Page:Mediaevalleicest00billrich.djvu/56

 a pistol, and shot the person that maltreated him." The jury by the direction of the Judge, returned a special verdict grounded on the plea that Soulé, or Soulés (who was a French teacher), went to the house in search of his property (a pistol which Fenton had taken from him). This plea was not allowed by the twelve Judges; but Soulés afterwards received His Majesty's pardon. Nichols' statement, that Soulés was killed by the Paris mob in 1792, is contradicted by Gardiner's account of his meeting the man in 1802.

The was thought by Thompson to have been the large house near the High Cross where the whole of the inmates were killed during the siege of Leicester in 1645. In the following century, however, it seems to have developed Jacobin tendencies, for in the year 1754 the Grand Jury enquired why the persons who drank treasonable toasts at this inn, with the connivance of its landlord, had not been arrested. The popular Horse and Trumpet toast, at the time when Mayor Mitford was standing as the Whig candidate at the Parliamentary election of that year, was "Damnation to King George and Mitford." The house was described by Throsby in 1791 as "a large inn, now occupied as a private house." Afterwards it became a warehouse. It is said that Gabriel Newton, who founded Alderman Newton's School, was at one time master of this house, the signboard of which swung across the street and was attached to the High Cross itself.

The was in Gallowtree Gate, nearly opposite to the low rambling tavern, called the Magpie, that once stood on part of the site of the modern Victoria Parade. It had a large, swinging sign, which, as I am informed, bore a rhyming inscription, that ran something like this:—

In front of this house, in the road near the Causeway, was placed the stone coffin which was traditionally said to be that of Richard III., used as a horse-trough. William Gardiner said 32