Fairs
The word "Fair" calls up to our minds all sorts of wonderful
sights and sounds--the stalls with their wonderful "fairings"
and "goodies"; the shows and the shooting-galleries; the "flying
horses", the "conjurors", the performing dogs, and Punch and Judy;
the wonderful caravans and coco-nuts; the musical instruments of
all sorts, from the mouth-organ and "squeaker" to the steam-organ
of the roundabout.
Many such fairs are still held in every county and they connect the
present day very closely with the life of bygone days. It is "all
the fun of the fair" which draws people to them mostly nowadays,
but in some of them there is still important business done; people
are attracted to them for trade as well as for pleasure.
Some of these fairs are held in big towns, such as Lincoln
and Carlisle. At Barnet a great horse fair is held every year
in September. But some big fairs are held away from any large
town, such as the big sheep fair at Weyhill, in Hampshire. At
Stourbridge, in Cambridgeshire, a fair is still held; it is quite
an ordinary one now, but in the Middle Ages it was one of the
most important fairs, not only in England, but in Europe--a great
gathering, where East and West met to do business with each other.
In some places the business part of the fair has quite died out,
and a few stalls, a roundabout, a shooting-gallery, and swings are
all that can be seen on a fair-day.
The word "fair" comes from an old word which means a "feast" or
festival. There are many villages which still have their annual
village feast, more important to the village than Christmas or
a "Bank Holiday". Houses are turned out and cleaned from top to
bottom; everything must be made fit to be seen "for the feast". It
is a great meeting-time for families, and the boys and girls who
have gone away to work in some big town try to get back for a few
hours to their native village, to "the old house at home".
[Illustration: CASTLE AND BUTTER MARKET, DUNSTER, SOMERSETSHIRE]
In the beginning the village feast was connected with the parish
church--it was the festival of the saint after whom the church
was named. That day was a holiday, and all the people went to
church as a matter of course. The church was the gathering-place,
and, in the porch and the churchyard, and on the village green,
friends, neighbours, and relatives met and had a time of
rejoicing.
So many people coming together attracted pedlars and hawkers,
who spread out their goods on the green, in the churchyard, and
in the church porch itself. People who met but seldom used the
chance of doing a little business with each other. Little by
little, then, the "feast" became a "fair", and in many cases was
a very important business and trading meeting.
Now it did not suit the ideas of people in those days that
outsiders should come into their village and buy and sell as they
chose. You know how the boys living in one street even nowadays
object to the boys from another street coming to play in their
street--"You go and play in your own street". So in very early
times the lord of the manor began to regulate these things.
Outsiders who brought their goods for sale had to pay a "due" or
"toll" to the lord of the manor to be allowed to trade; and the
right of receiving tolls for fairs became one of an overlord's
privileges.
The people in the towns, who were more interested in trade than
the people in the villages, saw how very important and profitable
a fair was--that it was something "with money in it"--and the
towns were very anxious to get the right to hold one or more
annual fairs. But the overlord, the king, had a voice in the
matter, because each stall set up, and each bale of goods,
brought in "by right" an income.
The king had the right to grant, almost to whom he pleased, the
privilege of holding a fair; and the privilege was much sought
after. Towns, as we saw in a former chapter, got charters from
the king, which very often gave to them this right. But it was
quite a common thing for the king to make a grant of an annual
fair to a religious house which he wanted to benefit without much
cost to himself, and the profits of the fair went to support the
house. The king's nobles did the same kind of thing in their own
domains.
All the shops in the place where the fair was held had to be shut
while the fair was on, and nothing could be bought or sold except
in the fair. The tradesmen of the place had to pay their tolls to
the person or public body to whom the fair had been granted, just
as the strangers coming into the town did.
Fairs lasted in some cases for only one day; in others for two,
three, or more days, and sometimes as long as a fortnight, during
which time, whether the inhabitants liked it or not, all trade
had to be carried on only in the fair. That was one of the things
which caused jealousy between the trading class and the religious
houses, and often led to much ill-feeling and disorder.
Then, too, the king could grant to any person the right to go to
any fair in the country without paying toll and duty. Of course
those persons to whom the king granted this right had to pay him
very heavily for this privilege, but you can see that it was
quite worth their while. Foreign merchants and Jews[16] often had
such privileges granted to them, and that partly accounts for
the great dislike there was to these classes of people.
[16] The Jews were expelled from England A.D. 1290.
Many of the religious houses had entered into trade too, and very
often the same privilege of putting their goods on the market was
granted to them. Members of a religious house could often travel
from place to place without having to pay any of the tolls and
duties which other folk had to pay. That might be quite right and
reasonable when they were on some religious duty or errand of
mercy, but when it was connected with buying and selling the goods
produced or manufactured on the monastery lands it was "rather
hard", as we should say, on the traders. The grievance grew up
gradually, but it caused very often a bitter feeling between the
towns and the religious houses in them, which over and over again
led to riots and bloodshed.
[Illustration: _Morris Dancers, Fourteenth Century_
_From an illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford._]