The domestic trade of the country was largely carried on during this
period by great fairs held at stated times by royal license. Bunyan,
in "Pilgrim's Progress," gives a vivid picture of one of these centers
of trade and dissipation, under the name of "Vanity Fair." Though it
represents the great fair of Sturbridge, near Cambridge, as he saw it
in the seventeenth century, yet it undoubtably describes similar
gatherings in the time of the Plantagenets.
In all large towns the merchants had formed associations for mutual
protection and the advancement of trade, called merchant guilds.
Artisans now instituted similar societies, under the name of craft
guilds. For a long time the merchant guilds endeavored to shut out
the craft guilds,--the men, as they said, "with dirty hands and blue
nails,"--from having any part in the government of the towns. But
eventually the latter got their full share, and in some cases, as in
London, became the more influential party of the two. There they
still survive under the name of the "City Companies."