On the other hand every encouragement was offered to traders to attend the fairs. "Any citizen of London," says Jacob, "may carry his goods or merchandise to any fair or market at his pleasure." Mounted guards were, in some instances, provided on the main routes leading to the fair, in order to protect the traders from attack by robbers. Tolls were to be paid to the lord of the manor or other owner of the land on which a fair was held under a special grant; but if the tolls charged were "outrageous and excessive" (to quote again from Jacob), the grant of the right to levy toll became void, and the fair was thenceforth a "free" one. It was further laid down that persons going to a fair should be "privileged from being molested or arrested in it for any other debt or contract than what was contracted in the same, or at least, was promised to be paid there."
An especially curious feature of these old fairs was the so-called "Court of Pie Powder"—this being the accepted English rendering, in those days, of "pied poudré"—or "The Court of Dusty Feet." The court was one of summary jurisdiction, at which questions affecting pedlars or other (presumably) dusty-footed traders and their patrons, or matters relating to "the redress of disorders," could be decided by a properly constituted authority during the period of the holding of the fair in which such questions or matters arose.
Jacob says of this old institution:—
"It is a court of record incident to every Fair; and to be held only during the time that the Fair is kept. As to the jurisdiction, the cause of action for contract, slander, &c., must arise in the fair or market, and not before at any former fair, nor after the fair; it is to be for some matter concerning the same fair or market; and must be done, complained of, heard and determined the same day. Also the plaintiff must make oath that the contract, &c., was within the jurisdiction and time of the fair.... The steward before whom the court is held, is the judge, and the trial is by merchants and traders in the fair."
Such courts were as ancient as the fairs themselves, and they ensured a speedy administration of justice in accordance with what was recognised as merchants' law long before any common law was established. Supposed to have been introduced by the Romans, the "court of pie powder" was, according to Jacob, known by them under the name of "curia pedis pulverisati," while the Saxons called it the "ceapunggemot," or "the court of merchandise or handling matters of buying and selling." It was, of course, the Normans who introduced the later term of "pied poudré," which the English converted into "pie powder."
One of the most ancient, and certainly the most important, of all the English fairs was the Sturbridge fair, at Cambridge, so called from a little river known as the Stere, or the Sture, which flowed into the Cam.[[4]]
Early records of this particular fair, according to Cornelius Walford, in "Fairs Past and Present," are to be found in a grant by King John in or about the year 1211. The fair is believed to have been originally founded by the Romans; but it may have acquired greater importance at the date of this particular charter by reason of what Cunningham, in his "Growth of English Industry and Commerce in the Early and Middle Ages," describes as the "extraordinary increase" of commerce in every part of the Mediterranean in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, coupled with the "improvements in navigation and in mercantile practice" which "went hand in hand with this development. Englishmen," he further tells us, "had but little direct part in all this maritime activity. Their time was not come; but the Italian merchants who bought English wool, or visited English fairs, brought them within range of the rapid progress that was taking place in South Europe."
From the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century the export of wool, leather, lead, tin and other English commodities was in the hands almost exclusively of foreign merchants, who came here both to purchase these raw materials and to dispose of the products of their own or other countries; and Sturbridge Fair, as it happened, formed a convenient trading centre alike for foreign and for English traders, the question of inland communication being, in fact, once more the dominating factor in the situation.
Foreign goods destined for the fair were mostly brought, first, to the port of Lynn, and there transferred to barges in which they were taken along the Ouse to the Cam, and so on to the fair ground which, on one side, was bordered by the latter stream. Heavy goods sent by water from London and the southern counties, or coming by sea from the northern ports, reached the fair by the same route. Great quantities of hops brought to the fair from the south-eastern or midland counties by land or water were, in turn, despatched via the Cam, the Ouse and the port of Lynn to Hull, Newcastle, and elsewhere for consignment to places to be reached by the Humber, the Tyne, etc. Where water transport was not available the services of packhorses were brought into requisition until the time came when the roads had been sufficiently improved to allow of the use of waggons.
In his "Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain" Defoe gives a graphic account of Sturbridge Fair as he saw it in 1723. By that date it had become, in his opinion, "not only the greatest in the whole Nation, but in the World." It covered an area of about half a square mile, had shops placed in rows like streets, with an open square known as the Duddery, and comprised "all Trades that can be named in London, with Coffee-houses, Taverns, and Eating-houses innumerable, and all in Tents and Booths." He speaks of £100,000 worth of woollen manufactures being sold in less than a week, and of—