Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

t is difficult at first to believe it possible that the internal trade of mediæval England was carried on chiefly at great annual fairs for the wholesale business, at weekly markets for the chief towns, and by means of itinerant traders, of whom the modern pedlar is the degenerate representative, for the length and breadth of the country. In order to understand the possibility, we must recall to our minds how small comparatively was the population of the country. It was about two millions at the Norman Conquest, it had hardly increased to four millions by the end of the fifteenth century, it was only five millions in the time of William III. Nearly every one of our towns and villages then existed; but the London, and Bristol, and Norwich, and York of the fourteenth century, though they were relatively important places in the nation, were not one-tenth of the size of the towns into which they have grown. Manchester, and Leeds, and Liverpool, and a score of other towns, existed then, but they were mere villages; and the country population was thinly scattered over a half-reclaimed, unenclosed, pastoral country.

To begin with the fairs. The king exercised the sole power of granting the right to hold a fair. It was sought by corporations, monasteries, and manorial lords, in order that they might profit, first by the letting of ground to the traders who came to dispose of their wares, next by the tolls which were levied on all merchandise brought for sale, and on the sales themselves; and then indirectly by the convenience of getting a near market for the produce the neighbourhood had to sell, and for the goods it desired to buy.

The annexed woodcut, from the MS. Add. 24,189, represents passengers paying toll on landing at a foreign port, and perhaps belongs in strictness to an earlier part of our subject. The reader will notice the picturesque custom-house officers, the landing-places, and the indications of town architecture. The next illustration, from painted glass at Tournay (from La Croix and Seré’s “Moyen Age et la Renaissance”) shows a group of people crossing the bridge into a town, and the collector levying the toll. The oxen and pigs, the country-wife on horseback, with a lamb laid over the front of her saddle, represent the country-people and their farm-produce; the pack-horse and mule on the left, with their flat-capped attendant, are an interesting illustration of the itinerant trader bringing in his goods. The toll-collector seems to be, from his dress and bearing, a rather dignified official, and the countryman recognises it by touching his hat to him. The river and its wharves, and the boats moored alongside, and the indication of the town gates and houses, make up a very interesting sketch of mediæval life.

Passengers paying Toll.

Traders entering a Town.

There were certain great fairs to which traders resorted from all parts of the country. The great fair at Nijni Novgorod, and in a lesser degree the fair of Leipsic, remain to help us to realise such gatherings as Bartholomew Fair used to be. Even now the great horse-fair at Horncastle, and the stock-fair at Barnet, may help us to understand how it answered the purpose of buyers and sellers to meet annually at one general rendezvous. The gathering into one centre of the whole stock on sale and the whole demand for it, was not only in other ways a convenience to buyers and sellers, but especially it regulated the general prices current of all vendibles, and checked the capricious variations which a fluctuating local supply and demand would have created in the then condition of the country and of commerce. The king sometimes, by capricious exercises of his authority in the subject of fairs, seriously interfered with the interests of those who frequented them—e.g. by granting license to hold a new fair which interfered with one already established; by licensing a temporary fair, and forbidding trade to be carried on elsewhere during its continuance. Thus in 1245 A.D. Henry II. proclaimed a fair at Westminster to be held for fifteen days, and required all the London traders to shut up their shops and bring their goods to the fair. It happened that the season was wet; few consequently came to the fair, and the traders’ goods were injured by the rain which penetrated into their temporary tents and stalls. He repeated the attempt to benefit Westminster four years afterwards, with a similar result.

Of course when great crowds were gathered together for days in succession, and money was circulating abundantly, there would be others who would seek a profitable market besides the great dealers in woolfels and foreign produce. The sellers of ribbands and cakes would be there, purveyors of food and drink for the hungry and thirsty multitude, caterers for the amusement of the people, minstrels and jugglers, exhibitors of morality-plays and morrice-dancers, and still less reputable people. And so, besides the men who came for serious business, there would be a mob of pleasure-seekers also. The crowd of people of all ranks and classes from every part of the country, with the consequent variety of costume in material, fashion, and colour—the knight’s helm and coat of mail, or embroidered jupon and plumed bonnet, the lady’s furred gown and jewels, the merchant’s sober suit of cloth, the minstrel’s gay costume and the jester’s motley, the monk’s robe and cowl, and the peasant’s smockfrock, continually in motion up and down the streets of the temporary canvas town, the music of the minstrels, the cries of the traders, the loud talk and laughter of the crowd—must have made up a picturesque scene, full of animation.