"It is a _court of record_ incident to every _Fair_; and to be held only
_during the time_ that the _Fair_ is kept. As to the jurisdiction, the
cause of action for contract, slander, &c., must arise _in_ the fair or
market, and not before at any former fair, nor after the fair; it is to be
for some _matter concerning_ the same _fair_ or _market_; and must be done,
complained of, heard and determined the same day. Also the plaintiff must
{23}make oath that the contract, &c., was _within the jurisdiction_ and
_time_ of the _fair_.... The steward before whom the court is held, is the
judge, and the trial is by merchants and traders in the fair."
Such courts were as ancient as the fairs themselves, and they ensured a
speedy administration of justice in accordance with what was recognised as
merchants' law long before any common law was established. Supposed to have
been introduced by the Romans, the "court of pie powder" was, according to
Jacob, known by them under the name of "curia pedis pulverisati," while the
Saxons called it the "ceapunggemot," or "the court of merchandise or
handling matters of buying and selling." It was, of course, the Normans who
introduced the later term of "pied poudré," which the English converted
into "pie powder."
One of the most ancient, and certainly the most important, of all the
English fairs was the Sturbridge fair, at Cambridge, so called from a
little river known as the Stere, or the Sture, which flowed into the
Cam.[4]
Early records of this particular fair, according to Cornelius Walford, in
"Fairs Past and Present," are to be found in a grant by King John in or
about the year 1211. The fair is believed to have been originally founded
by the Romans; but it may have acquired greater importance at the date of
this particular charter by reason of what Cunningham, in his "Growth of
English Industry and Commerce in the Early and Middle Ages," describes as
the "extraordinary increase" of commerce in every part of the Mediterranean
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, coupled with the "improvements in
navigation and in mercantile practice" which "went hand in hand with this
development. Englishmen," he further tells us, "had but little direct part
in all this maritime activity. Their time was not come; but the Italian
merchants who bought English wool, or visited English fairs, brought them
within range of the rapid progress that was taking place in South Europe."
From the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the {24}thirteenth century
the export of wool, leather, lead, tin and other English commodities was in
the hands almost exclusively of foreign merchants, who came here both to
purchase these raw materials and to dispose of the products of their own or
other countries; and Sturbridge Fair, as it happened, formed a convenient
trading centre alike for foreign and for English traders, the question of
inland communication being, in fact, once more the dominating factor in the
situation.
Foreign goods destined for the fair were mostly brought, first, to the port
of Lynn, and there transferred to barges in which they were taken along the
Ouse to the Cam, and so on to the fair ground which, on one side, was
bordered by the latter stream. Heavy goods sent by water from London and
the southern counties, or coming by sea from the northern ports, reached
the fair by the same route. Great quantities of hops brought to the fair
from the south-eastern or midland counties by land or water were, in turn,
despatched via the Cam, the Ouse and the port of Lynn to Hull, Newcastle,
and elsewhere for consignment to places to be reached by the Humber, the
Tyne, etc. Where water transport was not available the services of
packhorses were brought into requisition until the time came when the roads
had been sufficiently improved to allow of the use of waggons.
In his "Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain" Defoe gives a
graphic account of Sturbridge Fair as he saw it in 1723. By that date it
had become, in his opinion, "not only the greatest in the whole Nation, but
in the World." It covered an area of about half a square mile, had shops
placed in rows like streets, with an open square known as the Duddery, and
comprised "all Trades that can be named in London, with Coffee-houses,
Taverns, and Eating-houses innumerable, and all in Tents and Booths." He
speaks of £100,000 worth of woollen manufactures being sold in less than a
week, and of--
"The prodigious trade carry'd on here by Wholesale-men from London, and all
parts of England, who transact their Business wholly in their Pocket-Books,
and meeting their Chapmen from all Parts, make up their Accounts, receive
Money chiefly in Bills, and take Orders: These, they say, exceed by far the
sales of Goods actually brought to the Fair, and deliver'd in kind; it
being frequent for the London {25}Wholesale Men to carry back orders from
their Dealers for ten Thousand Pounds-worth of Goods a man, and some much
more. This especially respects those People, who deal in heavy Goods, as
Wholesale Grocers, Salters, Brasiers, Iron-Merchants, Wine-Merchants and
the like; but does not exclude the Dealers in Woollen Manufactures, and
especially in Mercery Goods of all sorts, the Dealers in which generally
manage their Business in this Manner:
"Here are Clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield and Huddersfield in
Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, &c. in Lancashire, with vast Quantities
of Yorkshire Cloths, Kerseys, Pennistons, Cottons, &c., with all sorts of
Manchester Ware, Fustians and Things made of Cotton Wooll; of which the
Quantity is so great, that they told me there were near a Thousand
Horse-packs of such Goods from that Side of the Country....
"In the Duddery I saw one Ware-house or Booth, with six Apartments in it,
all belonging to a Dealer in Norwich Stuffs alone, and who, they said, had
there above Twenty Thousand Pounds value in those Goods alone.
"Western Goods had their Share here, also, and several Booths were fill'd
as full with Serges, Du-Roys, Druggets, Shalloons, Cataloons, Devonshire
Kersies, &c., from Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, and other Parts West, and some
from London also.
"But all this is still outdone, at least in Show, by two Articles, which
are the Peculiars of this Fair, and do not begin till the other Part of the
Fair, that is to say, for the Woollen Manufacture, begins to draw to a
Close: These are the Wooll and the Hops: As for the Hops there is scarce
any price fix'd for Hops in England till they know how they fell at
Sturbridge Fair: the Quantity that appears in the Fair is indeed
prodigious.... They are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex, from
Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent and from Farnham in Surrey; besides what
are brought from London, the Growth of those and other places."
In the North of England, Defoe continues, few hops had formerly been used,
the favourite beverage there being a "pale smooth ale" which required no
hops. But for some years hops had been used more than before in the brewing
of the great quantity of beer then being produced in the {26}North, and
traders from beyond the Trent came south to buy their hops at Cambridge,
taking them back to Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and
even to Scotland. Of wool, according to the same authority, the quantity
disposed of at a single fair would be of the value of £50,000 or £60,000.
In writing on this same Sturbridge fair, Thorold Rogers says, in his
"History of Agriculture and Prices":--
"The concourse must have been a singular medley. Besides the people who
poured forth from the great towns ... there were, beyond doubt, the
representatives of many nations collected together to this great mart of
medieval commerce. The Jew, expelled from England, had given place to the
Lombard exchanger. The Venetian and Genoese merchant came with his precious
stock of Eastern produce, his Italian silks and velvets, his store of
delicate glass. The Flemish weaver was present with his linens of Liége and
Ghent. The Spaniard came with his stock of iron, the Norwegian with his tar
and pitch. The Gascon vine-grower was ready to trade in the produce of his
vine-yard; and, more rarely, the richer growths of Spain, and, still more
rarely, the vintages of Greece were also supplied. The Hanse towns sent
furs and amber, and probably were the channels by which the precious stones
of the East were supplied through the markets of Moscow and Novgorod. And
perhaps by some of those unknown courses, the history of which is lost,
save by the relics which have occasionally been discovered, the porcelain
of the farthest East might have been seen in many of the booths. Blakeney,
and Colchester, and Lynn, and perhaps Norwich, were filled with foreign
vessels, and busy with the transit of various produce; and Eastern England
grew rich under the influence of trade. How keen must have been the
interest with which the franklin and bailiff, the one trading on his own
account, the other entrusted with his master's produce, witnessed the
scene, talked of the wonderful world about them, and discussed the politics
of Europe!
"To this great fair came, on the other hand, the woolpacks which then
formed the riches of England and were the envy of outer nations. The
Cornish tin-mine sent its produce.... Thither came also salt from the
springs of Worcestershire ... lead from the mines of Derbyshire and iron,
either raw or {27}manufactured, from the Sussex forges. And besides these,
there were great stores of those kinds of agricultural produce which, even
under the imperfect cultivation of the time, were gathered in greater
security, and therefore in greater plenty, than in any other part of the
world, except Flanders."
Other leading fairs, besides that of Sturbridge, included Bartholomew Fair,
in London, and those of Boston, Chester and Winchester; while Holinshed
says of the conditions in the second half of the sixteenth century, "There
is almost no town in England but hath one or two such marts holden yearlie
in the same." In the case of Bartholomew Fair, its decay was directly due
to the fact that there came a time when English manufacturers could produce
cloth equal in quality to that from Bruges, Ghent and Ypres which had been
the chief commodity sold at this particular fair, thenceforward no longer
needed. But the eventual decline alike of Sturbridge and of most of the
other fairs carrying on a general trade was mainly due to the revolutionary
changes in commerce, industry and transport to which improved facilities
for distribution inevitably led.
{28}CHAPTER V