this house has been rightly placed at Leeds. "Loidis" was at first the name of the British kingdom. It seems to have been gradually contracted, so as to signify this one settlement in the district. There was no Roman station on the site of Leeds; but two important Roman roads, one running toward Tadcaster, another toward Ilkley, here met and crossed in the midst of the woods; and it was near the crossing that Thrydwulf's monastery was erected. Such a position was not unfrequently chosen for the site of a religious house. The forest gave seclusion enough; and the roads provided means of communication which none but the most severe anchorites cared to be entirely without.

Here, then, we have the "first beginnings" of Leeds; for, as in all similar cases, a hamlet must gradually have arisen under the walls of the monastery, and in connection with it. A greater contrast than that between such a convent, low and rudely built, in its sunny forest clearing, and the smoke-shrouded, far-stretching modern town, it is hardly possible to imagine. Many a great oak and elm, in the rich country extending from Leeds toward Barwick and Aberford, yet bears witness to the depth and extent of the ancient "wood of Elmete;" but all "green things upon the earth" have long been driven from the actual site of Leeds. In this respect the land occupied by the town is as completely "waste" as it is recorded to have been after the Conqueror's unpitying devastation of all this portion of Northumbria. What was the extent of the settlement at Leeds at the time of the Conquest, or what character the place had by that time assumed, we cannot tell. It may have developed far beyond the dependencies and outlying hamlets of a monastery. The position of the place, at a point where one ancient road crossed the stream of the Aire, and was encountered by another passing in an opposite direction, must, as soon as the hamlet began to increase, have afforded it great advantages. But whatever was its condition, it was entirely laid waste by the Conqueror during the general harrying of Yorkshire in the winter of 1069. At the time of the Domesday Survey, Leeds appears as one of the 150 manors held by the great baron Ilbert de Lacy, whose lordship stretched in a long line across half Yorkshire. He, or one of his immediate descendants, recognising the importance of the position, built a castle at Leeds on what is now known as Mill Hill. Every trace of this castle has perished; but it was of some strength, since it was besieged and taken by Stephen in 1139; and nearly three centuries later, in 1399, it became the first prison of Richard II. "The kyng," we are told,

"Then sent Kyng Richard to Leedes,

There to be kept surely in previtee."

He passed thence first to Pickering Castle, and then to the "bloody prison" of Pontefract. Except, however, an occasional and very brief notice of the castle, we hear nothing of Leeds until Leland, visiting it in the course of his travels, about the year 1530, describes it as "a praty market towne . . . as large as Bradeford, but not so quick as it." As yet the life and "quickness" of Leeds had hardly manifested themselves; and the Cistercians, in their neighbouring monastery at Kirkstall, the foundation of Henry de Lacy, entered upon by the monks in 1152, remained to the end untroubled by more than the occasional bustle of a "praty market towne." Indeed, it was not for more than a century after the dissolution of the monasteries that any considerable change took place at Leeds.

The town was first incorporated in the second year of Charles I., and the cloth market, at that time, had become of some importance. In 1642 Leeds was taken by the Royalists, under the Marquis of Newcastle; and in the following year it was retaken for the Parliament by Sir Thomas Fairfax, after a short but sharp struggle, in the course of which we are told that a certain minister named Scholfield distinguished himself by his valour, and

by his triumphant psalm-singing as work after work was taken, or was abandoned by the enemy.

Cloth-making had been established in this part. of Yorkshire at a comparatively early period; perhaps in the reign of Edward III., when Flemish workmen were encouraged to settle in the north, as well as in the east, of England. In the middle of the seventeenth century the clothiers of Leeds were prospering; and a market was held twice a week on a long and narrow bridge which crossed the Aire.* The cloth, which was made in all the neighbouring hamlets, as well as in Leeds itself, was laid for sale on the battlements of the bridge, and on benches below; and on these market-days the country clothiers could

This bridge marks the position of an ancient ford across the Aire, approached by a causeway (perhaps of Roman work) which has been traced. The old Norman bridge was widened at different times, and has now (1872-3) been replaced by an entirely new structure.

buy for twopence from the innkeepers, "a pot of ale, a noggin of porridge, and a trencher of boiled or roast beef"-a comfortable supply which long afterwards went by the name of "brigg [bridge] shot." The town of Leeds in the early part of the eighteenth century, when De Foe describes the district in his "Tour through Great Britain," was, as we learn from that, and from a drawing in Thoresby's "Ducatus Leodensis," still but a small place, in which the parish church and that of St. John were by far the most conspicuous buildings. There were but few streets-Briggate, Kirkgate, and Swinegate being the principal; and beyond them lay open fields and patches of ancient woodland. In the general appearance of the town there was perhaps little change until toward the end of the century; although long before that the whole district had become alive with the cloth manufacture. Dyer, whose poem of "The Fleece" was published in 1757, describes in it "the rich fields of Birstal:"

"Wide around

Hillock and valley, farm and village smile;
And ruddy roofs and chimney-tops appear

Of busy Leeds, upwafting to the clouds

The incense of thanksgiving; all is joy,

And trade and business guide the living scene;

Roll the full cars adown the winding Aire,

Load the slow-sailing barges, pile the pack

On the long tinkling train of the slow-paced steeds."

The trade of Leeds steadily increased; and long before the beginning of the present century it had become the capital and the chief mart of the clothiers, properly so called— that is, of the woollen manufacturers; whilst the worsted trade had gathered about Bradford. These towns still remain the centres of the two great divisions of the woollen trade-as much, it must be remembered, the characteristic business of Yorkshire as the cotton manufacture is that of Lancashire.

Factories, in which the different processes of the woollen manufacture were brought together into one building, were unknown in the country until the middle of the eighteenth century; and they first appeared, not in any of the larger towns, but in the open country. Again we turn to Dyer's poem, where we have a description of a "spacious dome" in the Vale of Calder, which seems to have been one of the first, if not the very first, of such common workshops. It had been built for a parish workhouse.

"High o'er the open gates with gracious air
Eliza's image stands. By gentle steps
Upraised, from room to room we slowly walk,
And view with wonder and with silent joy

The sprightly scene; where many of busy hand,

Where spoles, cards, wheels, and looms, with motion quick
And ever-murmuring sound, the unwonted sense
Wrap in surprise."

These first factories, however, must have differed not a little from their existing representatives. Coal was perhaps used in them; but as yet the steam-engine was unknown. It is the marvellous development of steam-power, within comparatively recent times, that

has so completely altered the appearance of south-western Yorkshire, and, in conjunction with the natural advantages of the country, has enabled it, in so far as the cloth manufacture is concerned, to leave all other parts of England far behind. The district has in abundance the "three grand requisites "-water, coal, and ironstone. "Intersected by small valleys, it abounds in rills, brooks, and rivers, excellently adapted either for the working of mills by water-power, or for the use of the 'great iron servant of nations'-the steam-engine. Add to these essentials that the rivers could easily be made navigable, and canals formed for the transit of goods; that the district is central, and what is of paramount importance, that the people are industrious and persevering, of indomitable energy of character, delighting in business, neither shunning labour nor fearing difficulties in the prosecution of their enterprises, and one may comprehend how the manufacture has obtained, in such a spot, among such a people, a mighty growth, and become one of the wonders of this progressive age." * A chief result, of course, has been the enormous increase of population, which is still steadily advancing. Of this, Leeds, as a chief centre, has had its full share. In 1801 the population of the borough was 53,162, and it was then held to be unduly crowded. In 1851 this population had risen to 172,270; and in 1871 the numbers were 259,212.

It is almost entirely since 1800 that factories have arisen within, and closely round, the town of Leeds, which has now become the greatest cloth market in the world. То the ordinary, or to the hasty, visitor the appearance of the place is not altogether prepossessing. Unless to the enthusiast in modern "progress," it is not agreeable to wander for miles through a region of tall chimneys and barrack-like edifices, from which issues the roar and clang of a machinery which is hardly ever at rest. And yet this machinery represents some of the highest efforts, and the most ingenious skill, of our race; and its perpetual roar is, in fact, but the beating of one great artery in the heart of England. This is true, whether the result be for good or for evil; and the due recollection of it may well induce the most passionate lover of open field and clear sky to linger for a time in the prison-house of a great manufacturing town, and to give his attention to the marvels which, on all sides, he will find ready to his hand.

And there are other points of interest in Leeds. Nothing remains indeed which can recall the days of "the most reverent Abbot Thrydwulf," but as in every old Yorkshire town which has developed into a vast "province" of houses, traces of its former and more simple condition are still to be found, elbowed, but not yet entirely pushed out of sight and existence, by modern bustle and magnificence. This remarkable contrast of old and new-of medieval relics with modern life, and of what was once rural seclusion with the sea of manufacturing tumult which has surged up round it is indeed characteristic not only of the towns, but of much of the so-called open country in the West Riding. The effect is often strangely pathetic, especially where, as is sometimes the case, the old village church, with its simple graveyard, has survived in the midst of a changed surrounding world; and in Leeds itself we are carried back at least to the time of Fairfax, and of his victorious assault, when we turn from the broad Briggate into the street of St. John,

* James's "Woollen Manufacture."

and enter the church built there by the piety of the rich clothier, John Harrison, and consecrated by Archbishop Neale in the September of 1634.

This church stands in the older portion of Leeds, round which, as from a centre, the modern town has developed. It is easy to make out the topography of Leeds in the middle of the seventeenth century; but who shall describe, so as to make them at all intelligible, without the aid of a plan, the streets and "places," the railway-stations, the halls, and the crowd of factories, which form the modern town? Leeds has spread itself beyond the Aire, to the left bank of which river the old town was confined. Houses and factories of all descriptions unite it, on the right bank, to what was once the hamlet of Holbecknow as little entitled to so rural an appellation as Clerkenwell or Paddington. Holbeck alone is a great manufacturing town. On the left bank the town of Leeds has spread north, west, and east. Woodhouse Moor, on the west, which was preserved by an especial provision when the greater number of commons in the neighbourhood were enclosed, is It is surrounded by plantations, among which rise the houses of the wealthiest citizens; and in 1859 the Grammar School, founded in 1552, was removed from the centre of the town to new buildings, designed by Mr. E. Barry, and erected on the edge of the moor, where the long hall of the school is conspicuous. A public park was established at Roundhay, about two miles from the top of Briggate, in 1872; and the beauty of the ground will probably, in due time, render this a favourite suburb of Leeds. Indeed, in the Roundhay direction, and stretching away through what was once the "wood of Elmete," the country is still open and pleasant; and is without the crowding, the tall chimneys, and the discoloured streams of the Aire Valley between Leeds and Keighley. When we remember that there are in Leeds and its immediate neighbourhood between eight and nine hundred manufacturers of woollen cloth alone, some of them representing firms of very great wealth and importance; that the flax trade is also carried on in some very large mills; that great iron-factories-which are sure to follow the growth of general manufacture-have arisen, one of which covers nearly four acres of ground; that glass-works, chemical works, leather works, and tobacco factories-all on a great scale, and all numerous - contribute their full share of darkening smoke and of evil odours; and that in effect almost every branch of manufacture is represented in Leeds we begin to appreciate the truth and the full importance of Mr. James's statement, and to recognise that there are special advantages in this ancient Loidis" which have been eagerly seized, and developed to their full skill and industry. But to this part of our subject we must return. modern Leeds, in so far as the clouded and dusky atmosphere will permit, is not unworthy of a town so large and so wealthy. The town hall, the public institutions of all kinds, the warehouses of the greater merchants, and the principal factories themselves, are for the most part grand and imposing buildings; and the variety of architectural style

still the great breathing-ground of Leeds.

region of extent by northern The appearance of