of the Bellomonts, tho’ the modern front which meets the eye effectually conceals all the outward traces of antiquity. The inside of the edifice however is a room exceedingly curious. Its area is large, being about seventy-eight feet long, twenty-four high and fifty-one broad. It is framed into a sort of aisles, by two rows of tall and massy oaken pillars, which serve to support a large and weighty covering of slate. This vast room was the antient hall of the castle, in which the earls of Leicester, and afterwards the dukes of Lancaster, alternately held their courts, and consumed in rude but plenteous hospitality, at the head of their visitors, or their vassals, the rent of their estates then usually paid in kind. On the south end appear the traces of a door-way, which probably
was the entrance into a gallery that has often, among other purposes, served as an orchestra for the minstrels and musicians of former days. This hall, during the reigns of several of the Lancastrian princes was the scene of frequent Parliaments, whose transactions our provincial historians have carefully recorded. At present it is used only for the holding the assizes and other country meetings, to which purpose it is, from its length, so well adapted, that, tho’ the business of the civil and crown bars is carried on at the same time at the opposite ends of the room, the pleadings of the one do not in the least interrupt the pleadings of the other.
The reflecting visitor, who may choose to compare the uses to which this place is now applied, with the purposes for which it was built, will
not fail to derive from the comparison so very favorable to the present times, a satisfaction most worthy the benevolent heart. Instead of the rude licentious carousals of the Bellomonts, when the baron domineered, even in drunkenness, over his assembled slaves, we often see large bodies of the inhabitants of the county, men worthy of freedom and possessing it, assembled to consider with decorum, and to decide with unawed, unbiassed judgment, upon measures of no little importance to the kingdom of England. And instead of the savage violence, or idiot folly which mostly dictated the award of every kind of property, in those feudal times, we see happily substituted the fair examination of the witnesses, the eloquent pleadings of the barristers, the learned observations of
the Judge, and the impartial decisions of the Jury, nobly co-operating to investigate truth, and to decide, according to right, the means alike of happiness and virtue. In what manner, and by what degrees this happy change was effected, the following well authenticated anecdote may serve to shew.
Robert de Bellomont, the first earl, sitting in the apartment of the keep of his castle at Leicester, heard a loud shout in the neighbouring fields. Enquiring into the cause, he found that it was given by the partizans of a combatant who was then fighting a duel with his near relation to ascertain the right to a certain piece of land in St. Mary’s field. The cruelty and absurdity of such a mode of decision seems to have been forcibly impressed upon the mind of the earl,
by this affecting circumstance; and he agreed with the burgesses and inhabitants of Leicester, on the payment of one penny for every house that had a gable or gavel in the High-street (a payment afterwards known by the term gavel pence) that all pleas of the above mentioned nature should be determined by a jury of twenty four persons.
From the county hall, or castle, as it is commonly called, a road to the right leads to an antient gate-way strongly built and once furnished with a port-cullis, and every requisite for defence. The embattled parapet being much decayed, was taken down a few years ago, and its roof is now reduced to one of an ordinary form. When this alteration was made, the arms of the dukes of Lancaster by whom the gate-way was undoubtedly built were destroyed on the outside; but
on the inside, at the spring of the arch, two mutilated figures, one of a lion, the other of a bear, doubtless some of their devices, still remain. The lion passant, it is well known, formed part of the arms of that family, and the muzzled bear was a symbol used on the seal by Edward the first in his transactions with Scotland. Nothing can be more probable than that the Lancastrian princes would ornament their buildings with a figure which would serve to preserve the memory of their descent from so renowned a monarch.
The stranger must now be requested to pass thro’ the uninviting doorway of the adjoining public house; and he will be led by an easy ascent up to the mount, or perhaps the scite of the keep of the castle, which tho’ lately lowered considerably for the