Leicester, positioned near the centre of the kingdom, and on a number of good trade routes both by water and by road, had reached a peak of prosperity in the 13th century: in the tax assessment of 1269 it was rated the eighth richest borough in England. By the end of Edward III’s reign, however, a decline had set in, no doubt partially due to the deaths of a large number of townspeople in the great pestilences of 1349 and 1361, but also attributable to a diminution in trade.
Leicester, the only parliamentary borough in Leicestershire, had returned Members since 1301. OR. The population at the beginning of the seventeenth century was about 3,500. In the late 1620s the corporation described the borough as ‘consisting principally of manual trades … very populous … [with] many poor and standeth far from the sea or any navigable river is maintained chiefly by the fairs and market’. Trade in wool and textile production were important elements of the local economy. VCH Leics. iv. 76, 78; Recs. of Bor. of Leicester ed. H.
Leicester, the county town, was a centre of cotton and worsted stocking manufacture: in 1831 it contained about 7,000 knitting frames giving employment to some 1,200 persons, but the trade was in general decline in this period, which was marked by severe spells of distress among the framework knitters.Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 212-13; VCH Leics. iv.
