(1) _Lincoln Invalids._—Near Lincoln is a spot still pointed out as the “Lepers’ Field.” Formerly it was known as the Mallardry or as Holy Innocents’ hospital. [p101] Had one visited this place in the days of Edward I, ten of the king’s servants—lepers or decrepit persons—would have been found there, together with two chaplains and certain brethren and sisters. Thomas, a maimed clerk, was one of the staff, but after thirty years he incurred the jealousy of his companions, who endeavoured to ruin his character while he was absent on business. Brother Thomas appealed to the king, and justice was administered (1278). Some time afterwards the household became so quarrelsome that the king issued a writ, and a visitation was held in 1291 to set matters straight. In 1290 William le Forester was admitted to the lepers’ quarters, his open-air life not having saved him from disease. Dionysia, a widow, took up her abode as a sister the same year, and remained until her death, when another leper was assigned her place. An old servant of the house past work was admitted as pensioner, and also a blind and aged retainer whose faithfulness had reduced him to poverty, he having served in Scotland and having moreover lost all his horses, waggons and goods in the Welsh rebellion. But strangest of all the residents in the hospital of Holy Innocents was the condemned criminal Margaret Everard. She was not a leper, but had once been numbered among the dead. Mistress Everard, of Burgh-by-Waynflete, was a widow, convicted of “harbouring a thief, namely, Robert her son, and hanged on the gallows without the south gate of Lincoln.” Now the law did not provide interment for its victims, but it seems that the Knights Hospitallers of Maltby paid a yearly sum to the lepers for undertaking this work of mercy at Canwick.[68] On this memorable [p102] occasion, however, the body being cut down and already removed near the place of burial—the lepers’ churchyard—the woman “was seen to draw a breath and revive.” We learn from a Patent Roll entry (1284) that pardon was afterwards granted to Margaret “because her recovery is ascribed to a miracle, and she has lived two years and more in the said hospital.”