You come to the site of Leicester Abbey by way of many hosiery factories, whence emerge the warm oily smells of wools and worsteds and the click-clack of machinery; and thence by Frog Island. The Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis, _i.e._ “St. Mary of the Meadows,” stood, as its name indicates, by the water-meadows of this sluggish river. The site, with merely the old surrounding precinct wall, is alone left, and even the first secular mansion built there stands a roofless ruin. Wolsey was under arrest, and worn with illness and misfortune, when he came here. In the words of Shakespeare: At last with easy roads he came to Leicester, Lodged in the abbey; where the reverend abbot, With all his convent, honourably received him; To whom he gave these words—“O Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; Give him a little earth, for charity.” He died the third day of his arrival, in the sixtieth year of his age. On the second day, observing his custodian, the Lieutenant of the Tower, in the room, he said, “Master Kyngston, I pray you have me commended to His Majesty. Had I but served God as I have served him, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is my just reward for my pains and study, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my prince.” And thus died the proud Cardinal, before whom all in the land, except his Sovereign, had earlier abased themselves. They buried him in the Lady Chapel, but in another seven years the Abbey itself was dissolved, its lands seized, and the buildings themselves destroyed; and no man knows what became of the body of Wolsey. Like that of Richard the Third, it was obscurely dispersed with others, and hence these two great historic characters have no known resting-place and no monument. The site was granted to a Mr. Cavendish, and on it in another thirty years was built the mansion whose ruins are now to be seen. This way ran the old original road out of Leicester to the north, instead of the existing road through Belgrave. The change, like that in the southern approach to the town, was due to the dread with which wayfarers in the early years of the seventeenth century regarded the place, sore stricken with the plague. They sought the byways and unfrequented paths outside the walls, and were careful not to enter the town itself. Traffic has ever been conservative, and when all fear of infection had at last died out, the new routes thus struck out were retained. XXIII