sacred harmony will not pass without particular notice, the Organ of St. Martin’s. A spirited subscription in 1774, furnished the church with this noble ornament. It was built by the celebrated Snetzler, and esteemed one of the best specimens of his art. It has three sets of keys, from F in alt, to GG. The stops in the great organ are, the stopped diapason, two open diapasons, flute, and principal, trumpet and baffoon, all entire, the 12th, 15th, sesqui-altera, cornet and clarion. In the ch. organ, are two diapasons and principal. In the swell two diapasons, principal, hautboy and trumpet.
A range of antient stone building bounding the west side of the church yard is an hospital founded about the year 1516, by W. Wigston, Merchant
of the staple at Calais, and mayor of Leicester, for 12 men and 12 women, their pay about 3s. weekly. It has a master and confrater. The Chapel has a large gothic window of painted glass.
On the north side of the hospital is a building called the Town Library, established 1632 by the corporation, at the motion of the then bishop of Lincoln. It consists of about 948 vols. chiefly the Latin classics and historians, to which no modern additions whatever have been made.
The building adjoining the Library which is the hall formerly belonging to the guild or fraternity of St. George, which, together with the Corpus Chrisri guild, the principal establishment of that kind in the town, was founded in St. Martin’s church, was purchased, on the dissolution of guilds
and chantries by the corporation, and is the guild-hall of the borough. It is adorned with several portraits among which is that of Sir Thomas White, Kt. citizen and merchant Taylor of London, who among many magnificent charities, bequeathed 10,000l. in the trust of the corporation to be lent without interest in sums of 50l. and 40l. to every freeman of Leicester for the term of nine years; a charity of peculiar value as it affords a perpetual incitement to the exertions of rising industry.
The magistracy of Leicester is an institution of great antiquity and respectability, being a corporation by prescription, dating its establishment from immemorial usage before its first charter in the reign of king John. It consists of 72 members; 24 aldermen, 48 common council men; the officers are
a recorder, town-clerk, bailiff, and steward.
By forming cities and towns into corporations, and conferring on them the privileges of municipal jurisdiction, the first check was given to the overwhelming evils of the feudal system; and under their influence freedom and independence began to peep forth from amid the rigours of slavery and the miseries of oppression.
To be free of any corporation was not then, as at present merely to enjoy some privileges in trade, or to exercise the right of voting on particular occasions, but it was to be exempt from the hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of