St. Margaret’s, down in the low-lying, soggy Church Gate, is not, in its present form, the oldest church, having been rebuilt in the Perpendicular period, but it is the successor and representative of the mother-church of the town, built about A.D. 600, when Leicester was the seat of a Saxon bishop. It stands not so far from the site of Leicester Abbey, and the street of “Sanvey Gate,” at the corner, indeed derives its name from “Sancta Via,” having been the way by which the mediæval religions processions came and went. The great imposing tower, built from the proceeds of a tax of “Smoke Farthing,” levied on the domestic hearths of the parish, is now a very weathered and crumbling mass, but all the more venerable-looking; and when the proposed restoration has taken place, it is to be feared that much of the majesty of it, will have vanished until such time as the surrounding factories have deposited more soot. But that will take a considerable time, for Leicester is not a sooty place.
For an example of thorough and unsparing restoration we must turn to St. Martin’s. Strangers, gazing at the exterior and the tall broach spire, imagine they have before them a new structure, but it is chiefly an Early English building, and, as the interior proves, a very fine one, and built on the site of a Roman temple to Diana. An epitaph of strange human interest is seen by the south porch:—
“Enquiring mortal, whoe’er thou art, ponder here on an incident which highly concerns the whole progeny of Adam. Near this place lieth the body of John Fenton, who fell by violence May 17th, 1778, and remains a sad example of the incompetency of judicial institutions to punish a Murderer. He left to mourn his untimely fate a mother, a widow, and two children. These, but these alone, are greatly injured: personal security received a mortal wound when vengeance was averted from his assassin by the sophistical refiners of natural justice.”
The man who slew Fenton was one François Soulés, a French officer then prisoner-of-war at Leicester, who was at the time a guest in Fenton’s house. The affair took place in a quarrel over a game of billiards. Soulés was condemned to death, but the sentence was revised, and he was in the end acquitted.