the dissolution, it was provided that the Hospital should in future be called "William Wigston's Hospital," and should not thereafter bear the name of "any fancied saint or other superstitious name," and that it should be one of the duties of the Confrater, or "Brother," to see that the poor went every dominical day and weekday to morning and evening prayer at St. Martin's church, but he might upon urgent cause say prayers in the chapel belonging to the hospital. The chapel remained in use until the hospital was removed, in 1869, to the present buildings on the Fosse Road. Shortly after that date, in 1875, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, it was ruthlessly destroyed. Painful, indeed, it is to contemplate a drawing, given in the Transactions of that Society, which delineates the fine old building, stripped of the Inmates' apartments, and presenting the appearance of a beautiful mediaeval Hall, now lost for ever.
The monuments were removed to the chapel of the new hospital. One of the "rich canopies" mentioned by Nichols was placed on a wall in the north aisle of St. Nicholas' church, and most of the old woodwork was transferred to the chapel of Trinity Hospital. The fine screen of dark oak had been taken away during the early nineteenth century "restorations," and was put up in the year 1810 at Ockbrook Church, near Derby. The site of the original chapel of Wigston's Hospital has been railed off, at the corner of the playground of Wigston's School, and a stone slab in the centre serves to remind the passer-by of its former significance.
(8) THE CHURCH OF ST. LEONARD.
The foundation of the Hospital of St. Leonard at Leicester is assigned by Henry of Knighton to William, the youngest son of Robert Blanchmains, Earl of Leicester, who was a Leper. Nichols felt some doubt about this, thinking that perhaps William the Leper founded only the Spital in the East Suburb, near St. John's chapel, and not the larger hospital beyond the North Bridge. But Henry of Knighton would be sure to know who was the traditional founder of the hospital which lay next door to his own Abbey. The church was, no doubt, built at
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