ng, with an inscription "_Consanguinitarium_, 1792." It
consists of five neat dwellings, to which is annexed a yearly stipend of
upwards of 60l. and was built by John Johnson, Esq. a well-known
Architect as a perpetual home for such of his relations as may not be
favored by successful fortune.

Turning down a narrow alley, called Castle Street, we arrive at a
spacious area, on the right of which is a charity school, built in 1785,
belonging to the parish of St. Mary, which clothes and educates 45 boys
and 35 girls.

The visitor will now have a full view of St. Mary's church, antiently
known by the distinguishing addition of _infra_ or _juxta Castrum_, a
building in which he will perceive, huddled together, specimens of
various kinds of architecture, from the Norman gothic of the north
chancel, to the very modern gothic of the spire; a mixture which evinces
the antiquity of the church, marks the disasters of violence, accident,
and time, and proves that the neighbourhood of the castle, within whose
outer ballium or precincts it stood, was often most dangerous. That
there was a church, on this spot in the Saxon times, seems almost
certain, from some bricks apparently the workmanship of that people,
found in the chancel; and the cheveron work round the windows of this
chancel proves that the first Norman Earl of Leicester, Robert de
Bellomont, when he repaired the mischiefs of the Norman conquest, or
rather of the attack made by William Rufus upon the property of the
Grentemaisnells, constructed a church on a plan nearly like the present,
and adorned it with all the ornaments of the architecture of his times.
This Earl founded in it a college of twelve canons, of whom the Dean was
most probably one, and among other donations for their support, he
endowed it with the patronage of all the other churches of Leicester, St.
Margaret's excepted. These, his son and successor, Robert, surnamed
Bossu, converted into regular canons, and removed them, with great
additional donations to the Abbey in the meadows. He seems however to
have continued an establishment of eight canons in the collegiate church,
tho' with revenues comparatively small, since their income, at the
dissolution of the monasteries, was valued only at 23l. 12s. 11d. That
the number of these canons remained unchanged at the time of the
dissolution, appears probable from the circumstance of seven cranes and a
socket for an eighth being still found in a kind of p