The chancery warrant of Edward IV., quoted in the Second Part of these papers, speaks of the retirement of a leper from society as a matter of custom and duty, and empowers the sheriff of the county to remove the suspected person to a secluded place, as is the usage (_prout moris est_), provided the actual existence of the disease was made out.[332] There exist in the old records of Scotland both local and general enactments enforcing the retirement and seclusion of lepers. The Scottish “Burrow Lawes” (_Leges Burgorum_) are generally allowed to have been drawn up as early as the twelfth century.[333] They are a code intended apparently for the government of the four first royal burghs of Scotland, viz. Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling. Their sixty-fourth chapter contains some regulations regarding “lippermen.” The first of these regulations provides in the following terms for the lodgment in hospital and sustenance of the “lippermen” of the burghs:[334]— “Gif ony man dwelland or borne in the King’s Burgh is striken with leprosie, and hes substance and geir of his awin to sustaine and cleath himselfe, he sall be put in the hospitall of that burgh quhere he dwells. And gif he hes na thing to liue upon, the burgesses of that burgh sall make ane collection amongst them, for meat and claith to him; and that collection sall be the summe of twentie shillinges.”[335] The canons of the Church of Scotland, as drawn up or authorised by the provincial ecclesiastical councils held at Perth in the years 1242 and 1269, speak of those attacked by leprosy in this country, as being “separated from society in accordance with general custom (_de consuetudine generali a communione hominum separantur_) and retired to secluded situations.”[336] I have already, in Part II., quoted a clause from the acts of the Perth Parliament of 1427, empowering and enforcing the dignitaries and officers of the church to search diligently in their parish visitations for any persons affected with leprosy, and to commit them to the keeping of either the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, according as they happened to be “Clerkes” or “Seculars.” PROHIBITIONS AGAINST THE INFECTED ENTERING TOWNS. Lepers were compelled, by other reasons than mere custom or common law, to retire from society. They were of necessity driven to seek the asylum of the lazar hospitals, in consequence of the statutes, both of the general country and of local communities, prohibiting any citizen from retaining a person labouring under leprosy in his house, and preventing the infected from entering within the gates of the towns and villages.[337]