Given under our signet at our palace of Westminster, the three and twentieth day of July, in the second year of our reign of England France and Ireland and of Scotland the seven and thirtieth.
1606. In the records of the Skinners Company there is an item under this date “To the wardens for their allowance in riding to Stourbridge Fair £3: 6: 8; and 13s. 4d. to me the Recter Warden for my pains.” But very soon after this period there are signs of a falling-off in the importance of the fair in this particular: In 1616 it is the accountant who receives “in allowance towards his charges in riding to Stourbridge Fair £6.” The wardens had ceased to attend personally.
1612. In the “Letters of Archbishop Williams” (1866) is one dated from the Proctors’ booth in the fair this year.
1613. In Dr. Nathan Drake’s “Shakespeare and his Times” it is recounted that at this date the fair had acquired so great a celebrity that Hackney coaches attended it from London. Subsequently not less than sixty of those coaches plied the fair (see 1688, &c.). He adds that vast quantities of butter and cheese found there a ready market; that it stocked the people in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex with clothes and all other necessaries; and that the shopkeepers supplied themselves from hence with the commodities wherein they dealt.
1615. On the 22nd June the Corporation ordered that Mr. French the mayor should have an irrevokable power of attorney under the Town seal to prosecute with effect all the suits already begun against those who kept any fair or market to the prejudice of the town, and to commence and prosecute suits against all who had done or should do the like; and it was ordered that all charges should be paid by the treasurers on demand.
1620. On 17th Sept., there was held a session of Goal Delivery in Sturbridge Fair, in the place where the courts there were usually kept (“Annals of Camb.” iii. p. 136). No explanation of the circumstance is given.
1622. The suit concerning the right to erect booths in the yard of Sturbridge Chapel which had been pending for some time was this year terminated. The Corporation obtained a grant of the Chapel from the Queen.
1625. In consequence of the Plague again being prevalent in the kingdom Charles I. by Royal Proclamation forbids the holding of this, as also Bartholomew’s Fair, by reason of the usual “extraordinary resort out of all parts of the kingdom” of persons to attend this fair, which would if held lead to the common danger. This proclamation is given in extenso in our chapter on “Legislation.”
1630. The plague existing in Cambridge the holding of this, and also Bartholomew and Southwark Fairs, was prohibited by Royal Proclamation.