But at whatever respective periods the disease first appeared in England and Scotland, there are strong reasons for believing that it continued to prevail in the latter kingdom long after it had ceased, or almost entirely ceased, in the former. In the preface to the statutes of the leper-house of St. Albans, drawn up about 1350, and already referred to as published in the supplement to Matthew Paris’ history,[125] it is stated that the number of lepers that presented themselves for admission had diminished so much by that time, that their expense of maintenance was below the revenue of the institution; “in general,” it is added, “there are now not above three, sometimes only two, and occasionally only one.” In exactly the same year (1350) that this report was drawn up for St. Albans, was it thought necessary to institute the leper-house at Glasgow; and nearly one hundred years later, or in 1427, the Scottish Parliament deemed it proper to legislate on the subject of lepers. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, at Ripon, was established in 1139 for the relief of all the lepers in that district. In the time of Henry VIII, it contained only two priests and five poor people to pray for all “Christen sowlez.”[126] At Illeford, in Essex, an hospital was instituted in the reign of Henry II. or Richard I. for thirteen lepers. In one of the reports of the commissioners for suppressing colleges, hospitals, etc., in the time of Edward VI., it is observed, in regard to the state of this Illeford Hospital, that though founded “to find 13 pore men beying Lepers, 2 pryests, and one clerke—thereof there is at this day but one pryest and 2 pore men.”[127] By the same commission most other lazar-houses were reported as having no leprous patients, and yet only a few years previously was the leper-house of Aberdeen built, and forty or fifty years afterwards (in 1591) the Edinburgh hospital at Greenside was established. We have several later notices of the disease among us. In the Aberdeen Kirk-Session Register, vol. i., it is stated that, on the 13th May 1604, the kirk-session ordained “Helene Smythe, ane puir woman infectit with leprosie, to be put in the hospitall appoyntit for keeping and haulding of lipper-folkis betwixt the townis; and the keyis of the said hospitall to be deliverit to her.”[128]