Many fairs were held at different times in Southwark, Westminster, and other places in the neighbourhood of London. How important the great fairs of the Middle Ages were may be seen in one instance among others by the fact that the citizens of London resorted in such numbers to St. Botolph’s Fair, annually held at Boston, county Lincoln, on St. Botolph’s Day (17th June), that all business in the Court of Husting ceased, and the Court was closed for a week.[294]
In the fourth book of the Liber Albus there is a list of letters and other documents relating to markets and fairs, several of which relate to St. Botolph’s Fair.[295]
In Saxon times buying and selling could only be lawfully carried out before the reeve of Folkmote, a practice which necessitated a gathering in towns at fixed times, from which custom grew up the practice of each town having a market day. As a rule this was on a Sunday, and the market-place was often situated in the churchyard, close beneath the sheltering walls of the parish church.
By the Statute Wynton (13 Edw. I.) fairs and markets were forbidden to be held in churchyards; and the Statute 27 Henry VI., cap. 5, was the first enactment intended to enforce a due observance of Sunday. To avoid the scandal of holding fairs and markets on Sundays and upon high feast days it was decreed that ‘Fairs and markets shall not be holden on Sundays or on festivals,’ with the exception of four Sundays in harvest. There is no public right of holding fairs or markets, and the privilege emanates from the prerogative of the Crown.
From the earliest times the streets of London were occupied by the various trades who obtained the privilege of using them as market-places. The market of West Cheap or Cheapside was the chief of these public places, but almost all the trades had their appointed stations in the different streets, and in many cases the trades were not allowed to sell their wares in other places than those assigned to them. In the time of Edward I. it was ordered ‘that all manner of victuals that are sold by persons in Chepe, upon Cornhulle, and elsewhere in the city, such as bread, cheese, poultry, fruit, hides, and skins, onions and garlic, and all other small victuals, for sale as well by denizens as by strangers, shall stand midway between the kennels of the streets as to be a nuisance to no one, under pain of forfeiture of the article.’[296]
‘The pavement in Chepe’ was a recognised market-place for corn, probably situated near the Church of St. Michael le Quern, at the west end of Cheapside. Stocks Market, which stood on the site of the present Mansion House, was founded in 1283, and the rents were appropriated to the maintenance of London Bridge. In 1324 the wardens of the bridge made complaint that certain fishmongers and butchers had of late abandoned the market-house, had erected sheds in the King’s highway and other adjoining places, and sold their flesh and fish there, ‘whereby the rents aforesaid, which formed the greater part of the maintenance of the said bridge, had become immensely reduced to the great peril and damage of the bridge and of the city, and of all passing over such bridge.’
Staples were markets where only certain goods called staple goods were allowed to be sold. The Company of Merchants of the Staple had a monopoly of exporting the staple commodities of England, and certain staple towns (which were constantly changed) were appointed as centres of the trade. The chief export was wool, ‘the sovereign treasure’ of England, wherewith she was said to keep the whole world warm. In 1328, and again in 1334, all staples were abolished and trade was free according to the great charter. Free trade did not last long, and the staple was fixed at Bruges in 1344.