Charles James Billson

“ Standing as it did in the most frequented open space of the town, the Gainsborough was far more in evidence than the Town Hall, and even than the High Cross, so that it became a favourite place for demonstrations of all kinds. ”

“ THE destruction of mediæval Leicester began with the passing of the Plantagenets and the dismantling of Leicester Castle. Fifty or sixty years later, the zeal of the religious reformer swept away many of the most characteristic and beautiful monuments of mediæval art. Other lingering remains of the Middle Age were afterwards allowed to fall into decay, and, within the last 150 years, many have been deliberately destroyed, under the blind pressure of growing life. Only a few are still to be found. ”

“ DURING the Middle Ages the trade of Leicester was almost entirely regulated by the Guild Merchant, or Chapman's Guild. As soon as a man had entered that Guild, he was free to carry on his special business, without paying the tolls which a non-guildsman would have to pay, and he shared all the privileges of the great trading fraternity of the town. ”

“ Here, in the large front chamber, according to tradition, Richard spent that night; and a bedstead, on which he is supposed to have slept, became famous at the beginning of the 17th century as one of the curiosities of Leicester. The local tradition is unsupported by any authority, but it is not contrary to known facts. It has been asked why the King did not sleep at Leicester Castle, where he had stayed just two years before; but a campaigner, on the eve of a decisive battle, may have had several reasons for preferring to pass the one night in a less ostentatious place of sojourn. ”

“ In the course of the next half century, Leicester, like the other trading towns of England, increased in wealth and population. The tallage rolls show an average of more than 450 taxpayers, and that for the year 1342 contains as many as 550 names. Before the visitation of the Black Death in 1348 — 1349, there must have been more than 3000 persons within the town. The community had become so numerous, and the civic life of Leicester had been so firmly established, when that calamity fell, that its effects were not so disastrous as they were in poorer and less advanced towns. ”

“ FOR many years after the Conquest the leading people of the town of Leicester were of Norman blood. This was owing, of course, to the power of the Norman Earls of Leicester, without whose appointment and approval no man could prosper, or obtain any high office, for the Earls naturally preferred men who were of their own race and who spoke their own language. The first Englishman who held the title of Mayor seems to have been William le Engleys, who was appointed in 1278, and in three subsequent years. ”

“ Thus, after remaining through many centuries a little community of from two to four thousand souls, the city of Leicester began to develop from a small country town into a densely-populated centre of modern commerce. ”

“ The Leicester Bridges emerge into the light of history in the middle of the 13th century, when the independent burgesses of the town, resenting certain taxes, known as "Bridge-silver," and "Gavel-pence," took steps to obtain their remission. In the first place, an Inquest was held, purporting to enquire into the origin of these taxes. The Leicester Jurats told two stories, one relating to gavel-pence, the other to bridge-silver. Both are interesting, and, as they are intimately connected, it may be well to give both. ”

“ No other trade, indeed, was quite so essential to the community; none was so jealously watched nor so stringently governed; and therefore, in order to learn how the Guild Merchant dealt with mediaeval trade, and how the Leicester Occupations were regulated, it may be well to gather some information about this ancient and life-giving fraternity.
For several centuries after the Conquest, the inhabitants of Leicester, who were compelled to grind their corn at the Earl's mills, were obliged also to bake their bread at his ovens. ”

“ THE annals of Leicester do not contain any story more curious and interesting than that of the fateful visit paid to the Blue Boar Inn by King Richard the Third, two days before his death, and the legacy of woe which that disastrous event is said to have bequeathed to a future generation. ”

“ I. THE EARL'S PRISON.
THE most ancient of the mediæval prisons of Leicester was the Castle Dungeon. The partly subterraneous room, which still exists between the Mount and the Hall of the Castle, and which has long been known as "John o' Gaunt's Cellar," has been generally identified with this venerable gaol. A very full and illustrated description of it will be found in James Thompson's account of Leicester Castle, published in 1859. He describes it as a long, dark and damp chamber, the sides and roof of which are constructed of wrought stones. ”

“ The tale of the two kinsmen's battle sounds like a genuine tradition, which had been in the mouths of Leicester people for many a year; but the application of it made by the Jurats is another matter. As soon as we come to the romantic story of the burglary and the lost charter, we feel the ground slipping under us. With regard to gavel-pence, or govel-pence, Mr. Round has pointed out that this tax was a Saxon service of immemorial antiquity, the "customary tribute" due from the tenant to the lord, commuted into a money payment. ”

“ When the Revolution Club celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the landing of William of Orange, there were as many as 672 diners at the Lion and Lamb and two other inns.
The Manchester and London coaches, which commenced running in 1777, used to stop for the night at Leicester, at the Inn known as the Swan with Two Necks. This thirsty bird makes a fine Pantagruelian sign, and it is quite a mistake to suppose, as some do, that its name is derived from the two nicks, or notches, cut in the swan's bill to distinguish its ownership. ”

“ In order to insure good weight, no baker might take bread into the country without first bringing it on horseback to the mayor, or to the Wardens of the Bakers' Occupation to be weighed, "and see whether it be able bread and wholesome for man's body." ”

“ If we relied solely upon the Records of the Borough we should hardly be aware that any such catastrophe had occurred, still less that it had been as serious and far-reaching as the canon of Leicester Abbey asserts. On turning to a tallage roll of the year 1336, one finds there the names of some 460 taxpayers of Leicester, and a tallage roll made eighteen years later in 1354, six years after the first and most severe visitation of the plague, contains very nearly the same number. ”

“ The White Lion, still standing, is also an old inn, and so is the Bee-hive near the West Bridge.
The Eastward drift of civic life in Leicester, which has been noticed before, and which was caused not only by the increase of trade in the markets, but by other factors, such as the decline of the Castle, and the dissolution of the great Abbey and of the religious houses that lay within the town west of the old High Street or in its immediate neighbourhood, received further impetus in the 17th century from a very different cause. ”

“ There are two factors which may partly explain the town's rapid recovery. In the first place, it has been observed that the mortality was greatest "among the meaner sort of the people," so that it would not fall as heavily upon a community of well-to-do traders as on agriculturalists. And, in the second place, the fame of Leicester's prosperity was at this period sufficiently wide-spread to attract fresh comers to take the place of those who fell in the course of the epidemic. ”

“ In fact, there are, underlying the common beliefs and practices concerning bridges and bridge-sacrifice, primitive religious traditions of immemorial antiquity. In mediæval times, when these old superstitions had been incorporated in the Christian faith, many persons built bridges for the salvation of their souls , and it was not unusual to dedicate a bridge to some saint, or to erect a chapel upon it, as at Nottingham and Northampton and Leicester. Private citizens would remember the bridges in their wills. ”

“ Simon's chantry was founded by Simon Symeon in 1381-2, "for the soul of Duke Henry, for the healthful estate of John of Gaunt, his son, Henry, earl of Derby, Simon Symeon and Elizabeth his wife, for their souls after death and the souls of the fathers and mothers of Simon and Elizabeth and all the faithful departed." On the day of Simon's obit, the office and mass of the dead were to be sung, and one of the canons was to say mass at the altar which Simon had constructed in the north part of the church, and three masses were to be said daily at the same altar. ”

“ When Queen Elizabeth, at the request of the Earl of Huntingdon, made new Statutes for the government of the house, after the dissolution, it was provided that the Hospital should in future be called "William Wigston's Hospital," and should not thereafter bear the name of "any fancied saint or other superstitious name," and that it should be one of the duties of the Confrater, or "Brother," to see that the poor went every dominical day and weekday to morning and evening prayer at St. Martin's church, but he might upon urgent cause say prayers in the chapel belonging to the hospital. ”

“ The destruction of the Grey Friars' monastery took place in the lifetime of Robert Herrick, who was born in 1540; and the events connected with it must have been fresh in the recollection of his contemporaries; yet, in 1612, he does not appear to have been aware of the tradition which had been published for the first time by Speed in the previous year, or, if so, he had evidently no faith in it. We cannot do better than follow his example. ”

“ For the relief of the poor and of sick men and women dwelling in Leicester We grant that the Mayor bailiffs and burgesses may have a wool market for the purchase and sale of wool, woollen thread, and yarn, provided such market damage no neighbouring market, and any subject may buy wool, woollen thread, and yarn brought into Leicester on the days appointed, when fairs and markets are held, and may sell the same again or use it in any way, the statute of Edward VI or any other statute notwithstanding. ”

“ Some time after, there was a certain clerk in this town of Leicester, by name Simon Maudit, who, for some time after the death of the aforesaid Robert, Earl of Leicester, who made the charter of quitclaim, had the reeveship of Leicester in farm, and collected and exacted the said pence called gavelpence by force and at his own will, distraining all who refused to pay, bidding them show him a warranty of quitclaim, for he knew very well that the quitclaim was burnt, so they are paid to this very day. ”

“ There were in fact two other persons of the name of Clowne living at Leicester in the early part of the 14th century. At any rate the Abbot was distinguished, like the burgess, not only for great business ability, but also for a generous hospitality and good nature. Henry of Knighton calls him "humanissimus," and the list of his benefactions to the Abbey is a long one. He obtained from the King a dispensation freeing the Abbey from the unprofitable duty of sending representatives up to Parliament; and he also procured exemption from payment of a heriot on an Abbot's death. ”

“ It ceased to be used as an inn sometime after the events there mentioned, but remained long in existence, a very beautiful specimen of the domestic architecture of the middle ages, until it was finally destroyed by the hand of man in the year 1836.
The most important of the other 16th century inns seem to have been the Angel, the White Hart, the Bull's Head, the Green Dragon and the Horse and Trumpet.
The most famous of all Leicester hostelries was the Angel, which stood in Cheapside, near the present Victoria Parade, and stretched back to the town wall overlooking Gallowtree Gate. ”

“ The family of Morton was long established in Leicester. William de Mortona entered the Guild Merchant early in the 13th century. William Morton in 1389 was one of the Wardens of the Guild of All Saints' Church. In the last half of the 16th century Alderman William Morton, linen-draper, was a person of some importance. He lived in the Stocks House at the High Cross, attached to which, on the northern side of Dead Lane, was a garden and orchard, part of which he sold off to accommodate the new Grammar School that was built in 1574. ”