[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.
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