LEICESTER, The capital of Leices tershire, England, on the Soar, 100 miles north no•thwest of London (Slap: England, E 4). It is a well-built town, with spacious and regular streets, interesting municipal buildings, educa tional and benevolent institutions, and 1111111Cr011S elairelies, one of which. Saint Nicholas, is partly built of bricks from the old Roman wall. It is a progressive municipality, and owns or maintains an excellent gas and plants. markets. abattoirs, baths, bathing-places, libraries. technical schools, an art gallery, arti sans' dwellings, garden allotments, four parks, eight and two public gymna siums, three sewage farms, an isolation hospital, a lunatic asylum, cemeteries, a fire-brigade, and an effective police force. Manufactures of boots and shoes, and woolen and hosiery goods, lace making, wool-combing, and dyeing are extensively carried on. Leicester lies near a coal-field, and is the centre of a famous agricultural and wool raising district. An early British city, the capi tal of the Coritani, it was known to the Romans as Itatw. It was one of the fire Danish burghs,
and from OSO to 874 t-he seat of a bishopric. The Mount or Castle View, an artificial earthwork on which stood the donjon or keep, and the great banqueting-hall, modernized and used as an assize court„ are all that remains of the Norman castle, dismantled by Charles I., in 1645. The ruins of the Abbey of Saint Mary Pr6—`of the Meadow'—where Cardinal Wolsey died in 1530, still exist. Numerous municipal charters and privileges, the first granted by King John and the last by Queen Elizabeth, governed the town prior to the Slnnicipal Corporations Act. Population, in 1891, 174.600; in 1901, 211,600. Consult: Johnstone, History of Leicester (1892) ; "Leicester as a Munieipality," in Municipal Journal, viii. 878 (London, 1899) ; Bateson. Stevenson and Stocks. Records of the Borough of Leicester (Cambridge, 1901).