Leicester Town Hall
Leicester Town Hall stands in the city centre of Leicester, England, in a square which contains a fountain. The building is the town hall of the city of Leicester and contains Leicester Bike Park; the town hall was built on the former cattle market between 1874 and 1876 in the Queen Anne Style by Francis Hames and is a Grade II* listed building. Before it was built, the Guildhall acted as the town hall. Leicester Town Hall covers an area of nearly 7,000 m2 and claims to be the most energy-efficient in the UK following a £80,000 investment in 1994; the installation of a number of energy-saving measures has reduced heating costs by more than £13,000 in less than ten years. On the first Wednesday of each month, a free tour is given by a Blue Badge tourist guide, which starts at 2 pm and lasts up to 2 hours and concludes with tea and biscuits in the Lord Mayor's Tea Room. Contrary to the notice board outside, visitors do not need tickets for the tour; some history is given of the building, including details of previous Lord Mayors etc. and one can visit the former courtroom and the current main council chamber.
Leicester Town Council accepted on 29 October 1878, "a handsome ornamental fountain to be placed in the centre of the land fronting the Town Hall Buildings", a gift to the Borough from Sir Israel Hart, a former Mayor of Leicester. It is constructed of Shap granite and Ross of Mull granite. Francis Hames, the architect of the town hall designed the layout of Town Hall Square and the fountain, unveiled by Sir Israel Hart on 24 September 1879. Is it said to be based on a similar fountain Hames saw in at Porto in Portugal, although this is unlikely, as the Town Hall Square fountain is the earlier work. There are strong similarities, which suggests that the Val d’Osne foundry copied the Leicester fountain for the Porto installation Seaton, Derek Leicester’s Town Hall: a Victorian jewel. Leicester City Council ISBN 1-901156-23-0 Leicester Town Hall Virtual Tour
Charles I of England
Charles I was the monarch over the three kingdoms of England and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life, he became heir apparent to the thrones of England and Ireland on the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead. After his succession, Charles quarrelled with the Parliament of England, which sought to curb his royal prerogative. Charles believed in the divine right of kings, was determined to govern according to his own conscience. Many of his subjects opposed his policies, in particular the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent, perceived his actions as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch.
His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic, generated the antipathy and mistrust of Reformed groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters, who thought his views were too Catholic. He supported high church Anglican ecclesiastics, such as Richard Montagu and William Laud, failed to aid Protestant forces during the Thirty Years' War, his attempts to force the Church of Scotland to adopt high Anglican practices led to the Bishops' Wars, strengthened the position of the English and Scottish parliaments, helped precipitate his own downfall. From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors' demands for a constitutional monarchy, temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Charles forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had consolidated its control over England.
Charles was tried and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared; the monarchy would be restored to Charles's son, Charles II, in 1660. The second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, Charles was born in Dunfermline Palace, Fife, on 19 November 1600. At a Protestant ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 23 December 1600, he was baptised by David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, created Duke of Albany, the traditional title of the second son of the King of Scotland, with the subsidiary titles of Marquess of Ormond, Earl of Ross and Lord Ardmannoch. James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England, when she died childless in March 1603, he became King of England as James I. Charles was a weak and sickly infant, while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father's friend Lord Fyvie, appointed as his guardian.
By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace without assistance, it was decided that he was strong enough to make the journey to England to be reunited with his family. In mid-July 1604, Charles left Dunfermline for England where he was to spend most of the rest of his life. In England, Charles was placed under the charge of Elizabeth, Lady Carey, the wife of courtier Sir Robert Carey, who put him in boots made of Spanish leather and brass to help strengthen his weak ankles, his speech development was slow, he retained a stammer, or hesitant speech, for the rest of his life. In January 1605, Charles was created Duke of York, as is customary in the case of the English sovereign's second son, made a Knight of the Bath. Thomas Murray, a presbyterian Scot, was appointed as a tutor. Charles learnt the usual subjects of classics, languages and religion. In 1611, he was made a Knight of the Garter. Charles conquered his physical infirmity, which might have been caused by rickets.
He became an adept horseman and marksman, took up fencing. So, his public profile remained low in contrast to that of his physically stronger and taller elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom Charles adored and attempted to emulate. However, in early November 1612, Henry died at the age of 18 of what is suspected to have been typhoid. Charles, who turned 12 two weeks became heir apparent; as the eldest surviving son of the sovereign, Charles automatically gained several titles. Four years in November 1616, he was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. In 1613, his sister Elizabeth married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, moved to Heidelberg. In 1617, the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, a Catholic, was elected king of Bohemia; the following year, the Bohemians rebelled. In August 1619, the Bohemian diet chose as their monarch Frederick V, leader of the Protestant Union, while Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor in the imperial election. Frederick's acceptance of the Bohemian crown in defiance of the emperor marked the beginning of the turmoil that would develop into the Thirty Years' War.
The conflict confined to Bohemia, spiralled into a wider European war, which the English Parliament and public grew to see
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader. He served as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England and Ireland from 1653 until his death, acting as head of state and head of government of the new republic. Cromwell was born into the middle gentry to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life, as only four of his personal letters survive along with a summary of a speech that he delivered in 1628, he became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period. He was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses, he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories, he was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short and Long Parliaments. He entered the English Civil Wars on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians, nicknamed "Old Ironsides".
He demonstrated his ability as a commander and was promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role under General Sir Thomas Fairfax in the defeat of the Royalist 11th forces. Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant in 1649, he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England as a member of the Rump Parliament, he was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. During this period, a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics, a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. On 20 April 1653, he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as Barebone's Parliament before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England and Ireland from 16 December 1653.
As a ruler, he executed an effective foreign policy. He was buried in Westminster Abbey; the Royalists returned to power along with King Charles II in 1660, they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, beheaded. Cromwell is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by historians such as David Sharp, a military dictator by Winston Churchill, a hero of liberty by John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, a revolutionary bourgeois by Leon Trotsky, his tolerance of Protestant sects did not extend to Catholics. He was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time in a 2002 BBC poll. Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599 to Elizabeth Steward; the family's estate derived from Oliver's great-grandfather Morgan ap William, a brewer from Glamorgan who settled at Putney in London, married Katherine Cromwell, the sister of Thomas Cromwell, the famous chief minister to Henry VIII. The Cromwell family acquired great wealth as occasional beneficiaries of Thomas's administration of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Morgan ap William was a son of William ap Yevan of Wales. The family line continued through Richard Williams, Henry Williams to Oliver's father Robert Williams, alias Cromwell, who married Elizabeth Steward in 1591, they had ten children. Cromwell's paternal grandfather Sir Henry Williams was one of the two wealthiest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Cromwell's father Robert was of modest means but still a member of the landed gentry; as a younger son with many siblings, Robert inherited only a house at Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes. Cromwell himself in 1654 said, "I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity". Cromwell was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St John's Church, attended Huntingdon Grammar School, he went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge a founded college with a strong Puritan ethos. He left in June 1617 without taking a degree after his father's death.
Early biographers claim that he attended Lincoln's Inn, but the Inn's archives retain no record of him. Antonia Fraser concludes that it was that he did train at one of the London Inns of Court during this time, his grandfather, his father, two of his uncles had attended Lincoln's Inn, Cromwell sent his son Richard there in 1647. Cromwell returned home to Huntingdon after his father's death; as his mother was widowed, his seven sisters unmarried, he would have been needed at home to help his family. On 22 August 1620 at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier. Elizabeth's father, Sir James Bourchier, was a London leather merchant who owned extensive lands in Essex and had strong connections with Puritan gentry families there; the marriage brought Cromwell into contact with Oliver St John and with leading members of the London merchant community, behin
Historic England
Historic England is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture and Sport. It is tasked with protecting the historical environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments and advising central and local government; the body was created by the National Heritage Act 1983, operated from April 1984 to April 2015 under the name of English Heritage. In 2015, following the changes to English Heritage's structure that moved the protection of the National Heritage Collection into the voluntary sector in the English Heritage Trust, the body that remained was rebranded as Historic England. Historic England has a similar remit to and complements the work of Natural England which aims to protect the natural environment; the body inherited the Historic England Archive from the old English Heritage, projects linked to the archive such as Britain from Above, which saw the archive work with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland to digitise and put online 96,000 of the oldest Aerofilms images.
The archive holds various nationally important collections and the results of older projects such as the work of the National Buildings Record absorbed by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and the Images of England project which set out to create a accessible online database of the 370,000 listed properties in England at a snapshot in time at the turn of the millennium. Historic England inherits English Heritage's position as the UK government's statutory adviser and a statutory consultee on all aspects of the historic environment and its heritage assets; this includes archaeology on land and under water, historic buildings sites and areas, designated landscapes and the historic elements of the wider landscape. It monitors and reports on the state of England's heritage and publishes the annual Heritage at Risk survey, one of the UK Government's Official statistics, it is tasked to secure the preservation and enhancement of the man-made heritage of England for the benefit of future generations.
Its remit involves: Caring for nationally important archive collections of photographs and other records which document the historic environment of England and date from the eighteenth century onwards. Giving grants national and local organisations for the conservation of historic buildings and landscapes. In 2013/14 over £13 million worth of grants were made to support heritage buildings. Advising central UK government on which English heritage assets are nationally important and should be protected by designation. Administering and maintaining the register of England's listed buildings, scheduled monuments, registered battlefields, World Heritage Sites and protected parks and gardens; this is published as an online resource as'The National Heritage List for England'. Advising local authorities on managing changes to the most important parts of heritage. Providing expertise through advice and guidance to improve the standards and skills of people working in heritage, practical conservation and access to resources.
In 2009–2010 it trained around 200 professionals working in local authorities and the wider sector. Consulting and collaborating with other heritage bodies and national planning organisations e.g. the preparation of Planning Policy statement for the Historic Environment Commissioning and conducting archaeological research, including the publication of'Heritage Counts' and ‘Heritage at Risk’ on behalf of the heritage sector which are the annual research surveys into the state of England's heritage. It is not responsible for approving alterations to listed buildings; the management of listed buildings is the responsibility of local planning authorities and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It owns the National Heritage Collection of nationally important historic sites in public care; however they do not run these sites as this function is instead carried out by the English Heritage Trust under licence until 2023. English Heritage Historic England Archive Cadw Historic Scotland Northern Ireland Environment Agency Manx National Heritage Department for Culture and Sport Conservation in the United Kingdom Heritage at Risk Historic houses in England National Trust Properties in England Heritage Open Days List of Conservation topics List of heritage registers List of museums in England Heritage film Official website The Historic England Archive: Search over 1 million catalogue entries describing photographs and drawings of England's buildings and historic sites, held in the Historic England Archive.
Britain from Above: presents the unique Aerofilms collection of aerial photographs from 1919-1953. Images of England website Heritage Explorer: Education site for teachers Department for Culture Media and Sport
Guild
A guild is an association of artisans or merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as a confraternities of tradesmen, they were organized in a manner something between a professional association, a trade union, a cartel, a secret society. They depended on grants of letters patent from a monarch or other authority to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as guild meeting-places. Guild members found guilty of cheating on the public would be banned from the guild. An important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities at Bologna and Paris. A type of guild was known in Roman times. Known as collegium, collegia or corpus, these were organised groups of merchants who specialised in a particular craft and whose membership of the group was voluntary. One such example is the corpus naviculariorum, the college of long-distance shippers based at Rome's La Ostia port.
The Roman guilds failed to survive the collapse of the Roman Empire. In medieval cities, craftsmen tended to form associations based on their trades, confraternities of textile workers, carpenters, glass workers, each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the "arts" or "mysteries" of their crafts; the founders were free independent master craftsmen who hired apprentices. There were several types of guilds, including the two main categories of merchant guilds and craft guilds but the frith guild and religious guild. Guilds arose beginning in the High Middle Ages as craftsmen united to protect their common interests. In the German city of Augsburg craft guilds are being mentioned in the Towncharter of 1156; the continental system of guilds and merchants arrived in England after the Norman Conquest, with incorporated societies of merchants in each town or city holding exclusive rights of doing business there. In many cases they became the governing body of a town. For example, London's Guildhall became the seat of the Court of Common Council of the City of London Corporation, the world’s oldest continuously elected local government, whose members to this day must be Freemen of the City.
The Freedom of the City, effective from the Middle Ages until 1835, gave the right to trade, was only bestowed upon members of a Guild or Livery. Early egalitarian communities called "guilds" were denounced by Catholic clergy for their "conjurations" — the binding oaths sworn among the members to support one another in adversity, kill specific enemies, back one another in feuds or in business ventures; the occasion for these oaths were drunken banquets held on December 26, the pagan feast of Jul —in 858, West Francian Bishop Hincmar sought vainly to Christianise the guilds. In the Early Middle Ages, most of the Roman craft organisations formed as religious confraternities, had disappeared, with the apparent exceptions of stonecutters and glassmakers the people that had local skills. Gregory of Tours tells a miraculous tale of a builder whose art and techniques left him, but were restored by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in a dream. Michel Rouche remarks that the story speaks for the importance of transmitted journeymanship.
In France, guilds were called corps de métiers. According to Viktor Ivanovich Rutenburg, "Within the guild itself there was little division of labour, which tended to operate rather between the guilds. Thus, according to Étienne Boileau's Book of Handicrafts, by the mid-13th century there were no less than 100 guilds in Paris, a figure which by the 14th century had risen to 350." There were different guilds of metal-workers: the farriers, knife-makers, chain-forgers, nail-makers formed separate and distinct corporations. In Catalan towns, specially at Barcelona, guilds or gremis were a basic agent in the society: a shoemakers' guild is recorded in 1208. In England in the City of London Corporation, more than 110 guilds, referred to as livery companies, survive today, with the oldest more than a thousand years old. Other groups, such as the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers, have been formed far more recently. Membership in a livery company is expected for individuals participating in the governance of The City, as the Lord Mayor and the Remembrancer.
The guild system reached a mature state in Germany circa 1300 and held on in German cities into the 19th century, with some special privileges for certain occupations remaining today. In the 15th century, Hamburg had 100 guilds, Cologne 80, Lübeck 70; the latest guilds to develop in Western Europe were the gremios of Spain: Toledo. Not all city economies were controlled by guilds. Where guilds were in control, they shaped labor and trade. In order to become a master, a journeyman would have to go on a three-year voyage called journeyman years; the practice of the journeyman years still exists in France. As production became more specialized, trade guilds were divided and subdivided, eliciting the squabbles over jurisdiction that produced the paperwork by which economic historians trace their development: The
Alice Mary Hobson
Alice Mary Hobson was an English landscape painter. She became a watercolourist and member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in London from 1879, her 1903 watercolour sketch of Leicester Guildhall called Room at Leicester in which Shakespeare is said to have Acted before Queen Elizabeth was included in the book Women Painters of the World. Alice Mary Hobson on artnet
King Leir
King Leir is an anonymous Elizabethan play about the life of the ancient Brythonic king Leir of Britain. It was published in 1605 but was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 May 1594; the play has attracted critical attention principally for its relationship with King Lear, Shakespeare's version of the same story. The records of theatre impresario Philip Henslowe show that King Leir was performed on 6 and 8 April 1594 at the Rose Theatre, by a cast that combined personnel from two acting companies, Queen Elizabeth's Men and Sussex's Men. Other records claim that the play was acted, though these two are the only specific performances known, it has been suggested that Shakespeare, a player in the Queen's company of the 1590s, may have performed in King Leir. The moste famous Chronicle historye of Leire king of England and his Three Daughters was entered into the Stationers' Register on 14 May 1594, by stationer Adam Islip; this conflict between stationers prevented the play's publication in 1594.
It was registered again on 8 May 1605, by stationer Simon Stafford. The first edition appeared that year, printed by Stafford for the bookseller John Wright, with the title The true Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters, Gonorill and Cordella; the title page states that the drama "hath been diverse and sundry times acted". The 1605 quarto was the sole edition of the play during the seventeenth century. There is no consensus of scholarly opinion on the authorship of King Leir; the play has been variously attributed to Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Anthony Munday, Shakespeare himself. The author drew on Holinshed's Chronicles for the story of Leir and his daughters. Other sources and influences include Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, The Mirror for Magistrates, William Warner's Albion's England, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In turn, critics agree that King Leir served as a primary source for Shakespeare's King Lear. King Leir has been called a "chronicle history", a "tragical history", a "tragicomedy", "a tragedy with a happy ending".
Leir does not contain the subplot about Gloucester and Edmund that Shakespeare added to the story. Some commentators have argued that King Leir was printed in 1605 to take advantage of the attention drawn by Shakespeare's similar play – which would mean that Shakespeare's Lear was being acted in 1605, yet "a remarkable historical parallel" provided "a topical reason" for the publication of Leir, also for Shakespeare's interest in the story c. 1605. Brian Annesley was an elderly former follower of Queen Elizabeth, a wealthy Kentishman with three daughters: Grace and the youngest, the unmarried Cordell. In 1603, Grace tried to have her father declared incompetent to manage his estate. Cordell wrote to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury to protest her older sister's action, otherwise supported her father against his eldest daughter. Brian Annesley died in July 1604. One of the executors of the will was a Sir William Harvey. Once the Dowager Countess died in 1607, Harvey married Cordell Annesley. So, a true-life scandal with noteworthy parallels to the Leir/Lear story was in the news in 1603 and 1604, may have helped to inspire both Shakespeare's play and the publication of the old play King Leir.
The text of King Leir Comparisons of Leir with Lear as well as the full texts of both King Leir and His Three Daughters public domain audiobook at LibriVox
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