VII.
THE SIX BRIDGES.
IN the autumn of the year 1392, William Mercer and William Spencer, we are told by Thompson in his History of Leicester (page 137), gave to the Mayor and community of Leicester divers houses, lands and tenements situate in Leicester, Whetstone and Great Glen, for the repair of the Six Bridges within the town of Leicester, and for other purposes. This statement need not, however, be taken too literally. It is possible, of course, that Messrs. Mercer and Spencer were public-spirited townsmen who wished to do well to their town, and to mend its bridges; but it seems far more probable that they were in reality more like what lawyers call sometimes, in their picturesque phraseology, "conduit-pipes." The transaction may be explained, perhaps, in the following way.
In the year preceding this grant, the Mortmain Acts had been extended for the first time to Boroughs, so that the community of Leicester were now prevented from holding any real estate, except by Ucense. To obtain a license was a rather complicated and costly business. It would have been impossible, on that account, for the governing body of the town to buy small lots of property, and take separate conveyances of each. And so they seem to have deputed two of their members to buy up several lots of property on their behalf, and to take conveyances and assignments of each lot separately into their own names, as private persons, to whom the Mortmain Acts did not apply. For this purpose the town required the services of two men of good repute and proved honesty, and Mercer and Spencer, who were selected, no doubt answered to that description. Mercer had taken his father's seat in the Guild Merchant in 1365, and Spencer entered the Guild in 1368. They were thus men of some experience in municipal affairs, and that Spencer, at any rate, was a man of good standing is shown by his being elected Mayor of the town in the year 1399.
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