was withheld, for example, in a charter granted to Plympton (1285), where a saving clause reserved the lord's prerogative over his subjects: "saving that the bondmen of the earl by tarrying in the city shall not acquire their freedom by any liberty of the city without the earl's special assent" 1. Sometimes also, the privilege was made an occasion for extortion. In 1267 the citizens of Lincoln complained that the "mayor and others of the city by force and intimidation have distrained men dwelling in the city to give money to them for their liberties" 2. Other privileges varied from borough to borough. The (v.) Other privileges. citizens of London 3 were freed from military and naval obligations, while Oxford and Cambridge were each liable for the service of twenty soldiers in the field. At Preston the burgesses were not required to go upon any expedition unless the lord accompanied them, and provided they were able to return on the same day 5. For the economic historian, however, interest attaches mainly to the mercantile privileges, of which the chief was the grant of a merchant gild. This will be the subject of a subsequent chapter. 1 Charter Rolls, ii. 303. Ibid, 1327-1330, p. 135. 2 Patent Rolls, 1266–1272, p. 270. ▲ Ballard, Borough Charters, p. xlviii. • Dobson and Harland, History of Preston Guild, 77. It is difficult to define the term 'liber burgus'. Gross (Gild Merchant, i. 5) holds that "it was a variable generic conception. It comprised a vague aggregate of franchises". Professor Tait (Mediaeval Manchester, 62) is of opinion that "the institution of a free borough' meant no more than the substitution of a free burgage tenure and customs for the villein services and merchet of the rural manor". This seems the most probable view, and with it may be compared the statement of the chronicler Jocelin (Chronica, 73) that before the town of St. Edmunds became free, its inhabitants used to reap as serfs; but when it received the name and liberty of a borough the townsmen commuted their services for a pecuniary payment. The two features common to all boroughs, Mr. Ballard (Borough Charters, p. lxxxviii) has pointed out, were (a) burgage tenure and (b) the borough court. Cf. also Petit-Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs, i. 69 (n. 2). The importance of mediaeval markets. CHAPTER VI FAIRS AND MARKETS IN the Middle Ages the greater part of the internal trade of the country was carried on at fairs and markets, and the fairs and history of their organization and growth occupies an important chapter in the development of mediaeval commerce. For many centuries they were the chief centres of traffic and the main channels of commercial intercourse. But the period during which their activity was at its height was that of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when England became covered with a network of markets and fairs, of which some rivalled in fame even the great French fairs of Champagne and Lyons. Their importance indeed can scarcely be over-estimated, for at a time when the stream of commerce was fitful and scanty they furnished what was commonly the sole opportunity for the purchase and sale of distant products. They represent in fact a phase of commerce which can best be described as periodic 1; where distribution and exchange take place at periodical gatherings and not in permanent centres. In the most primitive stages of commercial activity, when human needs were less intense, the scope of production and distribution alike was restricted to the satisfaction of the most pressing wants. In later stages, commercial dealing gradually became part and parcel of the everyday life of the community. Between the earliest and the ultimate stages lay an intermediate stage, in which the growing desires of society were met by increasing skill in production and an ever-widening circle of distribution. 1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology (1893), i. 498. But opportunities of distribution were still confined to fixed periods, for while the exchange of commodities had become a recognized practice, social disorders and the difficulties of transport impeded their rapid and unceasing circulation. In their first beginnings fairs and markets appear as a Their religious religious rather than as a commercial institution. They originated in the religious assemblies of pious worshippers who congregated round famous shrines on the feast days of saints. Indeed between the festival and the fair there is a close, almost inseparable, relation: "there is no great festival without a fair, no fair without a festival "1. The concourse of strangers from distant parts afforded opportunities for the exchange of products, and the pilgrim was often also a trader 2. These periodical gatherings became the natural centres for commercial dealings, and merchants were always assured of the presence of buyers in an age when population was scattered and seldom concentrated in large groups. Moreover, the ostensible purpose for which the assemblies were held threw over the trader the cloak of religion, and ensured a degree of security which induced him the more willingly to brave the risks inseparable from his calling. The influence of the Church was undoubtedly a powerful factor in fostering the temporary peace to which the fair usually owed its rise. In England we get occasional glimpses of a religious Early English origin in the case of some of the fairs. Before the Norman fairs. Conquest there was an annual gathering at the feast of St. Cuthbert in the palatinate of Durham3, and from this gathering sprang the great fair which took its name from the saint. Again at St. Ives in Huntingdonshire the discovery of the bones of the saint led to the institution of one of the greatest of English fairs. Our knowledge of early English fairs and markets is, however, very scanty, and we have only slight indications as to their condition at the 1 P. Huvelin, Essai historique sur le droit des marchés et des foires (1897), 40. Cf. also C. Walford, Fairs (1883), 1-3. 2 Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, ed. P. Jaffé (1873), vi. 286. G. T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (1900), 108. Founded in 1110: Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, i. 240. The peace time of the Conquest. Domesday Book records the existence of forty-two markets 1, and their value varied considerably. At Neteham in Hampshire 2 the market was worth as much as eight pounds, and at Okehampton in Devonshire as little as four shillings. References to fairs are extremely rare, nor is their value stated as in the case of markets. One was held at Aspella in Suffolk and another at Matele in Cornwall. The silence of Domesday Book is no proof that fairs did not exist, and, moreover, many important towns, London, Winchester and others, were omitted from the Survey. There is, for example, an early mention of a fair at Chester in connexion with a grant made to the Constable Nigel by Hugo, Earl of Chester, who came over with the Conqueror 5; and William I. conceded an annual fair to Malmesbury Abbey". Again at Arundel in 1071 Roger de Montgomery was seized of the town of Arundel with its fair and market, "and all other liberties to the same appertaining". But the really important fairs-St. Giles, St. Ives, Stourbridge and Bartholomew-were founded in subsequent reigns. Whatever their history at an earlier date, by the time of the compilation of the Hundred Rolls, the institution of fairs and markets had struck deep roots and had become an essential part of the economic framework of English society. The development of markets and fairs was enormously of the fair. facilitated by the protection which the Church and the monarchy extended to those who frequented them, and the market-cross became the emblem of the peace of commercial intercourse. They constituted the oases of commercialism in “a wilderness of militancy". The importance of the peace of the fair finds expression in the numerous charters in which it was accorded special prominence. In the charter of St. Ives (1110) the king says: "I will and ordain that all who come to the fair, remain at it, and return from it, have 1 Ballard, Domesday Inquest, 181. 2 Domesday Book, i. 38. Ibid. ii. 418 (Aspella); i. 120 b (Matele). 6 W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (1661), ii. 187. • Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ed. H. W. C. Davis (1913), i. 65. 7 F. E. Sawyer, "Sussex Markets and Fairs", in Sussex Archæol. Collections, xxxvi. 182. 8 Huvelin, Essai historique, 47. 2 my firm peace". Henry II. promised that all who attended the market of Nottingham from the eve of Friday to the eve of Saturday should not be distrained except for the king's farm; and the violation of the royal protection involved penalties of forfeiture to the king. The clearest enunciation of the peace of the fair is in the laws of the Scottish boroughs : "This is the ordinance of the peace of the fair-that once the peace of the fair has been proclaimed, no one shall be attached in the fair unless he break the peace of the fair", and unless he were an outlaw, or a traitor or such a malefactor "whom the peace of the Church ought not to protect"; even the fugitive serf was immune from arrest while the peace of the fair lasted 3. Other factors contributed greatly to the formation of The instimarkets and fairs, and among these was the importance witnesses. tution of attached in Anglo-Saxon law to the presence of witnesses at all purchases and sales, in order to avoid traffic in stolen goods. From the earliest times we find legislative enactments reiterating the prohibition against secret transactions. Already in the seventh century the laws of Ine1 bade the chapman do his traffic among the people before witnesses, while Edward the Elder 5 and Athelstan went a step further in ordaining that no man buy anything out of port, but there do his bargaining with the witness of the port-reeve or other 'unlying' man. Edgar' instituted official witnesses, thirty-six in large boroughs, and twelve or more if necessary in small boroughs and in hundreds. Canute 8 enacted that no one should buy anything above the value of fourpence unless he had the true witness of four men, 1 Cart. Mon. de Rameseia, i. 240. The charter of Bartholomew fair contains a clause, " And I forbid any of the royal servants to implead any of their persons, or without the consent of the canons . . . . . to levy dues upon those going thither": H. Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (1874), 12. Records of Nottingham, i. 3. On the subject of immunity from debt in fair-time, see infra, p. 227. Leges Burgorum", in Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland, ed. C. Innes (1868), i. 42, 43. • Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 100 (688-695). Ibid. i. 138 (901-924). • Ibid. i. 156 (c. 925). 'Ibid. i. 210 (962-963). Kemble (Saxons in England, ii. 338) thought that these witnesses foreshadowed the later municipal council. Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 326 (1027–1034). |