LEEDS.
BRIGGATE, LOOKING NORTH.
About nine miles north of Wakefield is the great commercial capital of Yorkshire and centre of the cloth-trade. Leeds, built in the valley of the river Aire. Twelve hundred years ago this region, embracing the valleys of the Aire and the Calder, was the independent kingdom of Loidis. It was soon overrun and conquered, however, by the Anglian hosts, and ultimately the conquerors built here the monastery that in Bede's time was presided over by the abbot Thrydwulf. This stood on the site of the present parish church, and in the eighth century it was called "the monastery at Leeta." It stood at the crossing of two important Roman roads in the midst of a forest. This was the beginning of the great city, for soon a hamlet gathered around the monastery, though long since the woods, and indeed all green things, were driven away from Leeds. The village was laid waste by William the Conqueror, and at the time of the Domesday Book it was one of one hundred and fifty manors held by Baron Ilbert de Lacy, whose possessions stretched halfway across Yorkshire. He built a castle at Leeds, which was afterwards a prison of Richard II., but has long since disappeared. In 1530, Leland described Leeds as "a pretty market-town, as large as Bradford, but not so quick as it." Charles I. incorporated it, and the cloth-market was then of some importance. In the Civil War it was taken by the Royalists, and afterwards retaken by Fairfax for the Parliament in a short, sharp struggle, in which a clergyman named Scholfield distinguished himself by his valor, and "by his triumphant psalm-singing" as work after work was captured from the enemy. Flemish workmen brought cloth-making into this part of Yorkshire as early as the reign of Edward III., and two centuries ago the cloth-makers prospered so much that they held a market twice a week at Leeds on a long, narrow bridge crossing the Aire. They laid their cloth on the battlements of the bridge and on benches below, and the country clothiers could buy for four cents from the innkeepers "a pot of ale, a noggin of porridge, and a trencher of boiled or roast beef." This substantial supply was known as the "brigg (bridge)-shot," and from the bridge ran the street known as the Briggate, which has since developed into one of the finest avenues of the city.
ST JOHN'S CHURCH
Leeds began to grow in the last century, when it became the chief mart of the woollen clothiers, while the worsted-trade gathered about Bradford. These still remain the centres of the two great divisions of the woollen industry, which is the characteristic business of Yorkshire. The factories began then to appear at Leeds, and in the present century the city has made astonishing advances, growing from fifty-three thousand population in 1801 until it exceeds three hundred thousand now. The great cloth-mart to-day is for miles a region of tall chimneys and barrack-like edifices, within which steadily roars machinery that represents some of the most ingenious skill of the human race. Within this hive of busy industry there still linger some memorials of the past among its hundreds of cloth-mills. Turning out of the broad Briggate into the quiet street of St. John, we come to the church built there by the piety of the wealthy clothier John Harrison, and consecrated in 1634. St. John's Church, which he built and presented to the town because the older parish church could scarce hold half the inhabitants, consists of a long nave and chancel, with a south aisle. It is of Gothic architecture, and much of the ancient woodwork, including the pulpit, remains. Arabesques moulded in white plaster fill the panels between the main roof-beams. This interesting church has undergone little historical change excepting the recent rebuilding of the tower. John Harrison is entombed in the church. The old parish church in Kirkgate has been within a few years entirely rebuilt. The other churches of Leeds, like this one, are all modern, and it also has an imposing Town Hall, opened by the queen in 1858, in which are held the annual musical festivals, which have attained much importance. A statue of the Duke of Wellington stands in the open square in front. The two Cloth Halls of Leeds, the Mixed Cloth Hall and the White Cloth Hall, where the business of selling was at first carried on, are now little used, the trade being conducted directly between the manufacturer and the clothier. Some of the mills are of enormous size, and they include every operation from the raw material to the finished fabric. But, with all their ingenious machinery, the cloth-weavers have not yet been able to supersede the use of the teasel, by which the loose fibres of wool are raised to the surface to form, when cut and sheared, the pile or nap. These teasels, which are largely grown in Yorkshire, are fastened into a cylinder, and at least three thousand of them will be consumed in "teasling" a piece of cloth forty yards long.