Bygone Leicestershire Note
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Sygone I^EICESTERSHIRE WILLIAM ANDRMWS F.RH.S. .$ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bygoneleicestersOOandriala BYGONE LEICESTERSHIRE NOTE. Of this book 750 copies have been printed, and this is /• No IIELVOIU I'AaTl.E. Bygone Leicestershire. Ki)rii:i) r,v WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.I I. S. AUTHOR OF "HYC.ONE ENGLAND," "OLD CHURCH LORE," "CURIOSITIES OF THE CHURCH," ETC. LEICESTER : FRANK MURRAY. HULL : WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., Limited. 1892. Ls A s7 preface. ^ I ^HIS volume, like others of the series to - which it belongs, attempts to deal in a popular, and at the same time accurate, manner with many of the more interesting phases of local history, biography, and folk-lore of Leicestershire. I am greath^ obliged to my contributors for their kind help. Other friends, including Mr. George Clinch, of the British Museum, Mr. S. Firth, F.R.H.S., Mr. Thomas Harrold, and Mr. William Kelly, f.s.a., have also assisted me with important suggestions and notes. To these gentlemen I tender my thanks. WiLLiAiM Andrews. HxLL Literary Cn'r., Xoremher Isf, 189:^. 645944 Contents. l»AOE HisToiuc Lkicestkksiiiki:. By Thomas Frost I John Wiclik axd Luttkkwoktii. My John T. Paj^e ... "JO T(£E Last Days ok a Dy.nastv : An iNTiionfcTioN to Red- more FiouT '.Hi The B.vttlk ok Boswoktii. By EdwjufI Laniploujrh ... 41 .'(4 SCE.NE.s AT H(iS\Vt)JtTII : TuE BlA'E BoAIl .Vl' LEICESTER ... BuAutJATE AND Ladv Jane Gbev. By John T. Page ... (>2 Lekesteu Castle. By L W. Dickinson, r..A. 70 Death ok C.vhdin.u, Wolsev at Lk[('Este}i AiiisEV. By I. W. Dickinson, i;.a. ... ... ... ... ... ... 7(J i>Ei.v(iiH Castle .. SH Robert, Earl ok Leicester : A (Jh.wter ok MEni.EVAE History 97 Local Proverbs and Folk Pjirases. By T. Broadbent Trowsdale lOo Festival Customs in Leicestershire. By Henrietta Ellis 117 WiTCHCRAKT IN Leicestershire. By J. Potter Bri.scoe, k.k.ii.s. !•_'() William Lilly, the Astrolo<;er. By W. H. Thompson ... loO (iLEANINCS KRO.M EARLY LEICESTERSHIRE WiLLS. By the liev. W. (!. D. Fletcher, m.a., k.s.a 140 PUNISH.MENTS OK THE PaST U")!) Lacrexce Ferrers, the Mt'roerkr E vrl. By T. Broadbent Trowsdale ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 170 The Last Gibbet. By Thomas Frost 193 The Ancient Water-mills .\t LoutiHBORoiGH. By the Rev. W. G. D. Fletcher, m.a., k.s.a 204 ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH CaSTLE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS ; AsHIU- DE-LA-Zoucii AND THE FRENCH PRISONERS. By Canon Denton, m.a. .. 219 Miss Mary Lin wood : An Artist with the Needle. By William Andrews, f.r.h.s ... 236 Street Cries. By F. T. Mott, k.r.g.s. 244 Minstrej.sv in Leicester. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, is. a. 234 Index 2G2 BYGONE LEICESTERSHIRE. 1bi6toric Xeicestersbire. By Thomas Frost. AMONGST the Celtic tribes who inhabited England in the earliest period of our country's history of which there are any records, the Coritani held a position second to none. They occupied the counties of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Northampton, Rutland, and Lincoln. At the time when the Romans were gradually extending their dominion over the whole of the country, the greater part of Leicestershire was covered with trackless forests, extending in an almost unbroken line from Charnwood Forest on the east to the moors of Staffordshire. The Romans intersected this woodland region with one of their great lines of communication, called the Fosse Way, which ran in an almost straight line from the site of the present town of 2 BYGONE LEICESTERSHIRE. Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, to a spot in the fertile valley of the Soar, on which they planted the colony and military station of Ratae, where now stands the chief town of the county. Ratse became, during the Roman occupation of the island, a more important town than its successor was for many years. Four great roads met there, and the civil and military institutions introduced by its enterprising rulers made it an advanced post of a stage of civilisation which, to the inhabitants of the surrounding country, was till then unknown. Evidences of its greatness in those days are still discernible. A fragment of Roman masonry still remains to attest the excellence of the cement used fifteen hundred years ago ; and the paved floor of a Roman house, preserved by the care of local antiquaries, with the Roman pottery, implements, etc., found at various places in the neighbourhood, bear witness to the extent to which the arts and the refinements of life which the conquerors introduced were carried in England under their rule. So much was Rata? a Roman settlement that, on the withdrawal of the imperial legions and the civil functionaries of the empire from England, it HISTORIC LEICESTERSHIRE. 3 rapidly declined from its former prosperity and importance. The hordes of invaders from the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, to whom historians have given the generic name of Saxons, laid the town in ruins, and spread themselves over the surrounding country. The evidences of Roman civilization almost disappeared before the flood of Norse barbarism, and the name even of the town was soon forgotten in that of Legecester, given to it by its new inhabitants, and which by a gradual process of corruption subsequently became Leicester. But the demolished houses were rebuilt, and an earthen mound was thrown up on the banks of the Soar to strengthen the defences of the new town, to which a castle was subsequently added. With the consolidation of the Saxon conquests, came the division of England into seven kingdoms, in the largest of which, Mercia, was included the present Leicestershire, with the other counties originally occupied by the Coritani, and afterwards forming the province of Flavia Csesariensis. Repton, in the adjoining county of Derby, though only a village, was the capital of this kingdom, and several of its kings were interred within the walls of the abbey which rose there after the 4 BYGONE LEICESTERSHIRE. conversion to Christianity of the races from whose mixture the EngHsh nation had sprung. Leicester became, in 679, the see of a bishop, which was soon afterwards, however, removed to the village of Dorchester, and eventually transferred to Lincoln, The first of these ecclesiastical changes was brought about by the occupation of Leicestershire and other northern parts of Mercia by the Danes. The incursions of the new swarms of invaders were at first successfully repelled by the kings of Mercia, but in 874 the last of those petty monarchs gave way before the persistent inroads of the enemy, abandoned a contest which seemed hopeless, and retired to the Continent. The heptarchy was at that time broken up, and its component parts were in course of incorporation in one kingdom, thereafter to be known as England. Four years after the Danish conquest of the north-eastern portion of Mercia, Alfred stayed the encroachments of the enemy, whom, however, he allowed to hold, on condition of acknowledging him as their sovereign, the districts in which they had settled. The records of the Danish settlements which have survived the mutations of time are very scanty, but the HISTORIC LEICESTERSHIRE. 5 existence of a hundred place-names terminating in " by," which is undoubtedly Danish, enables the extent of the locations of that people in Leicestershire to be determined. Ashby and Groby may be referred to as examples. The position of the Danes in Mercia did not long remain unassailed. On the first signs of renewed hostility to their Saxon suzerains, Ethelfleda, a princess of the royal family, led a strong force into Leicestershire, recovered posses- sion of Leicester, and drove the rebellious Danes into Lincolnshire, where their settlements had always been more numerous than elsewhere. The defences of Leicester were restored and strengthened, and for a long time the town and the county enjoyed peace. Misfortune fell heavily on both, however, when England felt once more the bitterness of a foreign yoke. The chroniclers of the period have not recorded the circumstances which drew upon them the wrath of William the Conqueror. Perhaps it was enough that sufficient territorial spoils could not be found elsewhere with which to reward and enrich the Norman officers who escaped the spears and arrows of the English at Hastings. However this may have been, the Domesday 6 BYGONE LEICESTERSHIRE. survey shows that the greater jjortion of the lands of Leicestershire passed by confiscation into the hands of foreigners in his reign, and that in the chief town of the county not a single English freeholder remained. The castle was either rebuilt or greatly strengthened by William's orders, and its custody was given to one of his Norman followers, Hugh de Grant- mesnil, who, as sheriff of the county, collected the royal dues. Those old Norman earls and knights, however, though they owed their titles and possessions to the king, did not forget that it was themselves who had placed him in a position to distribute those rewards. The feudal yoke chafed them at times as much as it did the inferior vassals and serfs. The son and successor of Hugh de Grant- mesnil gave the second William much trouble, and when reduced to submission sold his rights over Leicester to Robert de Beaumont, who, in 1107, was created Earl of Leicester. The new governor founded, within his castle, a college of canons of the Augustinian order, and built a church for them, which still remains as a portion of the present church of St.