"And moreover at this Fair there is at all times to be seen Juglings, Cheats, Games, Plays, Fools, Apes, Knaves, and Rogues, and that of every kind.
"Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, Thefts, Murders, Adulteries, False Swearings, and that of a blood-red colour.
"And as, in other Fairs of less moment, there are the several Rows and Streets, under their proper Names, here such and such Wares are vended, so here likewise you have the proper Places, Rows, and Streets (namely Countries and Kingdoms) where the Wares of this Fair are soonest to be found. Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold. But, as in other Fairs some one Commodity is the Chief of all the Fair, so the Wares of Rome and her Merchandize is greatly promoted in this Fair."
We find also reference to the standing Court of summary jurisdiction under "the Great One of the Fair," with "the trusty Friends" who formed his police, that took cognisance of the "Hubbub and great Stir in the Fair" caused by the demeanour of the pilgrims.
As an instance of how wide a range the commodities sold at this fair covered, we may mention that Sir Isaac Newton there bought his famous prisms—three of them for £3. They were probably of French or Italian make; no glass of this character was as yet manufactured in England.
CHAPTER VIII
Roads from Cambridge.—Cambs and Isle of Ely, Girvii, East Angles, Mercians, Formation of County.—Newmarket Road.—Quy.—Fleam Dyke.—Devil's Dyke.—Icknield Way.—Iceni, Ostorius, Boadicea.—Newmarket Heath, First Racing.—Exning, Anna.—Snailwell.—Fordham.—Soham, St. Felix.—Stuntney.—Wicken.—Chippenham.—Isleham, Lectern.—Eastern Heights.—Chevely, Cambridge Corporation.—Kirtling.—Wood Ditton.—Stetchworth.—Borough Green.—Bottisham.—Swaffham Bulbeck.—The Lodes.—Swaffham Prior.—Reach, Peat, Submerged Forest.—Burwell, Church, Clunch, Brass, Castle, Geoffry de Magnaville.
At the Lepers' Chapel we are clear of Cambridge and well on the road to Newmarket, probably the most trafficked of all the great roads which radiate from Cambridge. Of these there are seven; this Newmarket Road going to the north-east, the Hills road to the south-east, the Trumpington Road to the south, the Barton Road to the south-west, the Madingley Road to the west, the Huntingdon Road to the north-west, and, finally, the Ely Road to the north. This last takes us into the Isle of Ely; the other six serve the county of Cambridge, more strictly so-called, i.e., the southern half of the Cambridgeshire of our maps, not so long ago quite separate, politically, from the northern half, and even now not wholly united for administrative purposes.
The Isle, which contains the whole of the fenland forming this northern half of Cambridgeshire, is far older as a political entity than the southern part of the county. Its existence dates back to the far-off days of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the poor remnants of the British population in East Anglia, once the proud tribe of "the great Iceni," fled for refuge into the "dismal swamp" of the Fens. Here they held out for centuries, and formed themselves into a new tribe, the Girvii (as our earliest Latin chronicler transliterates the Welsh name Gyrwy, signifying "brave men," by which they called themselves). This Girvian principality has ever since held together. It passed as a whole into the hands of St. Etheldreda, by her marriage (in 652 A.D.) with the last Girvian Prince, Tonbert, and from her to her successors the Abbots and Bishops of Ely, whose jurisdiction survived until the nineteenth century.