ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST RISE OF FAIRS IN ENGLAND, AND THE MANNER OF LIVING IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
Before the necessaries or ornaments of life from the convenience of communication and the increase of provincial intercourse could be procured in towns, through the medium of shops, goods and commodities of every kind were chiefly sold at fairs, to which, as to one universal mart, the people resorted periodically, and supplied most of their wants for the ensuing year.
Fairs and markets were at first held near the castles of the great barons, and near the cathedrals and principal churches in the cities and great towns, not only to prevent frauds in the king’s duties or customs, but also as they were esteemed places where the laws of the land were observed, and as such had a very particular privilege.
The display of merchandize and the conflux of customers at these principal and only emporia of domestic commerce were prodigious, and they were, therefore, often held on open and extensive plains.
It appears from a curious record containing the establishment and expenses of the Earl of Northumberland in the year 1512, that the stores of his lordship’s house at Wressle, for the whole year were laid in from fairs; “He that stands charged with my lord’s house for the whole year, if he may possible, shall be at all fairs, where the gross emptions (that is the principal articles) shall be bought for the house for the whole year, as wine, wax, beeves, muttons, wheat and malt.”
This quotation is a proof that fairs were at that time the principal marts for purchasing necessaries in large quantities, which now are supplied by trading towns, and the mention of buying beeves and muttons, (oxen and sheep) shews that at so late a period they knew but little of breeding cattle.
The great increase of shops in the retail trade in all the towns and villages through the kingdom since the commencement of the eighteenth century, by means of which the inhabitants are supplied with every article necessary for subsistence as well as for luxury, has in a great measure rendered useless the purposes for which fairs were originally established. This change in the domestic trade of the country may be attributed partly to the facility of payment given by the notes of the bank of England and inland bills of exchange, and partly to the more speedy and certain intercourse which has been produced by the regularity of the post office. The latter may be looked upon as the cause and the former the effect of this change which has so completely altered the state of fairs throughout the kingdom.
Connected with fairs as furnishing the necessaries of life may be given an account of the living of the people in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
From the household book of the Earl of Northumberland above-mentioned it appears, that his family, during winter, lived mostly on salted meat and salt fish, and on that account there was an order for providing 180 gallons of mustard. On flesh days through the year, breakfast for the earl and his lady was a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, half a chine of mutton, or a chine of beef boiled. On meagre days, a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish, or a dish of buttered eggs. During Lent, a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, two pieces of salt fish, six baconed herrings, or a dish of sprats. The other meals had as little variety, except on festival days.
At that time capons, chickens, hens, pigeons, rabbits, plovers, woodcocks, quails, snipes, partridges, and pheasants, were accounted such delicacies as to be prohibited except at the earl’s table.
From the same book it appears that the earl had only two cooks for dressing victuals for his household which consisted of 229 persons.
Hollinshed, who wrote about 1577, observes that white meats, i. e. milk, butter and cheese, formerly the chief food of the English people, were in his time degraded to be the food of the lowest sort, and that the wealthy fed upon flesh and fish.
Feasts in those times were carried beyond all bounds of moderation. There is preserved an account of a feast given by Archbishop Nevill at his installation, 1466, in which are mentioned, among a great variety of others, the following articles, viz. wheat 300 quarters, ale 300 tuns, 80 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 300 calves, 300 swine called porks, 2000 pigs, 200 kids, 4000 rabbits, upwards of 400 harts, bucks and roes, 3000 geese, 2300 capons, 2000 chickens, 4000 pigeons, 100 peacocks, 200 cranes, 4000 mallards and teals, 500 partridges, 400 woodcocks; 1500 hot, and 4000 cold venison pasties, 2000 hot custards, and 4000 cold ones. On the tables at this feast it is mentioned there were 4 porpoises and 8 seals.
There were 62 cooks and 515 servants to assist them, and not less than 3000 persons in all were at this feast.
At the above period there was not discovered in society, any pleasure but that of crouding together in hunting and feasting. The delicate pleasures of conversation, in communicating opinions, sentiments and desires, were wholly unknown.
About the year 1512 the breakfast hour was eight, and at ten they sat down to dinner; at three in the afternoon they had a drinking, and four was the hour for supper. The gates of the Earl of Northumberland’s castles were shut at nine in the evening throughout the year, “to the intent that no servant shall come in at the said gate, that ought to be within, who are out of the house at that hour.”
By a household establishment of Lord Fairfax’s, about 1650, it appears that eleven had then become the hour of dining, and towards the end of that century the hour was twelve, but from the beginning of the last century it has gradually grown later to the present times, when seven has become the fashionable hour in noblemen’s houses.
In the country, and in moderate families in the metropolis, one and two are the more general hours for dining.
From the Percy household book it may be observed, that several dishes were then in use which have been long banished from our tables; among these may be reckoned cranes, herons, sea-gulls, bitterns and kirlews, and at archbishop Nevill’s feast, porpoises and seals were served up.
After the accession of Henry the seventh to the throne, the nation began to rest from the scenes of war and blood which for several years had subsisted between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and in the next reign the people turned their attention more to trade and the arts of peace, so that we find the mode of living considerably changed, for luxury being ever the attendant of extended commerce, this brought us acquainted with the produce of foreign countries till then unknown in England.
Previously to 1509 the principal vegetables used at the tables of the great were imported from the Netherlands, so that when Catherine, queen of Henry the eighth wanted a sallad, she was obliged to despatch a messenger to Flanders. Asparagus and artichokes were introduced into England about 1578, and cauliflowers somewhat later. Celery was not introduced into England till after 1709, when Marshal Tallard being made prisoner at the battle of Malplaquet, and brought into England, first introduced this plant on the English tables.
There is an article in the Percy household book which says, “That from henceforth there be no herbs bought, seeing that the cooks may have herbs enough in my lord’s gardens.”
Since the introduction of tea into England at the close of the seventeenth century the living of all classes of the people has experienced a total change, but it was not till about 1740 that tea came to be generally used in the country, for previously to that time those who made use of it got it by stealth, each being afraid of being known to be in possession of what was then termed a great luxury.
Waller has a poem addressed to the queen Maria d’Este, wife of James the second in 1683, “On Tea commended by her Majesty,” whereby it seems it was even then a new thing, though Mr. Hanway in his Essay on Tea says that Lord Arlington and Lord Ossory introduced it into England in 1666, and that it was then admired as a new thing. Their ladies introduced it among the women of quality, and its price was then £3 per pound, and continued the same till 1707. In 1715 green tea began to be used, and the practice of drinking tea descended to the middling classes of the people.
In the Tatler (No. 86, Oct. 27, 1709) the author mentions inviting his friends, seemingly as though tea was common, to drink a dish of tea, which they refused, saying they never drank tea in the morning.
The same author observes, that dinner had in his memory, crept by degrees from twelve o’clock to three, and in the Spectator it is said that coffee houses were frequented by shopkeepers from six in the morning, and that the students at law made their appearance in them in their night gowns about eight. A lady who sends her journal to the Spectator represents herself as taking chocolate in bed, and sleeping after it till ten, and drinking her Bohea from that hour till eleven. Her dinner hour was from three to four, and she did not sit up later at a card party than twelve. A citizen out of trade, in the same work, describes himself as rising at eight, dining at two, and going to bed at ten if not kept up at the club he frequented.
The history of Taverns in this country may be traced back to the time of king Henry the fourth, for so ancient is that of the Boar’s Head in East Cheap, London, the rendezvous of prince Henry and his riotous companions. Of little less antiquity is the White Hart without Bishopsgate, which now bears in the front of it, the date of its erection, 1480.