Between the ruins of two sacred buildings, with the town-wall to the south and a suburban hamlet known to ill fame as the Thieves' Row to the north of it, a lodging was prepared for the titular king of Scotland, and fitted up with tapestries taken from the Gordons after the battle of Corrichie.
He was an ardent social reformer; he secured the abolition of corporal punishment in the schools, the suppression of lotteries, of houses of ill-fame and of obscene literature; he instituted reforms in the hospitals, and insisted on the honours of public burial for the poor.
By the 15th century in many cases they had utterly sunk in reputation, their obligation to nurse the sick was quite neglected, and they had, rightly or wrongly, acquired the reputation of being mere nests of beggars and women of ill fame.
