The English charitable foundations, or hospitals of all kinds previous to the dissolution of the monasteries, including almshouses, infirmaries, Maisons Dieu and lazar-houses, amount to five hundred and nine in the index of Bishop Tanner’s _Notitia Monastica_. In the 1830 edition of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, the latest recension of those immense volumes of antiquarian research, there are one hundred and four such foundations given, for which the original charters, or confirming charters, or reports of inquisitions, are known; and, besides these, there are about three hundred and sixty given in the section on “Additional Hospitals,” the existence and circumstances of which rest upon such evidence as casual mention in old documents, or entries in monastery annals, or surviving names and traditions of the locality. Our task is to discover, if we can, what share of this charitable provision in medieval England, embracing at least four hundred and sixty houses, was intended for the class of _leprosi_; what indications there are of the sort of patients reckoned _leprosi_; how many sick inmates the leper-houses had, absolutely as well as in proportion to their clerical staff; and how far those refuges were in request among the people, either from a natural desire to find a refuge or from the social pressure upon them to keep themselves out of the way. It is clear that the endowed hospitals of medieval England were in no exclusive sense leper-hospitals, but a general provision, under religious discipline, for the infirm and sick poor, for infirm and ailing monks and clergy, and here or there for decayed gentlefolk. The earliest of them that is known, St Peter’s and St Leonard’s hospital at York, founded in 936 by king Athelstane, and enlarged more especially on its religious side by king Stephen, was a great establishment for the relief of the poor, with no reference to leprosy; it provided for no fewer than two hundred and six bedesmen, and was served by a master, thirteen brethren, four seculars, eight sisters, thirty choristers and six servitors. When Lanfranc, the first Norman archbishop of Canterbury, set about organising the charitable relief of his see in 1084, he endowed two hospitals, one for the sick and infirm poor in general, and the other for _leprosi_[166]. The former, St John Baptist’s hospital, was at the north gate, a commodious house of stone, for poor, infirm, lame or blind men and women. The latter was the hospital of Herbaldown, an erection of timber, in the woods of Blean about a mile from the west gate, for persons _regia valetudine fluentibus_ (?), who are styled _leprosi_ in a confirming charter of Henry II.[167] The charge of both these houses was given to the new priory of St Gregory, over against St John Baptist’s hospital, endowed with tithes for secular clergy. The leper-house at Herbaldown was divided between men and women; but in a later reign (Henry II.) a hospital