the stone trough, in his time, stood in the stable-yard of the inn. Celia Fiennes, at the end of the 17th century, forgetting the name of the inn, wrote, "I saw a piece of his" (Richard III.'s) "tombstone he lay in, which was cut out in exact form for his body to lie in; it remains to be seen at the Greyhound in Leicester, but is partly broken." The house at one time belonged to the Leicester Corporation, having been included in the Conveyance to them from the Crown contained in Queen Elizabeth's Charter of 1589, where it is described as "The White Horse in Galtregate alias Galtergate." It flourished for many years, and when it was pulled down in the early part of the 19th century, Mansfield Bank, which afterwards became the Stamford and Spalding Bank, was erected on the site.
Other 16th century inns were the Cross Keys, where the Recorder stayed in 1551, where, in 1553, the Queen's Solicitor was regaled with half a fresh salmon and two hundred oysters, and where, in 1589, gifts were sent by the Town Council "to certain players playing upon ropes"; the Star, which Mr. Woodall, the Queen's Receiver, visited in 1564, and 1565; the Fox, in the North Gate; the Swan, in the South Gate, older, probably, than the White Swan in the Market Place, the birthplace of a counterfeited Duke of Monmouth, which was pulled down about 1890; the Crown, situated in the old Swinesmarket; the Cardinal's Hat; the Red Lion, in Southgate Street, which was in its day one of the principal inns in Leicester; the Cock in Belgrave Gate; the ancient sign of the Saracen's Head, fronting the modern Hotel Street, which was demolished in the last century, and rebuilt on its old site; the Hare and Pheasant in the old Swinesmarket, destroyed about 1890, and the Mitre and Keys in Applegate Street. In 1509 one John Baker was tenant of a hospice "at the sign of the Lion" in the Parish of St. Peter. This inn may have been the Lion which stood where the sign of the King's Arms afterwards hung till about 1670. Silver Street, the old Sheepmarket, was formerly known as the "street on the backside of the Lion." The ancient inn called the Porter's Lodge, at the corner of South and East Bond Streets, was formerly the lodge at one of the entrances to the
33
