Earl of Huntingdon's residence in the Swinesmarket called the Lord's Place. The Bird-in-Hand in Red Cross Street, which is comprised in a Corporation rental of 1711, may have been a 16th century inn. The White Lion, still standing, is also an old inn, and so is the Bee-hive near the West Bridge.
The Eastward drift of civic life in Leicester, which has been noticed before, and which was caused not only by the increase of trade in the markets, but by other factors, such as the decline of the Castle, and the dissolution of the great Abbey and of the religious houses that lay within the town west of the old High Street or in its immediate neighbourhood, received further impetus in the 17th century from a very different cause. The course of traffic going from South to North, instead of passing, as formerly, through the town, became deflected outside the East walls. "The road running through Belgrave and terminating in Belgrave Gate at the Clock Tower, owes its existence as a main entrance into the town to one of the visitations of the Plague. The original road from the North turned off at the bottom of Birstall Hill, some two miles from the Clock Tower, and, passing the Abbey, entered the town by the North Gate, and emerged again at the South Gate. But fear of the Plague led travellers to take a side road by Belgrave as a preferable alternative, as by so doing they could pass by the old town, bounded by its four walls, without actually entering it on their way to the South or North. Hence it came into general use."
The visitation of the Plague referred to is that of 1669, but long before that time the flow of traffic must have been turned outside the walls, owing to precautions taken by the Leicester authorities to protect their town from the infection of the Plague which raged in London and elsewhere. As early as the year 1624 watchmen were appointed "to keep Londoners out of the town during the plague there"; and in the following year it was ordered that "no inhabitant should lodge any person coming from London or other place infected with the plague without consent of Mr. Mayor or the Aldermen of the Ward; neither shall receive or send any wares from London or other place infected without the like consent." In 1631 a considerable sum
34
