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archbishop came upon the city bridge, and there the bailiffs of the city delivered up their staves as the symbol of their authority; during the interregnum the former kept the peace of the city, collected toll and took all other profits, "as the city bailiffs do at other times as well by water as by land ”1. The fair was opened by proclamation. The form of pro- Proclamaclamation at Bartholomew fair 2 began with an injunction that all "having recourse to this fair keep the peace" of the king, and proceeded: "That no manner of persons make any congregation, conventicles, or affrays by which the same peace may be broken or disturbed. Also that all manner of sellers of wine, ale, or beer, sell by measures ensealed, as by gallon, pottle, quart, and pint. And that no person sell any bread, but if it keep the assize, and that it be good and wholesome for man's body. And that no manner of cook, pie-baker, nor huckster, sell nor put to sale any manner of victual, but it be good and wholesome for man's body. And that no manner of person buy nor sell, but with true weights and measures, sealed according to the statute in that behalf made. And that no manner of person or persons take upon him or them within this fair to make any manner of arrest, attachment, summons, or execution, but if it be done by the officers of this city thereunto assigned. And that no person or persons whatever, within the limits and bounds of this fair, presume to break the Lord's Day in selling, showing, or offering to sale, or in buying, or offering to buy, any commodities whatsoever, or in sitting, tippling, or drinking in any tavern, inn, alehouse, tippling-house or cook's house, or in doing any other thing that may tend to the breach thereof. And finally, that what persons soever find themselves grieved, injured, or wronged by any manner of person in this fair, that they come with their plaints, before the stewards in this fair, assigned to hear and determine pleas, and they will minister to all parties justice, according to the laws of this land and

1 Placita de Quo Warranto, 221-223; Drake, Eboracum, 218. Lex Londinensis or the City Law (1680), 247. The contents of the proclamation were doubtless substantially the same in earlier centuries.

For the clerk of the market, see J. G. Pease and H. Chitty, The Law of Markets and Fairs (1899), 10-13.

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the customs of this city" 1. At Southampton 2 the proclamation ended with the words: "Therefore now at noon begin in God's name and the king's, and God send every man good luck and this fair good continuance". The fair came to an end at sunset, and it was then the duty of the marshal to ride through the midst of the fair and proclaim publicly that every trader forthwith shut his stall, and neither sell nor offer for sale his merchandise 3.

The fair stood in the open fields, and booths and stalls were set up in rows to form streets. At Nottingham • the booths were eight feet in length and breadth, and it was sometimes the duty of manorial tenants to furnish the materials and labour required for their construction 5. Dealers in the same trade were commonly grouped together to favour the convenience of the buyers, to promote competition among the sellers and to facilitate the collection of tolls; at Boston fair the drapers took their stand on the south side, and the wool dealers on the north. Not only were different quarters assigned to each trade, but also separate streets were set apart for foreign merchants or for dealers from the same county or town. At St. Giles's fair the Flemings were located in one street, the men of Caen in another, and traders from Cornwall in a third; while the merchants of Leicester 8, who visited Stamford fair, were bidden to carry their wares to the shops in which the merchandise of Leicester is usually kept". The regulations of the Oxford market appointed with the most minute

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1 For the proclamation at Stourbridge fair in Mary's reign, see J. Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica (1790), v. 84. Proclamation at York fair: Drake, Eboracum, 218. At Manchester fair: HibbertWare, Foundations, iv. 41. At Sheffield fair: J. Hunter and A. Gatty, History of Hallamshire (1869), 54 (n. 2).

2 J. S. Davies, History of Southampton (1883), 232.
3 Kitchin, Charter, 50.

4 Records of Nottingham, i. 63.

5 At Boldon every two villeins made one booth for the fairs of St. Cuthbert, and in Aucklandshire the villeins furnished 18 booths: Boldon Buke (Surtees Soc.), 4, 26. The tenants of the lord of St. Ives fair provided bundles of rods: Select Cases concerning the Law Merchant (Seld. Soc. Pub.), i. p. xxxiii. • Records of Leicester, i. 74, 80.

7 Kitchin, Charter, 18. Similarly at St. Ives rows of stalls were assigned to the respective trades, towns and nationalities (Law Merchant, i. p. xxxiii). 8 Records of Leicester, i. 79.

9O. Ogle, "The Oxford Market ", in Collectanea (Oxford Hist. Soc.), 2nd ser. 13-16.

detail the different stations for dealers in straw, hay and grass, wood, cattle, earthenware, ale, bread, gloves and leather, dairy-produce, fish and corn; the members of the gild had permanent shops assigned to them in each street, and so we find Apothecaries' Row, Butchers' Row, and Cornmarket. The localization of trade has left its record in urban nomenclature, and is perpetuated in the names of streets to this day in London Bread Street, Milk Street, Fish Street and Honey Lane are situated where originally stood rows of stalls in the market-place. Tenth-century documents show that this trait of mediaeval life was an old one, for Fleshmonger Street, Shieldwright Street, Cheap Street and Tanner Street are enumerated among the streets of Winchester, and they also appear in the Winton Domesday1. A twelfth-century description of London 2 sets forth how "men of all trades, sellers of all sorts of wares, labourers in every work, are every morning all set apart by themselves in their distinct and several places". In his Survey of London Stow has left us a valuable account of the different quarters of the city, each associated with some famous mistery or trade; the mercers and haberdashers with their shops on London Bridge, the goldsmiths in West Cheap, the drapers in Candlewick Street, the butchers in East Cheap, and the rest also grouped together in their own locality3. York is claimed as an exception, and apparently here the crafts were not separated. Yet even at York we find Girdlegate, Spurriergate and Tanner Row 5. Apparently at Coventry also trade was not localized to any great extent. At each step we are reminded that mediaeval town-life was nowhere uniform, and that large generalizations need to be qualified at every turn.

1 J. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus (1848), iii. 252 (No. 673); vi. 135 (No. 1291). For the Winton Domesday: Domesday Book, iv.

* Materials for the History of Thomas Becket (Roll Series), iii. 2-13.

Stow, ed. C. L. Kingsford (1908), i. 81. The town rental of Bury exhibits a similar localization of trade: Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology, xiii. part ii. 198. Again at Lenton fair the merchants appear to have been classed according to their wealth or status, 'the best', 'the middle class', and 'the smaller', "each one according to his condition": Records of Nottingham, i. 63.

4 York Memorandum Book, i. p. xv. • English Hist. Review, ix. 293.

• Coventry Leet Book, iv. p. xlii.

Sources of market

revenues.

(i.) Stallage.

One reason for the association of traders in local groups was doubtless to facilitate the collection of tolls; on this account also the townsmen were required to shut up their shops and do their traffic at the fair 1. At Hereford 2 a dispute arose as to whether burgesses could sell wares in their own houses, provided they paid tolls to avoid loss of revenue to the bishop; the latter resisted the claim on the ground that they would be able to conceal the tolls due to him, and also could colour' the goods of merchant strangers. Market revenues were drawn from a threefold source: rents of booths and stalls, tolls on wares bought and sold, and profits of the court held to transact legal business. At Nottingham 3 cloth merchants, apothecaries, pilchers and mercers paid for each booth twelvepence, and other traders eightpence, "excepting those selling iron". On the other hand, every burgess of Cambridge 4 was allowed a booth in the fair of Stourbridge without stallage, nor was it paid by the men of Northampton 5 when they sold merchandise in their own markets. At Abingdon the unusual claim was advanced that all merchants, townsmen and strangers alike, should be quit of this tax. In the main, however, contro(ii) Tolls. versy raged over the exaction of tolls, and here every locality differed from its neighbour, though the burden of complaint is common to all. Excessive tolls were forbidden by law, and rendered the market or fair liable to be seized into the king's hands, but legal records and inquisitions afford eloquent testimony to the regularity with which the prohibition was disregarded. At Bauquell the lord of the manor claimed as market toll a penny from buyer and seller for every horse sold, and the like for an ox, a cow, four sheep, or a horse-load; in fair-time he took double toll. These tolls were pronounced in a court of law to be "superfluous, unjust, and to the oppression of the common people and

1 Kitchin, Charter, 52; J. J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (1889), 246.

2 Plac. Abbrev. 113 a.

• Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, i. 149.
5 Records of Northampton, i. 262.

3 Records of Nottingham, i. 61.

Patent Rolls, 1367-1370, p. 283. Also Wycombe had a fair " for all manner of people to come free without any manner of stallage": J. Parker, Wycombe (1878), 29.

Statutes, i. 34.

against the common law "; and he was forced to moderate them. He agreed to take from henceforth, for a horse one penny from the buyer only, and the like for a cow or for eight sheep, and one halfpenny for every horse-load; nor were these tolls to be exceeded at fair-time 1. The men of Lincoln complained that excessive toll was taken from them at Carlisle "to their damage in ten marks yearly, and yet the king's farm for Lincoln is paid in full, wherefore they who have once been bailiffs of Lincoln can hardly rise from poverty and misery "2. Another category of complaints was concerned with the imposition of tolls on commodities that claimed to go toll-free, more especially ordinary provisions. This grievance was an old one, for as early as 1086 the Domesday jurors in the North Riding of Lincolnshire 3 presented that tolls were exacted other than those taken in Edward the Confessor's day, namely on bread, fish, hides and many other things. In the Hundred Rolls the complaint is reiterated again and again: at Bosworth, for example, dues were charged on seed-corn and "other small wares of which toll is never wont to be given "4. Occasionally we get glimpses of a distinction to the significance of which attention will be drawn later 5, a distinction between merchants who bought to sell again, and 'men of the county' who bought for their household store; the latter claimed to be free from toll altogether. Immunity from toll was sometimes granted by express agreement between the contracting parties, and sometimes it was asserted by virtue of a peculiar tenure or charter from the Crown. Herein lay a fruitful source of dissension. The men of Lincoln, for example, claimed to be free at the fair of St. Botolph " from all time of all customs and demands ", and when the lord of the fair "attacked and oppressed them from day to day to obtain money by his power", and in particular charged ten pounds as tronage

1 Placita de Quo Warranto, 140. Similarly Meysham, ibid. 146. Rot. Hund. i. 317 a.

Rot. Hund. i. 239 b, 280 b.
Infra, p. 255.

3 Domesday Book, i. 375 b.

E.g. Rot. Hund. i. 12 b.

1 Agreement between the prior of Lenton and Nottingham (c. 1300): Records of Nottingham, i. 61-67.

Immunity was claimed by (a) tenants of Ancient Demesne, (b) Cinque Ports, (c) municipal and religious bodies with charters: infra, p. 252 seq.

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