Royal progresses and visits to Leicester Author:William Kelly Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART I. FROM THE FOUNDING OF LEICESTER TO THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. " Old legends of the monkish page, Traditions of the king and sage, Tales that have... more » the rime of age, And chronicles of eld." Longfellow. THE town of Leicester under the various appellations of Caer-leir, or Caer-Lerion, by the British—Rates by the Romans—and Leogereceastra, Leogracester, Legra- cester, or Legecester, with several other variations, by the Saxons, as is well-known, has for many centuries occupied a prominent place in our national annals. The original settlement of the spot undoubtedly took place at a very remote period. Its name " Cair-lerion," appears in the list of the thirty-three British cities in the work of Nennius, which by some writers has been assigned to the year 796. The earliest writer, however, who attempts to fix the precise time—and with whose account we have now more particularly to do as connecting the town with the presence of royalty—is Geoffrey of Monmouth,8 The Legend of King Leir. whose History of the Britons was written prior to the year 1147, and which is said to be a translation from a very ancient MS. in the British tongue. His account of the foundation of Leicester about the year 844 B.c.—a century before the building of Rome (75o B.c.)—is as follows :— After relating the death of Bladud, the founder of Bath (who, according to Matthew of Westminster, was contemporary with Elijah the Prophet), he says— " Leir, his son was advanced to the throne, and nobly governed his country sixty years. He built upon the river Soar a city, called in the British tongue, Kaerleir, in the Saxon Leircester." Then follows the story of Leir's three daughters, with which every one is familiar as forming the groundwork of Shakespeare's noble tragedy; and it has b...« less