ tumefied, as likewise the lobes of the ears; _with a suffusion in both eyes_, which had almost deprived the patient of sight,” etc.—_Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians_, vol. i. p. 35.

[200] I give the term “livid” as synonymous with the old Scotch term “haw,” under the idea that it expresses in all probability, as nearly as possible, the meaning of the author. The Scottish writer Gawin Douglas renders the Latin adjectives “caeruleus” and “glaucus,” by the adjective “haw,” in his celebrated translation of “The xiii. bukes of Eneados of the famose poet, Virgill, out of Latyne verses, into Scottish meter.” For the occasional livid colour of the lumps or tubercles in the face, see the extract in the preceding note from Dr. Heberden, and the modern descriptions quoted in a previous page from Bateman and Schedel.

[201] Since writing the above, I have met with the following interesting notice in the still earlier voyage of Martin to St. Kilda, the most westerly island of the Hebrides. Describing his visit to St. Kilda, in 1697, he states, “Some thirteen years ago, the Leprosy broke amongst the inhabitants, and some of their numbers died of it. There are two families at present labouring under the disease. The symptoms of it are, their feet begin to fail; their appetite declining; their faces becoming too red, and breaking out in pimples; a hoarseness, and their hair falling off from their heads; the crown (?) of it exulcerates and blisters; and, lastly, their beards grow thinner than ordinary.”—_Voyage to St. Kilda_ (first published in 1698), p. 40 of edition of 1749.

[202] _MS. Medical Annotations_, vol. iii. p. 226.

[203] “The Moderator proposed to the session, that, considering that a Gracious Providence had not only delivered the Island and country from the burden and necessity of maintaining and otherwise providing for the poor Lepers, formerly in this Island, but had also put a stop to the spreading of that unclean and infectious disease, so that there is no appearance of the symptoms thereof in any person now in this place, the Session should therefore ordain a day to be set apart for solemn thanksgiving for so great a deliverance throughout this ministry excepting Fowla, which we can have no access to probably to inform. The Session having heard the Moderator’s proposal, were cordially satisfied therewith, and did agree unanimously that a day be set apart for solemn thanksgiving on the above account throughout the bounds of the ministry, excepting Fowla, as above said.” (Extracts from the MS. Session Register of Walls, under date of 17th March 1742.) The 19th May 1742 was held as the day of thanksgiving, as appears from a subsequent entry.

[204] _Færoæ et Færoa Reserata_ (London, 1659), pp. 310, 311.

[205] Mackenzie’s _Travels in Iceland during the summer of the year 1810_; or _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, vol. viii. pp. 202, 203.

[206] Von Troil’s _Letters on Iceland_, p. 123; Barrow’s _Visit to Iceland in the summer of 1834_, pp. 289 and 294.

[207] Pontoppidan’s _Natural History of Norway_, containing an account of its Climate, etc. etc. (London translation, 1755), pp. 261, 262.

[208] See Wellhaven’s account, extracted from the _Transactions of the Stockholm Society_, vol. iii. pp. 188-200, into Hunefeld’s “Essay on Radesyge,” pp. 38-56.

[209] See pp. 110-117 of the excerpta in Hensler’s learned work, _Vom Abenländischen Aufsatze im Mittelalter_. (Hamburg, 1790.)

[210] The disease seems to be noticed under the name of Skyrbjugr in some of the oldest Iceland records. (See Olassen’s _Islansk Urtagaard Bok_, p. 172; and Back, in Von Troil’s _Letters on Iceland_, p. 324.) Munch and Hunefeld suggest, with no great probability, that it might have been carried to the north by the expeditions which, during the ninth and tenth centuries, were made upon the Norman coast by Rolf and others. (See Hunefeld’s _Radesyge oder das Scandinavische Syphiloid_, p. 57.)

[211] I have already referred to Bartholin in relation to its former prevalence in the Faroe Isles and Iceland. Writing in 1672, he states that in these parts leprosy “_fuisse olim familiarem_” (_de morbis Biblicis in Mis. Med._ p. 41). Jonas, Pastor of Hitterdale in Iceland, wrote in 1662 to the celebrated Sir Thomas Browne, “Nullus _elephantiasi_ vel abominabilior vel pestilentior hic existimatur, et tamen postremo hoc seculo pavendus se diffundit.” (Wilkin’s edition of Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, including his _Life and Correspondence_, vol. iv. p. 261.)

[212] The date of admission to the church of one of the priors of the hospital.

[213] _Synopsis of Cutaneous Diseases_, p. 419.

[214] Murray’s Edition of the _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 18. In Shetland the kirk-sessions seem to have latterly taken upon them the legal powers conferred by the above Act upon the bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities, as shown by the following extract from the Session Records of the parish of Walls. “Kirk of Walls, December 6th, 1772.—This day the Session being informed that Margaret Abernethy, relick spouse of James Henry, had been, to all appearance, for a considerable time past, deeply tinted with the inveterate scurvy, commonly called the Leprosy in this place, and was now removed to Brabaster in the midst of a number of children, whose parents were in the greatest fear of their being infected with that disease by the said Margaret Abernethy, and that they and others had again and again called upon the Session to convene the said woman before them, in order to be sighted, and also to be set apart, if she should be found unclean, conform to former use and wont, in this and other parishes of the country: Therefore the Session did, and hereby do, appoint the officer to require said Margaret Abernethy to compear before them at this place, next Wednesday, in order to be examined and inspected, as above said.”—Extracted from the MS. Session Records of Walls.

[215] In describing the duties of the examiner, De Chauliac observes, “In primis invocando Dei auxilium debet eos comfortare, quòd ista passio est salvatio animae et quod non dubitent dicere veritatem, quia si reperientur Leprosi, purgatorium animae esset; et si mundus habet eos odio, non tamen Deus, cum Lazarum Leprosum plus dilexit quam alios. Si autem non reperientur tales stabunt in pace.”—P. 310.

[216] From the “Statuta Milonis Episcopi Aurelianensis, anno MCCCXIV. in Synodo autumnali edita,” contained in Martene and Durand’s _Amplissima Collectio veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum_ (Paris, 1733), tom. vii. p. 1286.

[217] _Foedera, Conventiones, Literae et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica inter Reges Angliae et aliosquosvis Imperatores, Reges, Pontifices vel Communitates._ Vol. xi. (London, 1710), p. 635.

[218] Ropemakers were long treated and shunned as lepers, because their trade was one which at an early part of the middle ages was principally followed by pilgrims and crusaders who had returned in a leprous condition from the East.—Ogée’s _Histoire de Bretagne_. Hensler’s _Abendländischen Aufsatze_, 1790, p. 212.

[219] _Records of the Burgh of Prestwick_, p. 28.

[220] In the list (p. 10) of fifty-eight “burges inhabitant ye burghe of Prestwik” in 1507, occur the two significant surnames of “Allane Leppar” and “Adame Leppar.”

[221] _Burgh Records of Glasgow_, presented to the Maitland Club by Mr. Smith, pp. 1 and 127.

[222] _Memorabilia of Glasgow_, p. 55.

[223] Alexander Jenkins’ _History and Description of the City of Exeter, and its Environs, Ancient and Modern_, etc. (1806), p. 384.

[224] _Index Monasticus_, p. 61. _Monasticon Anglicanum_ (2d edit.), vol. vi. p. 769.

[225] _Notitia Monastica_, p. 211.

[226] Lord Lyttelton’s _History of the Life of Henry II. and of the Age in which he lived_. (Lond. 1767.) Appendix of Documents, vol. iv. p. 220.

[227] See _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. vi. p. 643, 2d edit.

[228] Leland’s _Itinerary through England and Wales_ (Hearne’s edit.), vol. iv. p. 105.

[229] _Chron. MS. Henrici Knyghton_, in Bibl. Bodl. lib. ii. cap. 2; _Monasticon Anglicanum_ (2d edit.), vol. vi. p. 687.

[230] Agnes Strickland’s _Lives of the Queens of England_, vol. ii. p. 78.

[231] Ryland’s _History of Waterford_, p. 200. Mrs. Gore has founded one of her latest tales (“The Leper House of Janval”), on the idea of William, the third son of the Empress Matilda, becoming a leper. See her _Tales of a Courtier_, vol. ii. p. 55. I am not aware whether the tale is so far historically accurate, or merely assumed, as I do not recollect to have met with any notice of the individual history or death of the prince (the youngest of the three grandsons of Henry I.) who is the subject of the story.

[232] _Chronicle at large and meere Historie of the Affayres of England and Kings of the same_ (1569); see p. 506 of edit. of 1809.

[233] _Chronicles_; or _Union of the two Noble and Illustre Families of York and Lancastre_ (1548); see Hearne’s edit. of 1809, p. 45.

[234] Hollinshed’s _Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, 1577. London, edit. of 1808, vol. v. p. 360.

[235] _History of England_ (1st edit.), vol. iii. p. 315.

[236] Rapin’s _History of England_ (ed. by Tindal), vol. ii. p. 185.

[237] Sharon Turner’s _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 272.

[238] Duchesne’s _Histoire d’Angleterre, d’Ecosse et d’Irelande_ (Paris, 1614), p. 1010.

[239] Strickland’s _Lives of the Queens of England_, vol. iii. p. 114.

[240] _The Chronicle of England unto the reigne of King Edward IV._, by Iohn Hardynge (Ellis’ edit. 1813) p. 370.

[241] Fuller’s _Historie of the Holy Warre_ (3d edit. 1647), p. 94.

[242] Fuller’s _Historie of the Holy Warre_ (3d edit. 1647), p. 101.

[243] _Oeuvres de Rabelais_ (Paris, 1835), p. 666.

[244] Bellenden’s Transl. of Boece’s _Chroniklis of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 102 (edit. of 1821). Dempster’s _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum_ (1627), p. 278.

[245] Spottiswood’s _History of the Church of Scotland_ (edit. of 1665), p. 21. See also Fiacre’s story in Lesslie _de Origine, Moribus_, etc., _Scotorum_ (1578), p. 156.

[246] The _Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland_ (Macpherson’s edit.), vol. ii. p. 136.

[247] I have already shown in Part I. that the name here given to the leprosy by the old French historian exactly corresponds with the Anglo-Saxon designation of the disease “_seo mycle adhl_.” It perhaps deserves to be added that (as appears from a paper of Dr. Ainslie—_Asiatic Researches_, vol. i. p. 287) the term “_Peri Vishadi_,” applied to tubercular leprosy by the Brahmins of Hindustan, also literally signifies “the great disease.”

[248] Sir John Froissart’s _Chronycles of England, France_, etc., translated at the command of Henry VIII. by Lord Berners (London, edit. of 1812), vol. i. p. 19. In p. 28, he again states, “it fortuned that King Robert was right sore aged and feble, for he was greatly changed with the great sicknes, so that there was no way with him but death.”

[249] Froissart, _Histoire et Cronique_ (edit. of 1559), vol. i. p. 13.

[250] _Collection des Memoires Nationelles_, etc., tom. x. p. 61.

[251] Johnes’ English edit. of _Froissart’s Chronicles_ (1839), pp. 18 and 26.

[252] _Hemingfordii Chronicon_ (Hearne’s edit. 1731), tom. ii. p. 270.

[253] Camden’s _Anglica, Normannica_, etc., _a veteribus Scripta_ (Frankf. 1603), p. 129.

[254] _Ibid._ p. 610.

[255] _Scotorum Historia_ (Paris edit. 1574), p. 308. Bellenden’s Translation vol. ii. p. 40: “He deceissit in lepre.”

[256] _Rerum Scoticarum Historia_ (1762), p. 224.

[257] _Collectanea de Rebus Britannicis_, vol. i. p. 552.

[258] _Scalacronica; a Chronicle of England and Wales, from 1066 to 1362_, by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton. Maitland Club edition (1836), p. 19.

[259] _Chronicon de Lanercost_, 1201-1346, presented in 1839 to the Maitland Club by Mr. Macdowall.

[260] _Histoire de Bretagne_; par Guy Alexis Lobineau (Paris, 1707), tom. i. p. 135.

[261] Adams on _Morbid Poisons_, p. 287.

[262] Cleland’s _Former and Present State of Glasgow_ (1840), p. 20.

[263] The five lepers in Papa, in Shetland, about 1736, were all females; see Part II., page 82, _supra_.

[264] _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. vi. (2d edit.), p. 710; and also Madox’s _Formulare Anglicanum_ (1702), pp. 22, 255, 314, etc.

[265] Mackarell’s _History and Antiquities of King’s Lynn_ (1738), p. 223.

[266] Bridges’ _History of Northamptonshire_ (1791), vol. i. p. 363.

[267] _History of Shrewsbury_ (1825), vol. ii. p. 173 (engraved seal of the House).

[268] _Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. vi. pp. 637 and 643.

[269] _Historie of the Holy Warre_, p. 102.

[270] Hailes’ _Annals of Scotland_ (1797), vol. ii. p. 146.

[271] Jameson’s edition of Barbour’s _Bruce_, Book vi. p. 167.

[272] Kerr’s _History of Robert the Bruce_ (1811), vol. i. pp. 332-3, and vol. ii. p. 474.

[273] Froissart gives the same cause for the Bruce not leading the expedition in question (see Lord Berners’ Translation of his _Chronicles_, vol. i. p. 19).

[274] _Chamberlain’s Accounts_ (printed copies), vol. i. p. 37. Compotum Constabularii de Cardross.

[275] See a beautiful lithograph copy of this interesting document in the second volume of the Bannatyne Club copy of the _Liber Sanctae Mariae de Melros_.

[276] Froissart (Berners’ translation), vol. i. p. 29. Shortly afterwards Froissart states, “And thus, soone after thys noble Robert de Brouse, Kyng of Scotland, trespassed out of thys incertayne worlde, and his hart was taken owte of his body and embawmed, and honourably he was entred in the Abbey of Donfremlyne.” When the grave of the Bruce was opened at Dunfermline in 1818, the anatomical appearances of the skeleton showed that the king’s will had been so far obeyed, the bones of the chest being found divided in such a way as to have allowed the removal of the heart. This piece of dissection seems, at the time at which it was made, to have drawn down the dreaded vengeance of the Vatican upon Randolph, Earl of Moray, the king’s nephew, and apparently the operator in this case, in such a way as forms a strange and startling contrast with the medical usages observed towards the dead at the present day. I quote the account, as a curious point in the march of necroscopic anatomy, from the Appendix to the _Chronicon de Lanercost_ (p. 428)—“It appears that, by a constitution of Pope Boniface, the mutilation of a dead body subjected those by whom it was mutilated to heavy ecclesiastical censures. To free himself from these censures, Randolph, two years after the death of King Robert, presented a petition to the Pope, setting forth that the deceased king had intended to undertake a crusade against the Saracens, but was prevented by death, and that in his last will he expressly ordered his heart to be taken out of his body and carried in such an expedition, which was done by James de Douglas, who conveyed it into Spain. The Bishop of Moray was employed to obtain from the Pope a remission for the crime, dated 8th before the Ides of August, in the fifteenth year of Pope John’s pontificate.” Raynald, in his _Annal. Ecclest._, gives the extract A.D. 1329. § 81.

[277] _Compendium Medicinae_ (Lugd. 1510), p. 336.

[278] See the Maitland Club _Burgh Records of Glasgow_, p. 127.

[279] See _Memorabilia of Glasgow_, p. 55.

[280] _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, xxvi. p. 15, _seqq._

[281] _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, xxiv. p. 286.

[282] Debes’ _Færoæ et Færoa Reserata_, p. 311.

[283] _Dictionnaire des Sc. Medicales_, tom. xi. p. 419; Rayer’s _Treatise on the Diseases of the Skin_ (London, 1831), pp. 740 and 747.

[284] _Memoires de la Soc. Roy. de Medecine_ (1776), p. 167.

[285] _Ibid._ (1782-83), p. 188.

[286] Bellenden’s Translation of Boece’s _History_, p. lviii.

[287] See, for example, among non-medical authors, various of these causes alleged for the disease in Heron’s _History of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 266 (unwholesome diet, uncomfortable lodgings, dirty clothing). Hooker’s _Iceland_, vol. i. p. 189 (ascribes it to former use of woollen garments). Taylor’s _Index Monasticus_, p. xii. (owing to personal filth, close and bad lodging, etc.) White’s _Natural History of Selborne_,