You may believe me when I tell you true.”
Set to the tune of “Digby’s Farewell.” Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clarke. Containing twelve stanzas of eight lines.
1656. During the Commonwealth several attempts were made by the lord mayors to put some check on the freedom of this fair.[8] One of them, Sir John Deltrich, was knighted by Cromwell soon after the fair-time (viz. 5th Sept.) in 1656; and it has been rightly assumed that he was the mayor who pressed hard against those puppet showmen and others who had commenced the business of the fair, as he conceived, twelve hours too soon, and were already at work when he arrived to proclaim the opening. This event appears to have led to a burlesque opening by a company of tailors who met at the “Hand and Shears” already noticed on the night before the official opening, elected a chairman, and as the clock struck twelve, went out into the Cloth Fair, each with a pair of shears in his hand. The chairman then proclaimed the fair to the expectant mob; and then all formed a procession to proceed in tumultuous array to announce the fair to the sleepers in Smithfield, by the ringing of bells and other discordant manifestations. The following is the form of proclamation used, and contains nothing objectionable.
An unauthorised Proclamation.—O yez! O yez! O yez! All manner of persons may take notice that in the Close of St. Bartholomew the Great and West Smithfield, London, and the streets, lanes and places adjoining, is now to be held a Fair for this day and the two days following, to which all people may freely resort and buy and sell according to the Liberties and Privileges of the said Fair, and may depart without disturbance, paying their duties. And all persons are strictly charged and commanded in His Majesty’s name, to help the peace, and to do nothing in the disturbance of the said Fair, as they will answer the contrary at their peril; and that there be no manner of arrest or arrests but by such officers as are appointed. And if any person be aggrieved, let them repair to the Court of Pie-Powder, where they will have speedy relief according to Justice and Equity. God save the King.
This irregular proclamation seems to have been accepted as a legal act by the Lord Kensington who had become owner of one-half of the tolls of the fair, and it continued down to 1839. It was but a repetition of the double jurisdiction claimed in Sturbridge Fair.
There is in the library of the British Museum a doggrel ballad, printed as a broad-sheet, called “The Dagonizing of Bartholomew Fair,” which describes, with coarse humour—the grossness of which may be attributed in part to the mingled resentment and contempt which underlies it—the measures taken by the civil authorities for the removal from the fair of the showmen who had pitched there in spite of the determination of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen to suppress with the utmost rigour everything which could move to laughter or minister to wonder. Among these are mentioned a fire-eating conjuror, a “Jack Pudding,” and “wonders made of wax,” being the earliest notice of a waxwork exhibition which I have been able to discover.—Frost’s Old Showman, &c., p. 31.
In “A Caveat for Cut-purses,” a ballad of the time of Charles I., there is the following:—
“The Players do tell you, in Bartholomew Faire,
What secret consumptions and rascals you are;
For one of their Actors, it seems, had the fate