English legislation was never severe regarding lepers. We may believe that the tolerant spirit of a certain thirteenth-century Scottish canon prevailed throughout Great Britain. Lepers, it was declared, might well fulfil their parochial obligations, but “if they cannot be induced to do so, let no coercion be employed, seeing that affliction should not be accumulated upon the afflicted, but rather their misfortunes commiserated.”[40] In France, however, upon one terrible occasion, Philip V was guilty of the abominable cruelty of burning lepers on the pretext that they had maliciously poisoned wells. Mezeray says:—“they were burned alive in order that the fire might purify at once the infection of the body and of the soul.” The report of this inhuman act reached England and was recorded both in the Chronicle of Lanercost (under date 1318) and also by John Capgrave, who says:— “And in this same yere [1318] the Mysseles [lepers] thorow oute Cristendam were slaundered that thei had mad couenaunt with Sarasines for to poison alle Cristen men, to put uenym in wellis, and alle maner uesseles that long to mannes use; of whech malice mony of hem were conuicte, and brent, and many Jewes that gave hem councel and comfort.”[41] (b) _Property._—The legal status of the leper must now be examined. When pronounced a leper in early days, a man lost not only his liberty, but the right to inherit or bequeath property. A manuscript Norman law-book [p057] declares “that the mezel cannot be heir to any one.” In the days of Stephen, for example, Brien Fitz-Count was lord of Wallingford and Abergavenny. “He had two sons, whom, being lepers, he placed in the Priory of Bergavenny and gave lands and tithes there to for their support,” bequeathing his property to other kinsmen. Again, two women of the Fitz-Fulke family appeared in the King’s Court (1203) in a dispute about property at Sutton in Kent: Avice urged that Mabel, having a brother, had no claim—“but against this Mabel says that he is a leper.”[42] Even a grant made by such a person was void. In 1204 King John committed the lands of William of Newmarch to an official who should answer for them at the Exchequer, but “if he have given away any of his lands after he fell sick of the leprosy, cause the same to be restored to his barony.”[43] This illustrates Bracton’s statement that “a leprous person who is placed out of the communion of mankind cannot give . . . as he cannot ask,” and, again, “if the claimant be a leper and so deformed that the sight of him is insupportable, and such that he has been separated . . . [he] cannot plead or claim an inheritance.”[44]