Saint Louis brought twelve of the Knights of St. Lazarus into France, and entrusted them with the superintendence of the Ladreries or leper hospitals of his kingdom.[72] The first notice of their having acquired a footing in Great Britain is in the time of King Stephen. During the reign of that sovereign their head establishment in England at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire, was built by (as Nicols[73] states) a general collection throughout the kingdom, but chiefly by the assistance of Robert de Mowbray. Here they gradually acquired considerable wealth and possessions.[74] I find that the Hospitals of Tilton, of the Holy Innocents at Lincoln, of St. Giles, London, the Preceptory of Choseley in Norfolk, and perhaps various others, were betimes annexed to Burton Lazars as cells containing “fratres leprosos de Sancto Lazaro de Jerusalem.” Nicols has printed not less than thirty-five charters relating to the House of Burton Lazars. Its privileges and possessions were confirmed by Henry II., King John, and Henry VI. It was at last dissolved by Henry VIII.[75] The only settlement of the Knights of St. Lazarus in Scotland that I have been able to find, was in the town of Linlithgow, and the notice of it is very imperfect and unsatisfactory. It is contained in a document of the reign of Alexander II., and preserved in the Chartulary of Newbottle, in which reference is expressly made to land held “de Fratribus de Sancto Lazaro” at Linlithgow.[76] That the Lazarites had an establishment or establishments in Scotland as well as in the sister kingdom, appears borne out by a fact recorded by Helyot,[77] that in 1342, John Halliday, a Scotsman, was appointed Governor of the Knights of St. Lazarus both in England and Scotland, by the Grand Master of Boigny in France, who was at that period the reputed head of the order. Indeed Pennecuik, on the authority of Maimbourg (_Histoire des Croisades_), asserts that the “Knights of St. Lazarus were numerous everywhere, but especially in Scotland and France.”[78] The first and original object of the Knights of St. Lazarus seems to have been the care probably of the sick generally, but in a special manner of those affected with leprosy.[79] They received lepers into their order, superintended the inmates of the lazar-houses, and, till the standing rule to the contrary was allowed to be changed by Pope Innocent IV., they were obliged to elect a leper to be their Grand Master;[80] “eatenus consuetudine observatâ ut Miles leprosus domûs Sancti Lazari Hierosolymitani in ejus Magistrum assumeretur.”[81] Toussaint de S. Luc, in his History, Ceremonials, etc., of the Order of St. Lazarus, after it was united in 1608 by Henry IV. of France to those of Notre-Dame and Mount Carmel, states that the candidates for this united knighthood were obliged, upon the Holy Evangelists, to swear _inter alia_, “to exercise charity and works of mercy towards the poor, and particularly lepers” (_et particulièrement les lepreux_.)[82]