September 19.
St. Januarius, Bp. of Benevento, A. D. 305. St. Theodore, Abp. of Canterbury, A. D. 690. Sts. Peleus, Pa-Termuthes, and Companions. St. Lucy A. D. 1090. St. Eustochius, Bp. A. D. 461. St. Sequanus, or Seine, Abbot, A. D. 580.
STOURBRIDGE FAIR
This place, near Cambridge, is also called Sturbridge, Sturbitch, and Stirbitch. A Cambridge newspaper speaks of Stirbitch fair being proclaimed on the 19th of September, 1825, for a fortnight, and of Stirbitch horse-fair commencing on the 26th of the month. The corruption of this proper name, stamps the persons who use it in its vulgar acceptation as being ignorant as the ignorant; the better instructed should cease from shamefully acquiescing in the long continued disturbance of this appellation.
Stephen Batman, in his “Doome warning,” published in 1582, relates that “Fishers toke a disfigured divell, in a certain stoure, (which is a mighty gathering togither of waters, from some narrow lake of the sea,) a horrible monster with a goats heade, and eyes shyning lyke fyre, whereuppon they were all afrayde and ranne awaye; and that ghoste plunged himselfe under the ise, and running uppe and downe in the stowre made a terrible noyse and sound.” We get in Stirbitch a most “disfigured divell” from Stourbridge. The good people derive their “good name” from their river.
Stourbridge fair originated in a grant from king John to the hospital of lepers at that place. By a charter in the 30th year of Henry VIII., the fair was granted to the magistrates and corporation of Cambridge. The vicechancellor of the university has the same power in it that he has in the town of Cambridge.
By an order of privy council of the 3rd of October, 1547, the mayor and under-sheriff of the county were required, not only to acknowledge before the vicechancellor, heads of colleges and proctors, that they had interfered with the privileges of the university in Stourbridge fair, but also, “that the mayor, in the common hall, shall openly, among his brethren, acknowledge his wilfull proceeding.” The breach consisted in John Fletcher, the mayor, having refused to receive into the tolbooth certain persons of “naughty and corrupt behaviour,” who were “prisoners, taken by the proctors of the university, in the last Sturbridge fair;” wherefore he was called before the lords and others of the council, and his fault therein “so plainly and justly opened” that he could not deny it, but did “sincerely and willingly confess his said fault.”[327]