authority would seem to be a letter bespeaking rooms at that house "if no private house be available." Thompson gives the 12th as the date of the King's visit, but the letter, which is itself dated the 12th, says "He will be here tomorrow night." Sixty-one years earlier, another victim of destiny, more pitiable and more innocent than Charles, had stayed at the same hostelry. Mary, Queen of Scots, when she was on the way to her trial at Fotheringay Castle, arrived at Leicester on September 23rd, 1586, and the physician who was in attendance states in his diary that she lodged at the Angel. The Leicester Chamberlains' accounts imply that she remained there two nights.
A year after the visit of Charles, his Conqueror and successor was at Leicester, when the Mayor and Aldermen entertained Lt.-General Cromwell with "wine, biscuits, beare and tabacko," but history does not relate where he lodged.
In the year 1688 a feast was held at the Angel, which was then the house of Mr. Joseph Cradock, the Mayor of the town, in order to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Wales (afterwards known as the Pretender).
When William of Orange and Mary were crowned in April, 1689, the Corporation of Leicester celebrated that joyful event also by dining together at the Angel Inn, and entertaining there, at the expense of the town the neighbouring gentry "and persons of good quality and fashion." In the autumn of the same year another banquet took place, when the Earl of Stamford was entertained "at a feast at the Angel," and the Companies that dined there were paid for at the Corporation's charge, and such gentlemen as he should bring with him, and such other gentlemen and others were allowed every person sixpence apiece in wine. In 1707 the Union with Scotland was celebrated by a civic feast held at the Angel, and in 1715 the first anniversary of the Accession of King George was welcomed by a twelvepenny Ordinary at that Inn. At the celebration of his Coronation, and on the day of Thanksgiving for his Accession to the Throne, the municipal banquets had been held elsewhere on a more lavish scale. Indeed, the great days of the old hostelry were now drawing to a close. It seems to have been demolished some time in the 18th century,
29
