LEICESTER (209), county town of Leicestershire, on the Soar, 40 m.  E. of Birmingham; is an ancient town, with several historic buildings; has grown rapidly of late owing to its hosiery, boot and shoe, and iron-founding industries; it sends two members to Parliament.

LEICESTER, ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, fifth son of the Duke of Northumberland; won the queen’s favour by his handsome appearance and courtly address; received many offices and honours, and on the death, under suspicious circumstances, of his Countess, Amy Robsart, aspired to her hand; still favoured, in spite of his unpopularity in the country, he was proposed as husband to Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1563; he married the dowager Lady Sheffield in 1573, and afterwards bigamously the Countess of Essex; after a short term of disfavour he was appointed commander in the Netherlands, and subsequently at Tilbury Fort, but proved an incapable soldier (1532-1588).

LEICESTERSHIRE (374), English midland county, bounded by Nottingham, Lincoln, Rutland, Northampton, Warwick, and Derby shires; is an undulating upland watered by the Soar, and mostly under pasture.  Leicester cattle and sheep are noted, and its Stilton cheeses.  There are coal deposits and granite and slate quarries in the N. The chief towns are Leicester, the county town, Loughborough, and Hinckley.

LEIGH, AURORA, the heroine of Mrs. Browning’s poem of the same name.  She styled it “a novel in verse,” and wrote of it, it is “the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered.”

LEIGHTON, FREDERICK, LORD, eminent English artist, born at Scarborough; studied in the chief art-centres of the Continent; his first exhibit at the Royal Academy being “Cimabue’s Madonna carried in Procession through Florence,” which was followed by a numerous array of others of classic merit, and showing the scholar as well as the artist; he distinguished himself in sculpture as well as painting, and died President of the Royal Academy after being ennobled (1830-1897).

LEIGHTON, ROBERT, a Scottish theologian, the son of a Puritan clergyman in London, who wrote a book against prelacy, and suffered cruelly at the hands of Laud in consequence; studied at Edinburgh; entered the Church, and became Presbyterian minister at Newbattle in 1641, but resigned in 1653; was made Principal of Edinburgh University; reluctantly consented to accept a bishopric, and chose the diocese of Dunblane, but declined all lordship connected with the office; was for a time archbishop of Glasgow; retired to England in 1674, and lived ten years afterwards with a widowed sister in Sussex; he was a most saintly man, and long revered as such by the Scottish people; his writings, which are highly imaginative, were much admired by Coleridge (1611-1684).

LEIOTRICHI, a primitive race of people distinguished by their smooth hair.