LEICESTER ABBEY AND CASTLE.
LEICESTER ABBEY.
GATEWAY, NEWGATE STREET, LEICESTER.
The city of Leicester, which is now chiefly noted for the manufacture of hosiery, was founded by the Britons, and was subsequently the Roman city of Ratæ. Many Roman remains still exist here, notably the ancient Jewry wall, which is seventy-five feet long and five feet high, and which formed part of the town-wall. Many old houses are found in Leicester, and just north of the city are the ruins of Leicester Abbey, This noted religious house was founded in the twelfth century, and stood on a meadow watered by the river Soar. It was richly endowed, and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but its chief fame comes from its being the last residence of Cardinal Wolsey. This great man, once the primate of England, has had his downfall pathetically described by Shakespeare. The king summoned him to London to stand trial for treason, and on his way Wolsey became so ill that he was obliged to rest at Leicester, where he was met at the abbey-gate by the abbot and entire convent. Aware of his approaching dissolution, the fallen cardinal said, "Father abbot, I have come hither to lay my bones among you." The next day he died, and to the surrounding monks, as the last sacrament was administered, he said, "If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs." The remains were interred by torchlight before daybreak on St. Andrew's Day, 1530, and to show the vanity of all things earthly tradition says that after the destruction of the abbey the stone coffin in which they were buried was used as a horse-trough for a neighboring inn. Nothing remains of the abbey as Wolsey saw it excepting the gate in the east wall through which he entered. The present ruins are fragments of a house built afterwards. The foundations that can still be traced show that it was a grand old building. The gardens and park now raise vegetables for the Leicester market.
Leicester Castle still exists only in a portion of the great hall, but it has been enlarged and modernized, and is now used for the county offices. The castle was built after the Norman Conquest to keep the townspeople in check. It was afterwards a stronghold of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and it then became part of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Dukes of Lancaster restored it, and lived there frequently in great pomp, and they also built the adjoining Hospital of the Newarke and a singular earthwork alongside, called the Mount. Several parliaments were held here, but after the time of Edward IV. the castle fell into decay. There are now few remains of the original castle, excepting part of the great hall and the Mount or earthwork of the keep, which is about thirty feet high and one hundred feet in diameter upon its flat, circular top. Not far from Leicester was fought the last great battle of the "Wars of the Roses," Bosworth Field, upon Redmoor Plain, about two miles from the village now known as Market Bosworth. It was a moor at the time of the battle in 1485, overgrown with thistles and scutch-grass. Shakespeare has been the most popular historian of this battle, and the well where Richard slaked his thirst is still pointed out, with other localities of the scenes of the famous contest that decided the kingship of England, Richard III. giving place to Richmond, who became Henry VII.