ABSTRACT
The potent mix of civic pride and Home Office conservatism brought obfuscation and annoyance, and not much has changed since, with towns seeking the status of city as a perceived promotion in the urban hierarchy, and the Home Office successfully if inadvertently stoking demand by limiting supply. Leicester's claim to city status was based not on its record of success in civic affairs, but on the grounds that it was seeking the restoration of a lost status. It claimed to have been a diocesan see in the seventh and eighth centuries, that it had been civitas in Domesday Book, and that as late as 1220 it appeared as a city in a return made to the Bishop of Lincoln. This long lost history cut no ice at the Home Office, and Leicester's claims to city status were turned down in 1889, 1892, 1900, 1902, 1905, 1907 and 1915.
