who received this sum — one John Laverock — refused to account for it, and it may never have reached the church. In the Subsidy List of 1526 "Dom : Rogerus Slatter" appears as "Curatus" of St. Leonard's, so John Baston had probably been suspended. Slatter was assessed on an income of £5 6s. 8d. In a list of Leicester vicars made out probably a few years later, the name of the vicar of St. Leonard's is left blank.
The parish of St. Leonard was outside the Borough Walls, beyond the North Gate, the little old church standing at the junction of Woodgate and Abbeygate, opposite St. Sunday Bridge. By her second charter of 1599, Queen Elizabeth placed the parish under the jurisdiction of the Town. The church had then fallen into a rather ruinous condition. Some thirty years afterwards an attempt was made to collect money for repairing it. The Brief issued for that purpose stated that "the steeple hath been theretofore a fair square steeple, but the foundation not being very good, for that it was made of soft mouldering stone, it so happened that the said steeple was, by a most violent tempest of wind, blown down; so that with the fall the middle aisle and north side of the church were so shaken and decayed in the main timber that it cannot be long upheld. Charge £510." Throsby, followed by Nichols, said that the church was then rebuilt, but this is doubtful. It was still standing in the year 1634. Sir John Lambe then noted that the steeple was "all down," and that there was at that time "no curate certain, but
it is served sometimes by Mr, Ward, the vicar of All Saints, and sometimes by Mr. Richardson the Preacher, who is also curate of Belgrave." The church was, however, in regular use apparently up to 1640 or later. The lists of baptisms, marriages and burials, which took place there between 1632 and 1639 inclusive, and in some earlier years, are still extant, signed by Nicholas Parker, curate, and the two churchwardens. It seems to have had no vicar at that time, and shortly afterwards, during the tempest of civil war, the building was entirely demolished. In the early part of the eighteenth century, the Hospital, "pro sex viduis," was in existence, but there was no incumbent, "ecclesia caret," and the parish was united with that of All Saints. All that remained at the end of the eighteenth century
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