(c) _Burial Rights._—The privilege of sepulture rendered the community more independent, and secured to it certain fees and legacies. A popular institution like St. Leonard’s, York, or St. John’s, Exeter, derived benefits from the burial of benefactors. There is a will entered on the Patent Roll of 1341 whereby a certain Vincent de Barnastapolia requested to be interred in the cemetery of St. Mark’s, Bristol, to which house he left a considerable legacy.[122] The conferring or denial of a place of sepulture seems to have been without rule, and was a matter of favour and circumstance. Thus St. Oswald’s, Worcester, had a cemetery (probably because it was originally a leper-house), whilst St. Wulstan’s had none. (d) _Worship and Burial of Lepers._—To lepers both chapel and graveyard were willingly granted. This was an early custom in England, as the Norman architecture of several chapels shows (e.g. Rochester, _circa_ 1100). The [p200] Gloucester lazars were granted burial rights before 1160, when they already possessed a chapel, the chancel of which still stands; the bishop’s licence made the usual stipulation that none but lepers should be interred.[123] A fresh impetus was given to spiritual provision for outcasts by the Lateran Council of 1179. Pope Alexander III decreed as follows:— “Seeing that it is very remote from Christian piety that those who seek their own and not the things of Jesus Christ do not permit lepers . . . to have churches or burial places of their own, nor to be assisted by the ministry of a priest of their own, we ordain that these lepers be permitted to have the same without any contradiction.” This privilege, it was declared, must not be prejudicial to the rights of ancient churches. * * * * * Digressing from the immediate subject of spiritual provision for the outcast, one point must be made clear. It is sometimes thought that the strict parochial discipline of mediæval England would insist upon the attendance of the leper at his parish church on certain occasions; others on the contrary suppose that the leper was excommunicate. The popular belief is that the Church provided for his worship the so-called “leper’s window,” frequently shown in old edifices. The existence of low-side-windows at such places as Bridgnorth and Spondon, where there were leper-colonies, is considered circumstantial evidence of their origin and purpose. But name and idea alike are of entirely modern growth, arising from a misinterpretation of a wall-painting at Windsor, which Mr. Street took to represent the [p201] communicating of a leper through an aperture. Administration would have been both difficult and irreverent; the opening, moreover, is often so situated that any such act would be physically impossible. A manuscript chronicle, indeed, records how Blase Tupton, who was dwelling near St. Chad’s, Shrewsbury, about the year 1409, had a gallery made so that she might join in public worship:—