This place, near Cambridge, is also called Sturbridge, Sturbitch, and
Stirbitch. A Cambridge newspaper speaks of _Stirbitch_ fair being
proclaimed on the 19th of September, 1825, for a fortnight, and of
_Stirbitch_ horse-fair commencing on the 26th of the month. The
corruption of this proper name, stamps the persons who use it in its
vulgar acceptation as being ignorant as the ignorant; the better
instructed should cease from shamefully acquiescing in the long
continued disturbance of this appellation.
Stephen Batman, in his “Doome warning,” published in 1582, relates that
“Fishers toke a disfigured divell, in a certain _stoure_, (which is a
mighty gathering togither of waters, from some narrow lake of the sea,)
a horrible monster with a goats heade, and eyes shyning lyke fyre,
whereuppon they were all afrayde and ranne awaye; and that ghoste
plunged himselfe under the ise, and running uppe and downe in the
_stowre_ made a terrible noyse and sound.” We get in _Stirbitch_ a most
“disfigured divell” from Stourbridge. The good people derive their “good
name” from their river.
* * * * *
Stourbridge fair originated in a grant from king John to the hospital of
lepers at that place. By a charter in the 30th year of Henry VIII., the
fair was granted to the magistrates and corporation of Cambridge. The
vicechancellor of the university has the same power in it that he has in
the town of Cambridge.
* * * * *
By an order of privy council of the 3rd of October, 1547, the mayor and
under-sheriff of the county were required, not only to acknowledge
before the vicechancellor, heads of colleges and proctors, that they had
interfered with the privileges of the university in Stourbridge fair,
but also, “that the mayor, in the common hall, shall openly, among his
brethren, acknowledge his wilfull proceeding.” The breach consisted in
John Fletcher, the mayor, having refused to receive into the tolbooth
certain persons of “naughty and corrupt behaviour,” who were “prisoners,
taken by the proctors of the university, in the last Sturbridge fair;”
wherefore he was called before the lords and others of the council, and
his fault therein “so plainly and justly opened” that he could not deny
it, but did “sincerely and willingly confess his said fault.”[327]
* * * * *
In 1613, Stourbridge fair acquired such celebrity, that hackney-coaches
attended it from London. Subsequently not less than sixty coaches plied
at this fair, which was the largest in England. Vast quantities of
butter and cheese found there a ready market; it stocked the people of
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and other counties with clothes, and all other
necessaries; and shopkeepers supplied themselves from thence with the
commodities wherein they dealt.[328]
* * * * *
Jacob Butler, Esq. who died on the 28th of May, 1765, stoutly maintained
the charter of Stourbridge fair: he was of Bene’t-college, Cambridge,
and a barrister-at-law. In stature he was six feet four inches high, of
determined character, and deemed “a great eccentric” because, among
other reasons, he usually invited the giants and dwarfs, who came for
exhibition, to dine with him. He was so rigid in seeing the charter
literally complied with, that if the ground was not cleared by one
o’clock on the day appointed, and he found any of the booths standing,
he had them pulled down, and the materials taken away. On one occasion
when the wares were not removed by the time mentioned in the charter, he
drove his carriage among the crockery and destroyed a great quantity.
The rev. John Butler, LL.D. rector of Wallington, in Hertfordshire,
father of Mr. Butler, who was his eldest son, endeavoured in the year
1705, to get Stourbridge fair rated to the poor. This occasioned a
partial and oppressive assessment on himself that involved him in great
difficulties. Dr. Butler died in 1714, and Jacob Butler succeeded to his
difficulties and estates in the parish of Barnwell. As a trustee under
an act for the turnpike road from Cambridge to London, Mr. Butler was
impeached of abuses in common with his co-trustees. Being obnoxious, he
was singled out to make good the abuse, and summoned to the county
sessions, where he appeared in his barrister’s gown, was convicted and
fined ten pounds, which he refused to pay, and was committed. He
excepted to the jurisdiction, wherein he was supported by the opinion of
sir Joseph Yorke, then attorney-general, and to save an estreat applied
to the under-sheriff, who refused his application, and afterwards went
to the clerk of the peace at Newmarket, from whom he met the like
treatment; this forced him to the quarter-sessions, where he obtained
his discharge, after telling the chairman he felt it hard to be
compelled to the trouble and expense of teaching him and his brethren
law. He appears to have been a lawyer of that school, which admitted no
law but the old common law of the land, and statute law. In 1754, “to
stem the venality and corruption of the times, he offered himself a
candidate to represent the county in parliament, unsupported by the
influence of the great, the largess of the wealthy, or any interest, but
that which his single character could establish in the esteem of all
honest men and lovers of their country. But when he found the struggles
for freedom faint and ineffectual, and his spirits too weak to resist
the efforts of his enemies, he contented himself with the testimony of
those few friends who dare to be free, and of his own unbiassed
conscience, which, upon this, as well as every other occasion, voted in
his favour; and upon these accounts he was justly entitled to the name
of _the old Briton_.” He bore this appellation to the day of his death.
The loss of a favourite dog is supposed to have accelerated his end;
upon its being announced to him, he said, “I shall not live long now my
dog is dead.” He shortly afterwards became ill, and, lingering about two
months, died.
His coffin, which was made from a large oak by his express order, some
months before his death, became an object of public curiosity; it was of
sufficient dimensions to contain several persons, and wine was copiously
quaffed therein by many of those who went to see it. To a person, who
was one of the legatees, the singular trust was delegated of driving
him to the grave, on the carriage of a waggon, divested of the body:
seated in the front, he was to drive his two favourite horses, Brag and
Dragon, to Barnwell church, and should they refuse to receive his body
there, he was to return and bury him in the middle of the grass-plat in
his own garden. Part only of his request was complied with, for the body
being put into a leaden coffin, and the leaden one into a shell, was
conveyed in a hearse, and the coffin made before his death was put upon
the carriage of his waggon, and driven before the hearse by the
gentleman above mentioned when arrived at the church door, it was taken
from the carriage by four men, who received half-a-guinea each; it was
then put into the vault, and the corpse being taken from the hearse was
carried to the vault, there put into the coffin, and then screwed down.
[Illustration: ~Jacob Butler, Esq.~]
The late rev. Michael Tyson of Bene’t-college, “a good antiquary and a
gentleman artist,” amused himself with etching a few portraits; among
them “were some of the old masters of his college, and some of the noted
characters in and about Cambridge, as Jacob Butler of Barnwell, who
called himself the _old Briton_,” which Mr. Nichols says “may be called
his best, both in design and execution; for it expresses the very man
himself.” A gentleman of the university has obligingly communicated to
this work a fine impression of Mr. Tyson’s head of “the _old Briton_,”
from whence the present portrait is engraven.
_Origin of Stourbridge Fair._
Mr. George Dyer, in a supplement to his recently published “Privileges
of the University of Cambridge,” being a sequel to his “History of the
University,” cites thus from Fuller:--
“Stourbridge fair is so called from Stour, a little rivulet (on both
sides whereof it is kept,) on the east of Cambridge, whereof this
original is reported. A clothier of Kendal, a town characterized to be
_Lanificii gloria et industria præcellens_, casually wetting his cloath
in water in his passage to London, exposed it there to sale, on cheap
termes, as the worse for wetting, and yet it seems saved by the bargain.
Next year he returned again with some other of his townsmen, proffering
drier and dearer cloath to be sold. So that within a few years hither
came a confluence of buyers, sellers, and lookers-on, which are the
three principles of a fair. _In memoria_ thereof, Kendal men challenge
some privilege in that place, annually choosing one of the town to be
chief, before whom an antic sword was carried with some mirthful
solemnities, disused of late, since these sad times, which put men’s
minds into more serious employments.” This was about 1417.
* * * * *
The “History of Stourbridge Fair,” &c. a pamphlet published at Cambridge
in 1806, supplies the particulars before the reader, respecting Jacob
Butler and the fair, except in a few instances derived from authorities
acknowledged in the notes. From thence also is as follows:--
Stourbridge fair was annually set out on St. Bartholomew’s day, by the
aldermen and the rest of the corporation of Cambridge, who all rode
there in grand procession, with music playing before them; and, when the
ceremony was finished, used to ride races about the place; then
returning to Cambridge, cakes and ale were given to the boys who
attended them, at the Town-hall; but, we believe, this old custom is now
laid aside. On the 7th of September they rode in the same manner to
proclaim it; which being done, the fair then began, and continued three
weeks, though the greatest part was over in a fortnight.
This fair, which was allowed, some years ago, to be the largest in
Europe, is kept in a corn-field about half a mile square, the river Cam
running on the north side, and the rivulet called the Stour, (from
which, and the bridge which crosses it, the fair received its name,) on
the east side; it is about two miles from Cambridge market-place, and
where, during the time of the fair, coaches, &c. attend to convey
persons to the fair. The chief diversions at the fair were drolls,
rope-dancing, sometimes a music-booth, and plays performed; and though
there is an act of parliament which prohibits the acting of plays within
ten miles of Cambridge, the Norwich company have permission to perform
there every night during the fair.
If the corn was not cleared off the field by the 24th of August, the
builders were at liberty to tread it down to build their booths; and on
the other hand, if the booths and materials were not cleared away by
Michaelmas-day at noon, the ploughmen might enter the same with their
horses, ploughs, and carts, and destroy whatever they found remaining on
the ground after that time. The filth, straw, dung, &c. left by the
fair-keepers, making the farmers amends for their trampling and
hardening the ground. The shops, or booths, were built in rows like
streets, having each their name; as Garlick-row, Booksellers’-row,
Cook-row, &c. and every commodity had its proper place; as the
cheese-fair, hop-fair, wool-fair, &c. In these streets, or rows, as well
as in several others, were all kinds of tradesmen, who sell by wholesale
or retail, as goldsmiths, toy-men, braziers, turners, milliners,
haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china warehouses,
and, in short, most trades that could be found in London, from whence
many of them came; there were also taverns, coffee-houses, and
eating-houses in great plenty, all kept in booths, except six or seven
brick-houses, in any of which (except the coffee-house booth,) you might
be accommodated with hot or cold roast goose, roast or boiled pork, &c.
Crossing the road, at the south end of Garlick-row, on the left hand,
was a square formed of the largest booths, called the _Duddery_, the
area of which was from two hundred and forty to three hundred feet,
chiefly taken up with woollen drapers, wholesale tailors, sellers of
second-hand clothes, &c. where the dealers had a room before their
booths to take down and open their packs, and bring in waggons to load
and unload the same. In the centre of the square there formerly stood a
high pole with a vane at the top. On two Sundays, during the principal
time of the fair, morning and afternoon, divine service was performed,
and a sermon preached by the minister of Barnwell, from a pulpit placed
in this square, who was very well paid for the same, by a contribution
made among the fair-keepers.
In this duddery only, it is said, that 100,000_l._ worth of woollen
manufacture has been sold in less than a week, exclusive of the trade
carried on here by the wholesale tailors from London, and other parts of
England, who transacted their business wholly with their pocket-books,
and meeting with their chapmen here from all parts of the country, make
up their accounts, receive money, and take further orders. These, it is
said, exceed the sale of goods actually brought to the fair, and
delivered in kind; it was frequently known that the London wholesale-men
have carried back orders from their dealers for 10,000_l._ worth of
goods, and some a great deal more. Once, in this duddery, there was a
booth consisting of six apartments, which contained goods worth
20,000_l._ belonging solely to a dealer in Norwich stuffs.
The trade for wool, hops, and leather, was prodigious; the quantity of
wool only, which was sold at one fair, was said to amount to between 50
and 60,000_l._, and of hops to nearly the same sum.
The 14th of September was the horse-fair day, which was always the
busiest day during the time of the fair, and the number of people, who
came from all parts of the county on this day, was very great.
Colchester oysters and fresh herrings were in great request,
particularly by those who lived in the inland parts of the kingdom.
The fair was like a well-governed city, and less disorder or confusion
were to be seen here than in any other place, where there was so great a
concourse of people assembled. Here was a court of justice, open from
morning till night, where the mayor, or his deputy, always attended to
determine all controversies in matters arising from the business of the
fair, and for keeping the peace; for which purpose he had eight servants
to attend him, called _red-coats_, who were employed as constables, and
if any dispute arose between buyer and seller, &c. upon calling out
red-coat there was one of them immediately at hand; and if the dispute
was not quickly decided, the offenders were taken to the said court,
and the case determined in a summary way, (as was practised in those
called pie-powder courts in other fairs,) and from which there was no
appeal.
The greatest inconvenience attending the tradesmen at this fair, was the
manner in which they were obliged to lodge in the night; their bed (if
it may be so called,) was laid upon two or three boards nailed to four
posts about a foot from the ground, and four boards fixed round it to
keep them from falling out; in the day-time it was obliged to be removed
from the booth, and laid in the open air, exposed to the weather; at
night it was again taken in, and made up in the best manner they were
able, and they laid almost neck and heels together, it being not more
than five feet long. Very heavy rains, which fall about this season,
would sometimes force through the hair-cloths, which were almost the
only covering to the booths, and oblige them to get up again; and high
winds have been known to blow down many of the booths, particularly in
the year 1741.