From the rules of the Lazar House of SS. Mary and Erkemould, at Ilford in Essex, which accommodated 13 Lepers--we learn, in 1336, that the inmates were ordered "to preserve silence, and, if able, to hear Mass and Matins throughout, and whilst there, to be intent on prayer and devotion. In the hospital, every day, each shall say for morning duty a Pater-noster and Ave Maria[i] thirteen times; and for the other hours of the day--1st, 3rd, and 6th of Vespers; and again, at the hour of concluding service, a Pater-noster and Ave Maria seven times; besides the aforesaid prayers each Leper shall say a Pater-noster and Ave Maria thirty times every day, for the founder of the Hospital--the Abbess of Barking, 1190--the Bishop of the place, all his benefactors, and all other true believers, living or dead; and on the day on which any one of their number departs from life, let each Leprous brother say in addition, fifty Paters and Aves three times, for the soul of the departed, and the souls of all diseased believers." Punishment was meted out to any who neglected or shirked these duties. Some of the Leper Houses in France excited the jealousy and avarice of Phillip V., who caused many of the inmates to be burned alive, in order that the fire might purify at one and the same time, the infection of the body and that of the soul, giving as an ostensible reason for his fiendish barbarity, the absurd and baseless allegation, that the Lepers had been bribed to commit the detestable sin and horrible crime of poisoning the wells, waters, etc., used by the Christians. The real cause being a desire, through this flimsy excuse, to rob the richer hospitals of their funds and possessions, this is clearly manifest in the special wording of his own edict, "that all the goods of the Lepers be lodged and held for himself." A similar persecution was renewed about 60 years afterwards, in 1388, under Charles VI. of France. As soon as a man became a prey to the disease, his doom on earth was finally and irrevocably sealed. The laws, both civil and ecclesiastical, were awful in their severity to the poor Leper; not only was he cut off from the society of his fellow-men, and all family ties severed, but, he was dead to the law, he could not inherit property, or be a witness to any deed. According to English law Lepers were classed with idiots, madmen, outlaws, etc.