In the twentieth year of Edward’s reign he issued an ordinance providing for the expulsion of all leprous persons from the City. “Forasmuch,” he begins, “as we have been given to understand that many persons, as well of the City aforesaid, as others coming to the same City, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do publicly dwell among the other citizens and sound persons and there continually abide; and do not hesitate to communicate with them as well in public places as in private: and that some of them endeavouring to contaminate others with that abominable blemish (that so to their own wretched solace they may have the more fellows in suffering) as well as in the way of mutual communication, and by the contagion of their polluted breath, and by sexual intercourse with women in stews and other secret places detestably frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are sound, both male and female, to the great injury of the people dwelling in the City aforesaid, and the manifest peril of other persons to the same City resorting....” And he orders the removal of all such persons from the City within fifteen days, and forbids for the future any one to harbour in his house any one “smitten with the blemish of leprosy.” This order seems to have been obeyed. It is unfortunate that we do not know the number of the wretched lepers who were thus driven out. The disease itself, the ravages of which had been terrible, was now slowly disappearing: within two hundred years from this time it had practically disappeared. That there were still a good number of lepers in London is proved by the fact that the citizens in obedience to the law began to build lazar houses outside the City. Three at least there were already: that of St. Giles in the Fields, founded by Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I.; that of St. James in the Fields, founded for leprous virgins; and that of Great Ilford in Essex, founded by King Stephen, the only one now left of the leprous foundations. The new lazar houses erected were: one at the Lock without Southwark in Kent Street; one between Mile End Road and Stratford-le-Bow; one at Kingsland between Shoreditch and Stoke Newington; and one at Knightsbridge. One is mentioned twenty years later at Hackney. Another was founded a hundred years later by one William Yeoman of the Crown, himself a leper, on the high road between Highgate and Holloway. Twenty-six years later John Mayn, a baker and a leper, “who had oftentimes been before commanded by the Mayor and Aldermen to depart from the City” (oftentimes! Here is a proof of the weakness of the Executive!), was finally ordered to depart at once. It is not stated whether he obeyed.