THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
L.XXXI11.—CENTRAL ENGLAND : RUTLAND, LEICESTERSHIRE, AND NOTT1NGHAMSUIRE :—THE TOWNS.
TAEICESTERSHIRE contains the market towns of Leicester, Ashby de la Zwick Bosworth, Market-Harborough, Latter- worth, Melton-Mowbray, Mount Sorrel, and Whitwick.
Leicester represents, as we have seen, the site of the Roman station of RAT.E. After the downfall of the Roman and British- Roman power, the Saxons seem to have built their new town on much the same spot. The name which theygave to it, with its Roman termination, implies this, but the first part of the new name has caused more doubt and speculation. We may at once dismiss the fable of its derivation from the British King Lear, or Leir,—about the last person the Saxons would celebrate in choosing a successor to the Roman name Rata;. It has been said with more plausibility that the ancient name of the river Soar, on the right bank of which Leicester stands, was Leir, Leger, Leda, or Lega ; and there is still a place called Lear at the head of the river. The name appears variously in Saxon times as Leger-ceastre and Ledcestre, and afterwards Legercester and Legecestria. We have already seen that it passed into the hands of the Danes, and became one of their fire or seven burghs or strongholds, so remaining till taken by the Lady Ethelfleda, Alfred's daughter, in the reign of Edward the Elder. A mint was established here in which coins were produced from the time of Athelstan to that of Henry II., and it was also for some time the seat of a bishopric. At the Conquest it became part of the Royal demesne. The following is the account in Domesday Book :—" The civitas of Ledcestre, in the time of King Edward [the Confessor], paid yearly to the King thirty pounds by tale (every one of the value of teupence), and fifteen sectaries of honey. When the King marched with his army through the land, twelve burgesses of that borough attended him. If the King went over sea against the enemy, they sent four horses from that borough as far as London, to carry arms or such other things as circum- stances required. At this time, King William has for all rents from that city and county forty-two pounds and ten shillings in weight. Instead of one hawk, he has ten pounds by tale, and instead of a baggage or sumpter horse twenty shillings. Of the mint masters he has yearly twenty pounds, every one of the value of twenty pence. Of this twenty pounds Hugo de Grentemeisnil has the third penuy. The King has in Ledcestre thirty-nine houses ; the Archbishop of York two houses with sac and soc, and they belong to Chirlintone. Earl Hugh has ten houses, which belong to Barhou, and six belonging to Cacheworde, and one house belonging to Locteburne. The Abbey of Coventreu has ten houses ; the Abbey of Cruiland has three houses. From all which the King has his geld. Hugo de Grentemeisnil has a hundred and ten houses and two churches ; besides these, he has in common with the King twenty-four houses in the same borough. In the same borough has the same Hugo two churches and two houses, and four houses decayed. The Countess Judith has in the same borough twenty-eight houses ; and from the moiety of a mill she has five shillings and fourpence. Without the borough she has six plough-lands belonging to the borough ; and she has there one plough, and her homagers three ploughs. There are eight acres of meadow, and a wood six furlongs long and three broad. The whole is worth forty shillings." A castle, as we have already said, was built or enlarged by the Conqueror to overawe Leicester, and the wardenship entrusted to Hugo de Grentemeisnil. Leicester Castle was held by Grentemeisnil against William Rufus, in favour of Robert Courthose ; but was taken and nearly destroyed, and remained in ruins for some time. In the reign of Henry I., Robert de Bellomont, Earl or Count of Mellent, is said to have been made Earl of Leicester,. in 1103. He chiefly resided in the castle, which he fortified. and enlarged. His son Robert, surnamed Bossu, came into. collision with Henry II., the town paying the penalty. This Earl is chiefly remarkable for the close of his career. In 1143, " tired of active life, he founded at Leicester a monastic establishment of Black Canons, afterwards enlarged by his. daughter-in-law, Petronilla, of whom it was said that after her death a plait of her hair was used to suspend the chapel lamp. The- abbey speedily became famous for its riches and its influence, mauy of its abbots sitting in successive Parliaments. It was, however, more celebrated for its visits from Royal personages, who in their progresses northward frequently lodged here. Here also (1530) died Cardinal Wolsey, who arrived a helpless invalid on his way from York to London, and entered the abbey, never to leave it All that are now left are the gateway and the walls surrounding the precincts, enclosing some scanty ruins of a domestic mansion of the sixteenth century, incorporated with a modern farmhouse.' A severe blow fell upon Leicester in the time of Earl Bassu's son. and successor, another Robert, surnamed Blanchmains. Leaguing with the " young King" against his father, Leicester became- the head-quarters of the rebels. The Earl and his adherents were routed by the King's forces under Richard Lucy, Chief. Justiciary, near Bury St. Edmund's, and the Earl was taken- prisoner. Leicester next was taken by storm by the Royal forces, fired in several places, and knocked to pieces by military engines. The castle held out some time longer, but at length was compelled. to capitulate, and was reduced to a heap of ruins. This was in. 1173. Remains of this ancient Leicester are still from time to. time discovered, some of the foundations of buildings being found. in directions right across the present streets. Earl Blanchmains regained the King's favour subsequently, and was restored to his estates; but he and his successor both engaging in the Crusades,. Leicester was but ill rebuilt, and the castle remained for many years in a state of dilapidation. Earl Blanchmains was slain in Greece in 1190, and his successor, another Robert, surnamed Fitz- Parnell, whom the peerages make to be the son of the last Earl,. —who in that case must have had another alias,—dying in 1204 without male issue, his estates passed to Amicia, his eldest sister ; and in 1207 the earldom was confirmed by King John to- Simon de Montfort, either her husband or her sou. The English, history of this Simon de Montfort is very obscure. He seems, in. the year 1210, when King John was under the Papal Interdict, to have suffered under a charge of conspiracy against the King, the Chronicle of Dunstable asserting that the King was informed, while- on an expedition against the Welsh, that Simon de Montfort had been chosen Kiag by the conspiring Barons. At any rate, he was deprived of his possessions and banished from the realm, and then entered on his adventurous campaign against the Albigenses in the south of France. In the latter end of 1213 the Pope made it a special point with King John that he should restore Simon de Montfort, but the King did not comply. In the seventeenth year of his reign, however, he put the earldom into the custody of Ranulph, Earl of Chester, De Montfort's near relation. So things seem to have continued till the death of John and of Simon de Mont- fort also, who was slain at Toulouse on the 25th of June, 1218. On the 19th of October, 1216, we find the earldom of Leicester in the custody of Stephen de Segrave, one of the young King's chief ministers. In the fourth of Henry III. the earldom was again committed to the charge of the Earl of Chester, who is generally supposed to have succeeded in the earldom ; but Mr. Nichols, the laborious and accurate historian of Leicestershire, states that De Montfort was never actually deprived of the earl- dom. On Simon's death the earldom was claimed by his eldest son, Amauri, sixth lord of the county of Montfort. In the month of February, 1230, this Amauri, in a petition to King Henry III., craved that he would vouchsafe to restore him, or if not him, his younger brother Simon, to all the lands and rights which he had and ought to have in England, and of which his father, as he alleged, died seised. The King replied that be would restore all the said lands in England, parcel of the manor of Leicester, with the third penny of the county, as soon as he could get them out of the hands of Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln, to whom he had formerly granted them. This seems to have been accomplished, since we soon afterwards find Simon de Montfort (the younger) in posses- sion of the earldom and estates. We need not pursue his history further, as it becomes identified with that of England in general, Leicester sharing in the honour attached thenceforth indelibly to the name of the Father of the House of Commons ; and although the attention of the family was necessarily much drawn away from the locality by the general affairs of the kingdom, Leicester has still some special tie to bind her to the memory of the great Simon de Montfort. A charter had been granted to the town by King John in the first year of his reign, and at the same time the Earl, Robert Fitz-Parnell, granted a charter to the bur- gesses investing them with the right of buying and selling land, &c. Some of the first privileges of the corporation are first defined and confirmed by this Earl ; and his successor, Simon de Montfort (the younger)—the Great De Montfort—extendedand ratified the rights of the burgesses by a charter dated at Leicester in the twenty- third year of the reign of Henry III. Ile also rebuilt the
castle. " During some repairs remains of the hall were brought to light. Originally it was a large apartment, with aisles formed by two rows of oak pillars, supporting the roof, five on each side, thirty feet high, with carved capitals. Only one of them now remains entire. An adjacent earthwork, called the Mount, was formerly occupied by the keep; the date of the for- mation is not clear. A portion of the walls that enclosed the courtyard ran round the Mount, and may still be seen. In the fourteenth century an additional arm, called the New Work, or Newarke, was added to the courtyard by the (then) Earl of Leicester, and was connected with the former enclosure by a turret gateway, now in bad preservation."
On the death of Simon de Montfort on the field of Evesham, in 1265, and the forfeiture of his earldom and possessions, these were conferred in 1274 by King Henry on his second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. His son Thomas, who succeeded in the earldom and property, was (as we have already mentioned) attainted and executed in 1322, leaving a son Henry, who was restored to the earldom and possessions in 1324. This last Earl made Leicester his principal place of residence, and under him and his successor the castle recovered and probably surpassed its former state of splendour. Henry Plantagenet, the fourth Earl of Leicester (of that family), was created Duke of Lancaster, but died without male heir in 1361, when the castle and manor of Leicester were allotted to his eldest daughter, Maud, then twenty-two years of age. She had been already widowed, and was then the wife of William, Count of Holland and Zealand, who acquired the castle and manor with her ; but on her death without issue in 1362, these passed to John of Gaunt, in right of his wife, Blanche, the younger daughter of the D uke of Lancaster. At the coronation of Richard II.
John of Gaunt claimed, as Earl of Leicester, the high Stewardship of England, and the claim was allowed,—so that the earldom may be considered as having passed, as well as the castle and town, to him and his successors, who became Kings of England. The earldom, it may be mentioned, was granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1563 to her favourite, Robert Dudley, who died in 1588 with- out acknowledged lawful issue. In 1618 it was revived in the Sydney family (representing the sister of the last Earl), in whom it continued till the year 1743, when it once more became extinct.
The next year it was granted to Thomas Coke, Lord Lovel, but expired again in 1759. The Cokes obtained a revival of the earldom in 1837 ; while another earldom (of the County) was created in the Townshend family in 1784, and became extinct in 1855.
In the meanwhile, the borough of Leicester continued to grow
iu importance. In 1295 it first returned two burgesses to Par- liament. In the reign of Henry VIII. one of the burgesses was elected by the " Mayor and his brethren," and the other by the commonalty of the town. " The freedom of election created much popular disturbance as far back as the reign of Henry VII., who ordained that the Mayor and his brethren should choose forty - eight of the most discreet inhabitants of the town, who should make election of all officers for the borough, as well as members of Parliament." Thus it continued till the reign of Charles If., when Sir John Pretyman was returned by the votes of " all the commons at large ;" and notwithstanding the efforts of the cor- poration, the suffrage continued from that time till the Reform Bill of 1832 to be vested in " the freemen not receiving alms, and the inhabitants paying scot and lot." Edward III. established a fair in the town. The accession of the House of Lancaster to the throne brought no permanent benefit to Leicester, though the Sovereigns of that line frequently visited the town, and several Par- liaments were held there in the reign of Henry VI. The castle had so far decayed in the time of Richard III. that he chose rather to stop at an inn a few evenings before his fall. A charter of Henry VII., dated 1504, confirms all the previous privileges of the burgesses, and empowers the justices, or a part of them, to take cognizance of treasons, murders, felonies, and other transgressions. "Several public acts and resolutions occurred during this reign relating to the local government of the town, for Henry appears to have paid particular attention to the wants and wishes of the corporation. A charter from Queen Elizabeth specifies that the borough of Leicester is very ancient and populous, and from remote times has been a borough incorporate. It proceeds to state that in consequence of petitions from the mayor and burgesses, the corporate and public body was to be created anew by the name of "The mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses of the borough of Leicester.' It grants also a market for wool yarn and worsted, and other commodities." In this reign the Rev. William Lee, a native of 1Voodborough, in Nottinghamshire, in 1589 in- vented the stocking-frame, it is said iu consequence of the in- terruption to his addresses cause I by the knitting of the lady he was courting. He applied to Queen Elizabeth to give bins a monopoly for snaking stockings. This the Queen declined, except in the matter of silk stockings. " Lee then carried his invention abroad, and there after many successes and failures died of a broken heart." Some of his workmen then returned to England, and settled in the county of Leicester. In the year 1640 a stock- ing-frame was introduced and employed at Hinckley by the family of Iliffe. In 1686, " one Alsopp, in the face of great difficulties and popular prejudice, erected a stocking-frame at Leicester." In the reign of Queen Anne there was a corporation termed the Framework Knitters' Company.'1' We have already mentioned the peculiar system under which the manufacture is carried on through the medium of middle-men between the manufac- turer in Leicester and the hands in the surrounding dis- trict called " Stockingers." " Some firms own and let out upwards of 1,000 frames, and it is estimated that in Leicester and its vicinity there are upwards of 12,000 frames, which give employment to a population of about 50,000. The manufacture of boots and shoes is also a staple trade of Leicester." The introduction of machinery into the manu- facture has from time to time been the cause of much rioting among the ignorant mechanics. The riots of 1773, 1787, and 1816 are the most remarkable. The last rioters
were called the Luddites," and six of the ringleaders were executed for the offence. We have already alluded to the storm- ing of Leicester by Charles I. in 1645, and the great slaughter of the inhabitants, followed by its reoccupation by the Parliamentary forces, immediately after the battle of Naseby.
Besides the stocking manufacture, lace-making, wool-combing, and dyeing are now also carried on in the town, which is the centre of a great agricultural and woolrraising district. Besides the markets, fairs are held about twelve times in the year. The population, which in 1851 was 60,584, had risen in 1861 to 68,056.
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