The example of archbishop Lanfranc at Canterbury and of queen Matilda in London was soon followed by other founders and benefactors. The movement in favour of lepers--there was probably too real an occasion for it to call it a craze--gained much from the appearance on the scene of the Knights of the Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem. Those knights were the most sentimental of the orders of chivalry, and probably not more reputable than the Templars or the main body of the Hospitallers from which they branched off. If we may judge of them by modern instances, they wanted to do some great thing, and to do it in the most theatrical way, with everybody looking on. What real services they may have rendered to the sick poor, leprous or other, there is little to show. The head-quarters of the order were at Jerusalem, the Grand Master and the Knights there being all _leprosi_--doubtless in a liberal sense of the term. We should be doing them no injustice if we take them to have been Crusaders so badly hit by their vices or their misfortunes as to be marked off into a separate order by a natural line. However, many others enlisted under the banner of St Lazarus who were not _leprosi_; these established themselves in various countries of Europe, acquired many manors and built fine houses[172]. In England their chief house was at Burton in Leicestershire; it was not by any means a great leper-hospital, but a Commandery or Preceptory for eight whole knights, with some provision for an uncertain number of poor brethren--the real Lazaruses who, like their prototype, would receive the crumbs from the high table. The house of Burton Lazars gradually swallowed up the lands of leper-hospitals elsewhere, as these passed into desuetude, and at the valuation of Henry VIII. it headed the list with an annual rental of £250. Their establishment in England dates from the early part of the twelfth century, and although the house at Burton appears to have been their only considerable possession, they are said, on vague evidence, to have enlisted many knights from England, and, curiously enough, still more from Scotland. A letter is extant by the celebrated schoolman, John of Salisbury, afterwards bishop of Chartres, written in the reign of Henry II. to a bishop of Salisbury, from which it would appear that the “Fratres Hospitales” were regarded with jealousy and dislike by the clerical profession; “rapiunt ut distribuant,” says the writer, as if there were something at once forced and forcible in their charities[173].