Fair and markets compared. for weighing wool, they withdrew from the fair1. At Bury St. Edmunds, on the other hand, a compromise was effected by which the citizens of London paid toll but at once received it back; this preserved the privileges of both parties, though the substantial victory lay with the London merchants who had stayed away for two years to the abbot's great loss 2. The citizens of London were also for a time at variance with the abbot of Waltham who charged them with stallage, on which account they withdrew from the fair for more than three years. Eventually the abbot agreed to restore all the distresses that he had taken from them, and to levy no more stallage for the future 3. Indeed it was always open to traders to escape unfair exactions by absenting themselves from the fair, or by resorting to evasion. The burgesses of Scarborough complained that fishing merchants and sailors sold their cargoes at sea, and at Dunwich the market was held in the harbour on board the vessels. Henry I. had made an attempt to protect Newcastle from this practice by enacting that "whatever merchandise a ship may bring by sea must be brought to the land, except salt and herrings "". In one direction the interests of the lord and trader coincided it was to the advantage of both that commodities should be plentiful, and by their sale bring revenue to the former and profit to the latter. Here, however, an important difference emerges between the fair and the market. In principle they were alike, for each was a periodical gathering, distinct from permanent centres of trade on the one hand and from occasional and irregular marts on the other, but in their degrees of importance they differed widely. The market supplied the wants of the locality and was attended only by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood; its commodities were country produce and 1 Rot. Hund. i. 320 a; Thompson, Boston, 327. For Lincoln and the abbot of Peterborough, cf. Rot. Hund. i. 309 b. a Chronica Jocelini, 55. For a dispute between Tamworth and Walshale, cf. Patent Rolls, 1391-1396, p. 40. The men of the abbot of Abingdon complained of toll taken at Worcester: Plac. Abbrev. 120. Rot. Parl. ii. 221 a. De Antiquis Legibus Liber, 29. ↳ Ibid. iii. 254 a; this deprived the burgesses of their toll. the wares of everyday life. The fair was often of national, and sometimes of international repute, and its stalls exposed for sale everything that was rare and costly. A statute of Henry VII.1 relates that: "There be many fairs for the common weal of your people" who resort to them "to buy and purvey many things that be good and profitable, as ornaments of Holy Church, chalices, books, vestments, ... and also for household, as victuals for the time of Lent and other stuff as linen cloth, woollen cloth, brass, pewter, bedding, osmund, iron, flax, and wax, and many other necessary things, the which might not be forborne". Foreign wares could only be purchased at fair-time, and traders flocked to these shores from all parts of Europe; merchants from Venice and Genoa with costly spices from the East and silks and velvets and " things of complacence", the Flemish weaver with linen cloth, the Spaniard with iron, the Norwegian with tar, the Gascon with wine, and the Teuton with furs and amber 2. At the fairs also was gathered native produce-wool, the source of England's wealth in the Middle Ages, tin from Cornwall, salt from the Worcestershire springs, lead from the Derbyshire mines, iron from the Sussex forges 3, and cloth which the drapers were wont to purchase "at home and abroad about Michaelmas for the fairs ensuing "4. Here the bailiff purchased his farm implements and store of salt and sheep-medicines and fish for Lent 5, the noble his armour and steed and falcons, the lady her robes and dresses'. Of the eager, active life of the fair we may learn something from the vivid glimpses we get of the London markets in the well-known ballad, "London Lykpenny" 8: 1 Statutes, ii. 518. • Ibid. 'The bailiff was apt to seize the pretext of the fair to neglect his duties, and presentments were ordered to be made of those in the habit of "always haunting fairs and taverns": The Court Baron, 103. • Thorold Rogers, Agriculture and Prices, i. 142. 4 Letter Book F, 229. • Falcons were bought for the king's use at the fairs of Lynn, Yarmouth, Derby and Boston in 1253: Patent Rolls, 1247-1258, p. 175. Similarly: ibid. 1258-1266, p. 84. ? Walter of Henley, Husbandry, 145. A remarkable list of commodities sold at fairs is enumerated in "Dives Pragmaticus" (1563), in Fugitive Poetical Tracts, ed. W. C. Hazlitt (1875). Minor Poems of Lydgate, ed. J. O. Halliwell (1840), 105. Lydgate's authorship is rejected by H. N. MacCracken, Minor Poems of Lydgate (1911), p. xlvii. Importance "Then to the Chepe I began me drawne, 'Sir', sayth he, wyll you our wyne assay? The importance of the fair is indicated not only in the of the fair attendance of foreign traders 1, but by the fact that the ordinary activities of municipal life were commonly suspended while the more important fairs were being held. At London the court of Husting suspended its sittings during the fairs of Bartholomew, St. Giles 2 and St. Botolph 3, and at Leicester the members of the merchant gild were excused from attendance on the same ground. But the significance of the fair lies deeper. It was a cosmopolitan gathering, and association with men from distant parts must have enormously broadened the horizon and widened the outlook of those who frequented it. As the common hearth of the nation it must have fostered mental progress, and stimulated a keen and active interest in the world that lay beyond. The profits of jurisdiction constituted the third source 1 Thus at St. Ives fair (1270-1315) there were present merchants from Cologne, Douai, Ypres, Ghent, Rouen, Bruges, St. Omer, Caen, Dinant, Louvain and Malines: Law Merchant, i. 9, 26, 91, 93. 2 Riley, Liber Albus, i. 321. Riley, Memorials of London, 637. Records of Leicester, i. 33. At Cambridge the day of municipal elections was changed so as not to clash with Stourbridge fair: Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, i. 287. Similarly the parlement of Paris did not sit during the famous fair of St. Denis: Morley, Bartholomew Fair, 16. of the lord's revenue, for a judicial tribunal, held to transact (iii.) Profits of jurislegal business and to settle disputes among traders, was an diction. integral element in the organization of every fair and market. This was the piepowder court, or court of the dusty feet, so called from the attendance of wayfaring merchants who went from mart to mart and could not await the sitting of the regular courts 1. On the continent 2 the concession of a market was usually accompanied by the right to hold a court, and in England it is common to find judicial privileges expressly granted in the charter. William the Conqueror gave to the monks of Battle a market with the words: "Those who resort to the market are to answer to no one but the abbot and monks; the abbot and monks to no one but God". This, if not a subsequent interpolation, would imply the authority to set up a local tribunal. The charter of St. Ives contained a significant phrase: "with sac and soc and infangthef, just as any fair has in England", an indication perhaps that the court had already become the recognized appurtenance of a fair. Apparently there grew up the conception of a customary fair-right embodying definite usages, for in the Staffordshire Hundred Rolls 5 the jurors presented that a lord had a fair and market "and whatever appertains to the fair or market". The right to hold a court, if only conjecturable in the case of some earlier grants, is expressly included in later ones, and in the fifteenth century was legally recognized by statute 8: "To every fair is of right pertaining a court of piepowder to minister in the same due justice in this behalf; in which court it hath been all times accustomed that every person coming to the fairs should have lawful remedy". Hence, as 1 C. Gross, "The Court of Piepowder", in Quarterly Journal of Economics, xx. 231; partly reprinted in Law Merchant, vol. i. 2 Huvelin, Essai historique, 382. ' Davis, Regesta Regum, i. 16. A charter of Edgar conferred 'sac and soc': Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 963. A Cart. Monast. de Rameseia, i. 240. Compare Quarterly Journal of Economics. xx. 234. Wm. Salt Archæol. Soc. Collections, v. part i. 112. "It is obviously inferable from a clause in a charter of 1280: the wardens appointed by the abbot of Westminster for the fair "shall show full justice" to complainants: Charter Rolls, ii. 239. 'Patent Rolls, 1467-1477, P. 422. 8 Statutes, ii. 461. The Coke explains, the franchise of a market or fair carried with it " without any grant" the right to hold a court 1. The holding of a piepowder court was not the prerogative Piepowder of the fairs alone; they were often set up in boroughs to Court. provide expeditious justice "for merchants and foreigners passing through "in matters affecting “covenants, contracts, trespasses and debts" 2. The promise of speedy justice was one of the concessions extended to aliens in the Carta Mercatoria (1303) 3. Cambridge held a court "between merchants and merchants concerning their merchandises " from day to day and from hour to hour, according to the exigencies of the complaint. London also took measures to facilitate speedy judgment in order that foreign merchants might not be delayed by a long series of pleadings 5. The laws of the Scottish boroughs contain the familiar injunction that if a plea arose between a burgess and a merchant, it should be determined before the third tide; and the laws of Oleron allowed a suit to be deferred for seven days, except in the case of one "passing on his way, to whom justice ought to be done forthwith". It has been said that where the piepowder court sat as a special session of the borough moot, pleas between burghers were excluded from its jurisdiction; but it appears questionable whether in actual practice a hard and fast line was drawn. At Bristol burgesses could plead against each other in the same way as strangers did: "from day to day, without writ, according to the custom of the town". We may conjecture, however, that the court of the fair was generally held at more frequent intervals. At Ipswich the pleas of strangers were heard in fair-time from hour to hour; at other times from day to day 10. 1 Coke, Second Part of the Institutes, 220. 2 M. Bateson, Borough Customs (1904), ii. 189. 3 Infra, P. 451. Riley, Liber Albus, i. 295. • Cambridge Borough Charters, 85. • Borough Customs, ii. 184. Similarly Newcastle (Ballard, Borough Charters, 217) and Faversham (Plac. Abbrev. 140 b). Black Book of the Admiralty (Roll Series), ii. 255. • Borough Customs, ii. 183. 10 Black Book of Admiralty, ii. 23. For London, cf. W. de G. Birch, Historical Charters of London (1884), 83. |