Lanfranc, Bishop of Canterbury, and the ecclesiastical favourite of William the Conqueror, died, according to the evidence of the Saxon Chronicle in 1089,[109] seven years previous to the first crusade. During his lifetime he founded two hospitals near Canterbury, one a house built of stone (lapideum domum decentem et amplum) for patients affected with various descriptions of diseases (variis infirmitatum qualitatibus), and the second an hospital constructed of houses of wood, and specially set aside for lepers (ligneas domos ad opus leprosorum.)[110] Somner states that this latter institution still exists at Canterbury as a charitable establishment.[111] Other English lazar-houses were probably of as early a date, or at least earlier than the first emigration for the crusades. Brigges alleges that the leper-house of St. Leonards in Northampton, was founded in William I.’s reign,[112] or before 1087; and one at Chatham was, according to Tanner, in existence before the termination of the short reign of his son, William Rufus.[113] But more than a century even previous to the date of which we speak, leprosy had been made a subject of legislation in Great Britain. In a parliament held by Pepin, King of France in 757 at Campiegne, it was enacted that leprosy in a husband or wife be regarded as a cause of separation, and that the sound party might again remarry.[114] Lobineau, in his history of Brittany,[115] tells us as one of the effects of this law of divorce, that among the higher ranks of the city of Dol, there were a number (_quantité_) of husbands who had as many as three wives living at the same time. Now among the earliest extant code of laws enacted in any part of Britain, those, namely, of the celebrated Welsh King, Hoel Dha, who died about the year 950,[116] there is a canon to the same effect as that referred to, viz. that a married female was entitled to separation, and the restitution of her goods, provided her husband was affected with leprosy.[117] There is, however, as we shall afterwards see, great reason to believe that the word leprosy was then used as a generic term, including under it many different varieties of cutaneous affections. I can offer nothing precise in regard to the exact period of the first introduction of Leprosy into Scotland. If, as I have already shown to be highly probable, the term Liberton is merely a conversion from leper town, it would render it likely that the disease was an early visitant of this country; for we know that Liberton is mentioned in various old charters of the reign of David I., who died in 1153.[118] In the Foundation Charter of Holyrood (1128) the mill and chapel “de Libertune”[119] are mentioned, and in the chartulary of Kelso, “William, parsona de Liberton,” signs as witness to some charters dated during the latter half of the twelfth century.[120] At a later date there figures repeatedly, in the ancient and well-known verses of Blind Harry, as an occasional companion of Wallace—