when fairs and markets are held, and may sell the same again or use it in any way, the statute of Edward VI or any other statute notwithstanding. Further We will that all tolls, stallages pickages, fines, amercements, profits, &c., arising out of the said market shall be used for the profit of the poor and sick men and women within the borough." The Wool Market was held every Wednesday and Saturday.
A Wool Hall was made out of the disused Hospital of St. John, and it was ordered by the Corporation "that every stone or tod of wool, either fleece wool or pelt wool, which shall be at any time hereafter brought to the Borough to be sold, shall be weighed at the Wool Hall in the same Borough upon pain of 3s. 4d. for every stone and of 6s. 8d. for every 10d." This order was made in the October of 1599, but was not universally obeyed for in the following August it was resolved "that the Act and Order lately made for the selling and weighing of wool at the Wool-Hall shall be put in execution, and such townsmen as have since the making of the said law sold and weighed their wool at home at their houses, or in any other place within the Borough of Leicester out of the Wool Hall, shall pay the fines forfeited." The Wool Hall did not, however, fulfil the hopes of its promoters, and the grant of the market was afterwards called in question.
On the western side of the Saturday Market used to stand a large elm-tree, which, in the 16th century, had the ground beneath its spreading branches paved, and furnished with seats. A new elm was planted in the year 1689. This was, presumably, the "Pigeon Tree," under which, according to Gardiner, " country women sat to sell pigeons." A pair of stocks stood in the shade of the marketplace elm, and another pair is said to have been under the Pillory near to the Cornwall.
A very good idea of the general appearance of the Leicester Saturday Market Place, as it was before the modern industrial expansion of the town, may be gathered from the three old views reproduced in the first volume of Messrs. J. and T. Spencer's Leicestershire Notes and Queries.
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