FAIRS
1. 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" and the
"conjurors"; the wonderful caravans and cocoa-nuts; the musical
instruments of all sorts, from the mouth-organ and "squeaker" to the
steam-organ of the roundabout.
2. 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=.
3. 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 kind of Nijni-Novgorod, where East and West
met.
4. In some places the business part of the fair has now quite died out,
and a few stalls, a roundabout, a shooting-gallery, and swings are all
that can be seen on a fair-day.
5. 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: STOURBRIDGE FAIR, IN THE MIDDLE AGES (page 119)]
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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[11] often had such privileges granted
to them, and that partly accounts for the great dislike there was to
these classes of people.
14. 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 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.
=Summary.=--Fairs are usually now only for pleasure, though
in many places, like Lincoln, Carlisle, and Barnet, they are
important business meetings. The most important fair in the
Middle Ages in England was at Stourbridge. It was a kind of
Nijni-Novgorod.
The Fair was at first the "feast-day" of the parish church. It
brought people together, and pedlars began to sell their goods on
such occasions. Gradually the overlords regulated these meetings,
and strangers had to pay toll. Kings granted the right to hold
fairs to towns and religious houses, and the privilege was much
sought after.
Freedom from paying tolls was also a privilege which the king
could grant. It led in time to many squabbles between townsmen and
the religious houses.