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Urban

nomen

clature.

2 the pro

Therefore now at noon

the customs of this city" 1. At Southampton
clamation ended with the words:
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 4 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

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.

9 O. Ogle,

2nd ser. 13-16.

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The Oxford Market", in Collectanea (Oxford Hist. Soc.),

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 Domesday 1. 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 locality. York is claimed as an exception 4, 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.

2 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. 5 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 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 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.

4 Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, i. 149.
Records of Northampton, i. 262.

3 Records of Nottingham, i. 61.

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• 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 8. 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.
2 Rot. Hund. i. 317 a.
3 Domesday Book, i. 375 b.

Rot. Hund. i. 239 b, 280 b.

5 Infra, p. 255.

7

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

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

8

Immunity was claimed by (a) tenants of Ancient Demesne, (b) Cinque

Ports, (c) municipal and religious bodies with charters: infra, p. 252 seq.

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 5 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.

2 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.

3 De Antiquis Legibus Liber, 29.

5 Ibid. iii. 254 a; this deprived the burgesses of their toll.
Ballard, Boroughs Charters, 168.

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