“If a crier finds people drinking in a tavern, he may ask what they pay for the wine they drink; and he may go out and cry the wine at the prices they pay, whether the tavern-keeper wishes it or not, provided always that there be no other crier employed for that tavern.
“If a tavern-keeper sells wine in Paris and employs no crier, and closes his door against the criers, the crier may proclaim that tavern-keeper’s wine at the same price as the king’s wine (the current price), that is to say, if it be a good wine year, at seven denarii, and if it be a bad wine year, at twelve denarii.
“Each crier to receive daily from the tavern for which he cries at least four denarii, and he is bound on his oath not to claim more.
“The crier shall go about crying twice a day, except in Lent, on Sundays and Fridays, the eight days of Christmas, and the Vigils, when they shall only cry once. On the Friday of the Adoration of the Cross they shall cry not at all. Neither are they to cry on the day on which the king, the queen, or any of the children of the royal family happens to die.”
This crying of wines is frequently alluded to in those French ballads of street-criers known as “Les crieries de Paris.” One of them has—
Si crie l’on en plusors leus
Li bon vin fort a trente deux,
A seize, a douze, a six, a huict.[16]
And another—
D’autres cris on faict plusieurs,
Qui long seroient à reciter,
L’on crie vin nouveau et vieu,
Duquel on donne à tatter.[17]
Early in the Middle Ages the public crier was still called Præco, as among the Romans; and an edict of the town of Tournay, dated 1368, describes him as “the sergeant of the rod (sergent à verge), who makes publications (crie les bans), and cries whatever else there is to be made known to the town.” The Assizes of Jerusalem, which contained the code of civil laws of the whole of civilised Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which take us back to the most ancient forms of our own civil institutions, make mention in the following manner of the public crier: “Whosoever desires to sell anything by auction, must have it proclaimed by the crier, who is appointed by the lord viscount; and nobody else has a right to make any publication by crying. If anybody causes any such auction to be proclaimed by any other than the public crier, then the lord has a right by assize and custom to claim the property so cried as his own, and the crier shall be at the mercy of the lord. And whoever causes anything to be cried by the appointed public crier in any other way than it ought to be cried, and in any other way than is done by the lord or his representative, the lord may claim the property as his own, and the crier who thus cries it shall be amenable for falsehood, and is at the mercy of the lord, who may take from him all he possesses. But if he [the lord] does not do that, then he shall not suffer any other punishment; and if he be charged, he must be believed on his oath.”
From these very stringent and protective regulations it appears, then, that at this early period the public criers, or præcones, appointed by the lord, had the exclusive right of proclaiming all sales by auction, not only voluntary, but also judicial, of movables, as well as of fixtures; of “personal,” as well as of “real” property.