In considering under a previous head the extent of endowment of the British leper hospitals, we have seen that the inmates of many of the poorer institutions depended more or less entirely for their means of subsistence upon the casual alms which they were able to beg from the charitable. In a few favoured cases the lepers were specially authorised to pursue this occupation beyond the district of the hospital. A charter was given by King John to the lepers of St. Lawrence’s Hospital, Bristol, granting them great privileges of this kind. Some of the passages in this charter are curious, as illustrative of the present point. I append a translation of a part of it from the copy of the original document as published by Dugdale:— “John, by the grace of God, King of England, etc., to the Archbishops, etc., greeting, know ye that we, for the love of God, have granted, and by this charter have confirmed to the lepers near Bristol, a croft beyond the gate of Lacford, on the road to Bath, to dwell there, as the charter which we gave them while we were Count Moreton reasonably proves; know ye also that we have received these lepers into our protection, and therefore desire and command that ye befriend and protect them (_quod eos manu teneatis et protegatis_), and cause no impediment to them, wherever they shall be asking alms in our lands, as our letters-patent which we granted unto them when Count Moreton rationally testifies,” etc.[351] Grants and liberties, such as the above, were certainly, however, rare. In general the lepers were restricted as to the districts and places in which they presented themselves to seek for alms. We have already seen the Burrow Lawes ordering that they “sall not gang fra dure to dure, but sall sit at the ports of the burgh, and seek alms fra them that passes in and furth;” and the Scottish Parliament of 1427 enacted that they should not be allowed to sit and beg “neither in kirk nor in kirk-yairdis,[352] nor other places within the burrowes, but at their owne hospital, and at the part of the town and other places outwith the burrowes.” But even in exercising this vocation in these stated places, the unfortunate petitioners seem to have been everywhere obliged to use certain precautions, with the view of prohibiting them from diffusing the disease.