A Walk Through Leicester Part 2

The next object that engages the eye is the church of _All Saints_, projecting on the west end into the street, exhibiting in its clock an humble copy of the machinery of St Dunstan's, in London. It is a small neat church with three aisles and a low tower, and nothing in its architecture attracts regard. This vicarage with that of _St Peter's_, which was annexed to it in the reign of Elizabeth, includes the antient parish of _St Michael_, and part if not the whole, of that of _St.

Clement_.

A monument in this church-yard commemorates a character greatly distinguished by his large donations to the poor--_Ald. Gabriel Newton_.

Of the prevalence of alms-giving in Leicester, this parish, together with the rest, bears full testimony, in a long list of benefactors, from the Royal Grant of Charles the first of forty acres of land in Leicester forest, to poor housekeepers, (which now produces annually 33l. 11s. 4d {42}) to the donor of the penny wheaten Loaf. From the returns to Parliament in the present reign, when accounts were made of all the charitable donations in the kingdom, it appears that there are donations in the parishes of Leicester, in land and money (including the endowments of the lesser Hospitals) mostly vested in the trust of the Corporation and by them distributed, to the annual amount of upwards of 800l.--see Nichols.--

A short s.p.a.ce below the church is the spot where formerly stood the North Gates; here a narrow lane, which once obtained the name of St. Clements, from its leading to that church, but which is now degraded into _Dead-mans Lane_, is the pa.s.sage to a Meeting House, belonging to the Society of Quakers. The street continuing in a right line, now takes the name of

NORTH-GATE STREET.

and conducts us to a bridge over the Ca.n.a.l, beyond which is the _North_ or _St. Sunday's Bridge_. This is an elegant stone structure, erected in 1796 and when viewed from the Abbey meadow below, it forms with the trees and slopes beyond it a very pleasing scene. Its three arches are small segments of a large circle.

At the foot of the bridge in an area enclosed by a low wall, and distinguished by a few scattered grave-stones, the church-yard of _St.

Leonard_ meets the eye. The church, of which no trace remains, was demolished by the Parliament Garrison in the reign of Charles the first; as from its convenient situation it might have covered the approach of the enemy, and given them the command of the bridge. The parish still remains distinct, and the occasional duty is performed by the minister of St. Margaret's.

We cannot leave the North Bridge, without remarking that near this spot once stood an establishment, which as it related to a privilege exclusively royal, that of coining money, has ever been thought to confer honor on the places where it was allowed to be exercised. It is undoubtedly proved from the series of coins that has been collected, that money was coined at the _Mint at Leicester_, in regular succession from the reign of the Saxon king Athelstan, down to Henry the second. The _Monetarii_, or Governors of the mint, were ent.i.tled to considerable privileges and exemptions, being _Socmen_, or holders of land in the Soc, or franchise of a great Baron, yet they could not be compelled to relinquish their tenements at their lord's will. They paid twenty pounds every year, a considerable sum, as a pound at the time of the conquest, contained three times the weight of silver it does at present. These pounds consisted of pennies, each weighing one _ora_ or ounce, of the value of 20 pence. Two thirds of this sum were paid to the king, and the other third to the feudal Baron of Leicester.

The Leicester coins of Athelstan and Edmund the first have only a rose with a legend of the king's name, that of the Moneyer, and Leicester; from Etheldred the second, they bear the impress of the royal head and sceptre, with the same stile of legend unchanged.

In this series of Leicester coins, which has been engraved with accurate attention in the valuable work of Mr. Nichols, the triangular helmets, uncouth diadems, and rudely expressed countenances of our Saxon Sovereigns, exhibit, when opposed to a plate of Roman coinage, a striking contrast to the nicely delineated features of the laurelled Caesars. In no instance of comparison does the Roman art appear more conspicuous.

The great quant.i.ty of coins of that scientific people which have been found at Leicester, is an additional testimony of its consequence as a Roman town; these, unfortunately upon being found at different periods, have paffed into various hands, and altho' some few gentlemen here have made collections, yet it is to be regretted that by far the greater part of the coins have been taken from the town. Had those found in the last century been thrown together into one cabinet, Leicester might have exhibited at this time a respectable series of Roman coinage, both in bra.s.s and silver, from the emperor Nero, down to Valens. Leaving those whose taste shall so direct them, to pursue the train of reflections to which this most curious subject may lead, we return to our route. From the North Budge two streets branch out, that on the left the

WOOD-GATE,

leading to the Ashby-de-la-Zouch road, and that on the right, the

ABBEY-GATE,

conducting us to the Abbey.

The name of _Abbey_, so dear to painting, poetry, and romance, naturally raises in the mind an idea of the picturesque and the aweful; but we are now approaching no gothic perspectives, no "long drawn aisles and fretted vaults," and scarcely able to bring a single instance of a.s.similation, we visit indeed an Abbey only in name; yet we visit a spot well adapted to the purposes to which it was appropriated. Sequestered, surrounded by pleasing objects, and dignified by the not uncertain evidences of history, it offers to the thinking mind all those interesting sensations which a review of past times, important events, and manners now no more, can possibly produce.

An antient brick wall with a small niche of stone is the first indication of its boundaries. This is said by Leland, to have been built by Bishop Penny who was Abbot of this Monastery in 1496. This prelate continued in his Abbacy till he was translated to the See of Carlisle, and even then, when spared from his episcopal duty, he delighted to dwell among his brethren in this religious retreat, and was interred in the neighbouring church of St. Margaret. Tracing the wall, we enter the grounds by a modern gateway, and perceive, among orchards, gardens, and potatoe plantations (the land being occupied by a Gardener and Nursery-man) the front wall, facing the north west, of the mansion, once belonging to the Earls of Devons.h.i.+re, which, as Mr. Grose has ascertained from a MS. in the British Museum, was built out of the ruins of the Abbey, long after its dissolution. The ma.s.sy stone stanchions of the windows of this house which still remain entire, and the firmness of the walls, shew the durability of the materials. They still retain the traces of that fire by which the forces of Charles the first on their retreat northward after their defeat at Naseby, destroyed that mansion, a few days before, the quarters of the king himself.

In these gardens, nearly thirty acres in extent, no traces now remain of the refectory, the cells of the Abbot and twelve Canons, the structures raised in the year 1134, by the great Robert Bossu, Earl of Leicester; neither is there, as might have been hoped, one vestige of that n.o.ble church, believed to have been built by Petronilla, the wife of his son Robert Blanch-mains, and adorned with the pious donation of a braid of her hair wrought into a rope, to suspend the lamp in the great choir; an offering at which some of our modern females who sacrifice their tresses with other views, may perhaps smile. Nor has the diligence of the enquiring Antiquary been more successful in the discovery of any traces of the tomb of Cardinal Wolsey, that great example of fallen ambition; who, after a life of more than princely magnificence, stripped of his honours, deprived of his eight hundred attendants, came here, sick, almost solitary, and a prisoner, performing a wearisome journey on an humble mule, to crave of the Abbot "_a little earth for charity_."

But, however barren this spot may seem to be of antient relicks, it is not wholly dest.i.tute of objects calculated to revive in the thinking mind, the events to which we have been alluding; for in the small garden or court before the main front of the present ruins are still to be seen the delapidated towers of that gate-way thro' which Wolsey entered in melancholy degradation, and thro' which other great, more prosperous, and often royal visitors were admitted with their stately trains.

Returning by the first entrance, and pa.s.sing this interesting gate-way, and the antient stone wall of the Abbey, overhung with profuse ivy, the visitor will find himself well recompensed for the trouble of a traverse along the Abbey meadow, from the Bleach-yard at the angle of the wall, to the navigation bridge at the bottom of North-gate street.

On crossing the antient bed of the Soar, the eye will immediately take its flight over a fine level plain containing at least five hundred acres of perhaps the richest soil in the kingdom, for that may truly be said of the _Abbey Meadow_. The right of this tract is vested partly in a number of proprietors who claim the hay, and partly in the inhabitants of Leicester, who possess the privilege of here pasturing their cows till a certain period of the year.

This ample area was formerly used as a race ground, but that annual sport is now removed to the South-side of the town, having been here frequently incommoded by the floods from the Soar.

It has lately, at various reviews been dignified by a display of that admirable patriotism, which, while it reflects honor on the British name in general, is found in particular to glow with equal zeal and firmness in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Volunteers of Leicester and its County.

The view to the North-ward is simply ornamented by the church and village of Belgrave, whose inhabitants in 1357, in consequence of a dispute with the Abbot concerning the boundaries of the Stocking Wood, blockaded the North Bridge, and the Fosse, with a determination of depriving the Monks of their usual supply of provision from their _Grange_, or Farm at Stoughton. This view forms a pleasing contrast to the towering churches and close grouped houses of Leicester. The eye of taste will however soon turn from these objects and dwell with greater pleasure on the n.o.ble ivied walls bounding the Abbey domains; it will proceed to contemplate the mingling angles of its ruins, and in the back ground, the rich tops of the woods in the neighbourhood of Beaumont Leys. This scene however, will not serve merely to amuse the eye, but will naturally lead the well informed visitor to interesting and affecting thoughts, while he contemplates the spot in which, in former times, were acted all the striking rites of the Romish Church, tho' he may lament the superst.i.tious errors into which a dark and ignorant age had plunged mankind, he need not join with the destroyer of these venerable inst.i.tutions in lording then memory with odious crimes, nor deem them even wholly useless. Pity and a regard to truth will lead him to acknowledge that, tho' their wors.h.i.+p was less pure than the reformed service now happily established in this Island, yet it was calculated, by its address to the senses, to keep alive the remembrance of the faith of the Gospel, and to prevent the warring Baron and his rude va.s.sals from relapsing into heathenism. Let it also be remembered, that Monks, odious as we are wont to consider them, were at one time, the only inhabitants of Christendom, who were at all acquainted with such sciences as then peered above the mists of overwhelming ignorance. Of history, they may be said to be the modern fathers, and tho' perhaps, like the age in which they lived, in some respects, blind themselves, they led, not indirectly to the enlightening of the present age. But in their own times they were far from useless; their monasteries were ever ready to receive the wearied traveller, and many persons of family, tho' of broken fortunes were honorably maintained at their board. The poor were gratuitously relieved from their kitchens, and that in a manner, upon the whole, more favorable to religion and morality than they are now by those parish rates, which the abolition of monasteries, and the part.i.tion of their property among private individuals, have rendered so oppressively necessary. To these valuable purposes the revenues of our Abbey were fully competent, for it possessed the advowsons of thirty six parish churches in Leicester and its County, which together with lands in various places, and rights in particular districts, produced annually for its disposal more than one thousand pounds.

Quitting the Abbey meadow, and pa.s.sing the North lock, we still continue our walk along pleasing rural scenes. The sweeps of the river which here beautifully meanders, wash, almost closely, a large extent of town, affording an agreeable prospect on the left, and a slope finely diversified with groves and pasturage descends gently to the meadows on the right. Approaching the Bow-Bridge, we pa.s.s a plot of ground insulated by the Soar, called the Black Friars, once the scite of a monastery belonging to the Augustine or Black Friars, of which no traces now remain. That arm of the river which flows under the west bridge, is by some supposed, from its pa.s.sing under the scite of the old Roman town, to be a ca.n.a.l formed by that people for the convenience of their dwellings. It is now called the _New Soar_, and whether it can authentically boast the honor of being a Roman work, the antiquary may perhaps endeavour in vain to decide. A tunnel or Roman sewer, was discovered in 1793, at an equal distance between the Roman ruin, called Jewry Wall, and the river, and in a direct line towards the latter, which contained some curious fragments of Roman pottery.

Tho' it be the leading purpose of this survey to point out existing objects, those who lament the loss of such antient remains as were justly to be prized, will pardon a brief tribute to the memory of _Bow-Bridge_.

That single arch of stone, richly shadowed with ivy, spanned, at the corner of this island, the arm of the Soar. Its beautiful curve, unbroken either by parapet or hand-rail, well merited the name with which some Antiquaries have graced it, the _Rialto Bridge_. On the top of the bow, feeding on the mould which time had acc.u.mulated upon the stony ridge, flourished a spreading hawthorn; this with the stream below, when sparkling under the reflection of the western sun, the broken shrubby banks, and the distant swell of Brad-gate Park hill, formed a picture which has often allured the eye; a picture, that, as it repeatedly arrested the painter's hand, we can hardly say is now no more.

Of this Bridge, the learned author of the _Desiderata Curiosa_, who has mistaken it for the adjoining one of four arches, has given a plate in which is represented a troop of hors.e.m.e.n with banners, carrying the dead body of Richard the third, thrown upon a horse, over a bridge which never exceeded three feet; a width fully sufficient for the purpose for which it seems to have been constructed, that of affording a foot pa.s.sage from the monastery of the Augustines to a spring of pure water some yards distant. This spring till within a few years, was covered with a large circular stone, having an aperture in the centre, thro' which the monks let down their pitchers into the water, and retained the name of _St.

Austin's Well_.

But tho' not over this bridge, yet over the adjoining one, known also, probably from its vicinity to the other, by the name of _Bow-Bridge_, the monster Richard really pa.s.sed, proud, angry, and threatening, mounted on his charger to meet Richmond; and over it, the day after the battle, his body was brought behind a pursuivant at arms, naked and disgraced, and after being exhibited in the Town-Hall, then situated at the bottom of Blue-Boar Lane, was interred in the church of the Grey-Friars near St.

Martins.

The name of this king excites in the mind a sensation of horror;--and tho' it required the overwhelming evidence of human depravity furnished by the French revolution, to make the author of the "Historic Doubts,"

believe his crimes possible, the concurrent testimonies both of Lancastrian and Yorkist Chroniclers, too well demonstrate them. Tho' the latter may have endeavoured to soften the picture, and Shakespear may have thrown upon it the darkest shades by working up his deformity of body and mind into a picture of diabolical horror, the original, the undoubted traits are preserved by both parties; traits, which so far from being peculiar to Richard, marked likewise the other characters of the contending houses. Nor did he deviate widely from the manners of the times when he "_waded thro' slaughter to a throne_."

A pleasing woody road leads from Bow-Bridge to Danett's Hall, the seat of Edward Alexander, M.D. The ground here rising in a gentle slope obtains a command of the town, and that the dryness of the soil and agreeableness of the situation, mark it as a desirable spot for residence, even the taste of the antient Romans may prove; for in the plot of ground known by the name of the "great cherry orchard," remains a relic of one of their houses. This is a fragment of a tesselated floor, discovered a few years ago, but covered over by a former possessor of the estate. It is composed of tesseroe of various sizes, forming an elegant geometrical pattern, but how far it extends, has not yet been ascertained.

Among the great number of these pavements found at Leicester, are three very perfect ones discovered in the ground belonging to Walter Ruding Esq. adjoining the old Vauxhall, near the west bridge--they also are composed in curious and exact patterns, and form entire squares; but are now filled up. Of these, together with that in the great cherry orchard, very accurate plates are given in Nichols.

To the westward of Danett's Hall, and West-cotes, the seat of Mr. Ruding, is a lane or bridle road, commonly called the Fosse, but various reasons lead to the belief that it is not part of the antient Roman road of that name. The unvarying testimony of tradition has clearly proved that the road from the town westward lay, in the reign of Richard the third, over Bow-Bridge. By attending to the Fosse, which runs nearly in the line of the Narborough road by West-cotes, it will seem likewise necessary to conclude that the approach to Leicester, in the time of the Romans, was also over a bridge situate near that spot; for as it is certain that the Fosse did pa.s.s thro' Leicester, and the Romans in forming their roads scrupulously adhered to the strait line, they would cross the old Soar near this place.

When the Romans penetrated into Britain under the reign of Claudius, they found it almost in every part, crowded with woods, and infested with mora.s.ses; and as the natives well knew how to avail themeslves of these fastnesses, the island could never be considered as effectually conquered till it was rendered accessible to the march of the legions, and means were provided for speedy communication of intelligence from even the most distant parts of the provinces. On this account their Cohorts early applied themselves to the task of forming roads; nor did they cease their labours till in the time of Antoninus, they had opened pa.s.sages thro' the island in all directions. In the reign of that emperor, these works, connected with others which they had already constructed on the continent, formed a great chain of communication, which, pa.s.sing thro'

Rome, from the Pict's wall, or north west, to Jerusalem, nearly the southeast point of the empire, was drawn out to the length of 4080 Roman, or as Mr. Reynolds has shewn, of so many British statute miles. Along these roads proper relays of horses were stationed at short distances, and it seems that couriers could travel with ease above an hundred miles a day. Two of these roads, as already observed, pa.s.sed thro' Leicester.

One, the _Via Devana_, leading from Camalodunum, or Colchester, in Ess.e.x, to _Deva_, of west Chester, a distance of about two hundred miles, has been lately discovered by some ingenious and able Antiquaries of the University of Cambridge.

It enters Leicesters.h.i.+re in the neighbourhood of Rockingham; continues a strait road for many miles till it nearly reaches Leicester, and pa.s.sing thro' the town it is found to leave the county near Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

The other road, called the _Via_ _Fossata_ or Fosse, always known, and every where remarkable, traverses the island in a north-east direction, from near Grimsby on the coast of Lincolns.h.i.+re, pa.s.ses thro' Bath, and terminates at Seaton, a village situated on the coast of Devons.h.i.+re, a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles. This road enters Leicestes.h.i.+re at a place called Seg's Hill, on the wolds, or antiently wild and uncultivated parts of the county; from thence it pa.s.ses the village of Thurmaston and approaches the East gates of Leicester, by the street called the Belgrave Gate. On the south-west of the town it is again recognized in the Narborough road, and from that village it proceeds again a solitary lane till it enters Warwicks.h.i.+re at High Cross, where it crosses the no less celebrated Roman road, the Watling-Street.

It is well known that in the formation of these roads, the Romans spared no cost and labour. From the remains of some of them it appears that upon a bed of sand they spread a coating of gravel, upon which the pebbles, and sometimes hewn or squared stones were laid, firmly compacted together in a bed of cement. This, we have reason to believe, was the structure of such of the roads in this island as are distinguished by the t.i.tle of _Street_, a word derived from the Latin _Strata_, meaning formed of layers. But such pains were not, it is probable, taken in all cases; and from the name of one of the roads pa.s.sing thro' Leicester, the _Fosse_, an abbreviation of the Latin _Via Fossata_, meaning the way ditched, or dug, we cannot but conclude that it was a road raised by the spade and formed with a rampart, and probably covered with gravel in the manner of our present turnpike roads. The same may also be said of the _Via Divana_, whose rampart, now covered with gra.s.s, the ingenious discoverers observed in many places.

When the Saxons subdued this island, after the departure of the Romans, to preserve a ready communication between distant places formed no part of then rude and simple policy. Hence the best roads of the Romans were neglected by them, and since the Romans had either forbidden, or the inclination of the Britons had dissuaded them from erecting villages on the line of public roads, those roads became useless, and their lasting materials are only to be found, tho' not distinguished, in the foundations of the neighbouring habitations. As it would always be more easy to carry away the materials of a Roman road than dig for them in a quarry, it has happened that those materials have been in general so intirely removed, as to leave almost no where any other trace, than history and tradition, of their existence.

From the departure of the Romans in 445, to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the roads of this Island received little or no improvement from the legislative powers, except by an order in the reign of Henry the second, that roads should be cleared of woods and made open that travellers might have leisure, if they should find it prudent, to prepare to resist the almost armies of robbers which were spread over the face of almost every county. Roads, being no longer regulated by any system, to pa.s.s from place to place so as to avoid as well as might be the inconveniences of woods, bogs, and sloughs, became the only business of the traveller. It was thus by accident the line of our present roads was formed, and to this their frequent circuits and other inconveniences are owing.

During the period above mentioned they were in general so bad as to be useless for the pa.s.sage of any other carriages than carts, and for these only in the summer season; so that the people inhabiting the same country as the Britons, who are said to have had numbers and great variety of cars of all kinds, were so exclusively confined to the use of horses and mules, that scarcely any other mode of conveyance was known even in London, and this so late as in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the first; for it is certain that when the great Shakespeare fled from his country and came to town, his first means of subsistence were the pittances he might earn by holding the horses of the persons who had come from different parts of London to see the plays then performed at the Bankside Theatre.

It is not indeed to be a.s.serted that till the eighteenth century our roads never received any repairs, for necessity would frequently call for something of the kind in most places; nor yet that Toll Bars were antiently wholly unknown; for it is certain that a Gate or Bar was first erected in the reign of Edward the first, at a place now called Holborn Bars in London, for the purpose of collecting tolls for the repairs of the roads. But it must be allowed that the art of constructing a good and firm road was ill understood, and worse attended to; and when, in the beginning of the last century, turnpike roads were first made, it was imagined that the only good form was that of a ridge and furrow lying across the road on the line of its direction. Turnpike gates were also in many places considered as such impositions that even in the beginning of the reign of George the second, some persons contested the payment, several were frequently seen together, especially at newly erected gates, suffering an interruption in their journey rather than submit to what they deemed an imposition. Every one who understands the true conveniences of life will rejoice, that both the formation and repairs of roads, and also the usefulness of turn-pike tolls are now better understood; that even countries once held to be inaccessible are now open at all times and at all seasons to the traveller, and that most of our roads are now so well suited to the purposes not only of convenience but of pleasure, that we have no reason to lament the destruction of the Roman ways, or even not to think that we have within these few years greatly surpa.s.sed them in the expedition of our mails and all the conveniences and comforts of travelling.

On this western side of the town, where its environs afford the attraction of woody scenery, the stranger is invited to prolong his stroll round _Ruding's Walk_. This walk, tho' a continuation of the plantation that encloses West-cotes, is liberally left open by its possessor, who generously shares with the public the pleasure of his cool and shady scenery. Where the walk, after winding thro' a flouris.h.i.+ng shrubbery, enters a grove of tall and venerable elms, the churches and buildings of the town, broken by the intermediate trees of the paddock, and the long line of distance varied by villages, scattered dwellings and corn-mills, unite in a rich and pleasing prospect.

On turning towards the West, the lover of contrast may for a moment call to his imagination the dark, heavy, and almost impenetrable forest which covered these lands in the twelfth century, and depicture figures of the inhabitants of Leicester bearing from thence their allowed load of wood, the supply for their hearths, and for this privilege, paying at the West bridge, their toll of _brigg silver_ to their feudal Baron. To this picture he will oppose the present scene of pasturage, flocks, and free husbandmen, cultivating the earth under the protection of just and equal laws. The slightest glance at past ages is a moral study, that renders us not only satisfied but grateful.

We cannot pa.s.s West-cotes, without noticing an object in the possession of Mr. Ruding, highly interesting to the admirers of the fine Arts. This is a picture in painted gla.s.s, representing Mutius Scaevola affording Porsena an astonis.h.i.+ng proof of his resolution by burning that hand which had a.s.sa.s.sinated the secretary instead of the king. The exquisite finish, and perfect preservation of this small piece bespeak it of the antient Flemish school, whose artists according to Guicciardini, invented the mode of burning their colours into the gla.s.s so as to secure them from the corrosion of water, wind, or even time. There is no department of the delightful art of painting that so much excites wonder as this.