First Charter, 1133.
The Prior obtained from the King a Charter, wherein, after providing for an independent election of a new prior by the monks in the event of Rahere’s death, and after confirming the privileges and possessions of the Priory, it was declared “I grant also my firm peace to all persons coming to and returning from the fair, which is wont to be celebrated in that place at the Feast of St. Bartholomew; and I forbid any of the Royal Servants to implead any of their persons, or without the consent of the Canons, on those three days, to wit the eve of the feast, the feast itself, and the day following, to levy dues upon those going thither. And let all people in my whole kingdom know that I will maintain and defend this Church, even as my crown; and if any one shall presume to contravene this our Royal privilege, or shall offend the prior, the canons, clergy or laity of that place, he, and all who are his, and everything that belongs to him, shall come into the King’s power.”
In addition to the King’s “firm peace,” and the usual privileges, it came to be believed that there were special miracles in store for those who braved the perils of distant travel in making pilgrimage to the Festival and Fair of St. Bartholomew. In Mr. Morley’s book will be found a long enumeration of these. “What wonder (he asks) if to see the miracles worked at the celebration of the Feast of St. Bartholomew, in the first years after the foundation of his Priory in Smithfield, the people came from far and near, and were to be found ‘shouldering each other’ as well as ‘dancing and rejoicing’ in a concourse at the fair”?
1154-86. We have it on the authority of Stow that Henry II. granted to the Priory the privilege of a fair to be kept yearly at Bartholomew tide for three days, to wit the eve, the day, and next morrow; to which the clothiers of all England and drapers of London repaired, and had their booths and standings within the Church Yard of this Priory, closed in with walls and gates, locked every night, and watched for safety of men’s goods and wares. A Court of Piepowder was daily during the fair holden for debts and contracts. But he adds a note in regard to the time of the fair—“that forrens [foreigners] were licensed for three days; the freedmen so long as they would, which was sixe or seven dayes.” It is clear that the venerable historian had mixed and confounded various and distinct events. I do not find other reference to this charter of Henry II. except by Hone, who says this charter gave the mayor and aldermen of the City criminal jurisdiction during the fair. The chief articles of commerce at the fair about this period were cloth, stuffs, leather, pewter, and live cattle.
1292. The first dispute between the City of London and the Priory of St. Bartholomew regarding the fair arose this year. It was on the subject of Tolls. The fair as we have already seen had spread beyond the Prior’s bounds. The Custos of the City—for in 1288 Edward I. upon a quarrel with the City seized its liberties, and Ralph Sandwich was appointed Custos to collect the Tolls for the Sovereign—applied for half the tolls. The Prior claimed the whole on the ground of ancient custom, &c. The King was at Durham, and the matter coming before him on the approach of the fair, made the following order:—
Dominus Rex &c.—The Lord the King hath commanded the Custos and Sheriffs in these words: Edward by the Grace of God, to the Custos and Sheriffs of London, greeting. Whereas the Prior of St. Bartholomew, of Smithfield in the suburbs of London, by the Charters of our progenitors, Kings of England, claimeth to have a certain Fair there every year, during three days viz. on the Eve, the Day, and on the morrow of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, with all Liberties and Free Customs belonging to the Fair; a contention hath arisen between the said Prior and you the said Custos, who sue for us concerning the use of the liberties of the said Fair, and the free Customs belonging to it. And hindrance being made to the said Prior by you the said Custos, as the said Prior asserteth, to wit, concerning a Moiety of the Eve and of the whole morrow aforesaid, concerning this We Will, as well for us as for the aforesaid Prior, that justice be done as it is fit, before our Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer, after Michaelmas day next within a month. We command you that sufficient security be taken of the said Prior for restoring to us on the said day the proceeds of the aforesaid fair, coming from the moiety of the foresaid Eve and from the whole morrow, if the said Prior cannot then show something for himself, why the said proceeds ought not to belong to us. We command you that ye permit the same Prior in the meantime, to receive the foresaid proceeds in form aforesaid; and thereto you may leave this Brief. Witness myself at Durham the 9th day of Aug. in the 20th year of our reign.
While the question was thus pending the disputants grew so warm that the City authorities arrested some of the monks, and confined them in the Tun prison on Cornhill. They were released by command of the King, but thereupon nine citizens forced the Tun and released all the other prisoners, by way of resenting the royal interference. The rioters were imprisoned in their turn, and a fine of twenty thousand marks was imposed upon the City; but the civic authorities proposed a compromise, and, for a further payment of three thousand marks, Edward consented to pardon the offenders, and to restore and confirm the privileges of the City.—Frost, pp. 10-11.
The result of the reference above ordered to the Barons of the Exchequer &c. was unfavourable to the claim of the City, the Charter of the Hospital was again confirmed. The question of the Tolls was not indeed finally disposed of; but as it sleeps for a century or so, we must not now depart from the course of our record—see 1445.
1305. Another and special incident arose at the fair of this year. I will quote the eloquent description of Mr. Morley. On the eve of St. Bartholomew, the first day of the fair in the year 1305, the traders and pleasure-seekers, the friars and the jesters, clothiers, tumblers, walkers upon stilts, hurried across the grass of Smithfield from the side on which the fair was being held, to the Gallows under the Elms, where officers of state and a great concourse of men awaited a most welcome spectacle. The priory was indeed built on the site of the gallows; but in that suburban gathering-place of the people—place of executions, place of tournaments, place of markets, place of daily sport, place of the great annual fair—one gallows-tree was not enough to satisfy a justice that loved vengeance and had slight regard for life. Under the Elms of which already mention has been made (Cow Lane now represents their site)—under the Elms we read in a close roll, so early as the fourth year of Henry III., gallows were built “where they had stood before.” An execution during fair time on that ancient exhibition ground, was entertainment rarely furnished to the public: for the Church forbade, among other work, fulfilment of the sentence of the law on any holiday of festival; and a fair was a Saint’s Holiday. But on this occasion, law was eager to assure the execution of its vengeance. The redoubtable Wallace, hero of the Scottish people, had been taken. The rugged patriot, strong of heart and strong of hand, had been brought to London in his chains the day before the fair was opened, and on the day of the opening of the fair was arraigned and condemned at Westminster as a traitor, and without even a day’s respite, at once sent on to his death. Under the Elms, therefore, in Smithfield, stood all the concourse of Bartholomew fair, when William Wallace was dragged thither in chains at the tails of horses, bruised, bleeding, and polluted with the filth of London. The days had not yet come when that first part of the barbarous sentence on high treason was softened by the placing of a hurdle between the condemned man and the mud and flint over which he was dragged. Trade in the fair was forgotten while the patriot was hanged, but not to death; cut down, yet breathing, and disembowelled, mummers and merchants saw the bowels burnt before the dying hero’s face, then saw the executioner strike off his head, quarter his body, and dispatch from the ground five basket-loads of quivering flesh, destined for London, Berwick, Newcastle, Aberdeen and Perth. Then, all being over, the stilt-walkers strode back across the field, the woman again balanced herself head downwards on the points of swords; there was mirth again round the guitar and tambourine, the clothiers went back into the Churchyard, and the priest perhaps went through a last rehearsal with the man who was to be miraculously healed in church on the succeeding day!—“Memorials of Bartholomew Fair,” pp. 71-2.
1321. In this, the 14th Edward II. there was issued a writ inquiring by what warrant the Priory held its rights over Bartholomew Fair. This writ was part of the machinery of a general inquisition into the rights claimed by subjects, which had in many cases been alienated without license from the crown, and often gave rise to private oppression of the people. The Prior pleaded the Royal Charters of his house and testified upon oath that his predecessors had held such a three-day fair since times beyond the reach of memory. The justification satisfied the King’s Exchequer.
1334. In this, the 7th Edward III. a new Charter of the fair was granted to the Hospital of St. Bartholomew confirming the old rights and reassuring the King’s firm peace to all persons travelling towards, staying in, or returning from the fair; also forbidding any servants of a royal or episcopal court to implead any of their persons “or without the consent of the prior and canons on those three days ... to exact tolls either without the City or within it, whether in the passage of roads or bridges, but let all proceeds that arise according to the usage of fairs belong to the canons of the aforesaid church.” This latter provision clearly had reference to the claims of the City. See 1376.
It was a review of these and similar facts which induced Mr. Morley to remark that in early times, if not from the beginning, there were practically two fairs held in Smithfield—one within and one without the Priory bounds. The outer fair, he adds, “was possibly composed of the mere pleasure givers and pleasure seekers, who attended on the company of worshippers and traders then attracted to the priory, and whose tents were pitched in the open market of Smithfield, outside the gates, not [? but] free from toll to the Church. Within the gates, and in the Priory churchyard, the substantial Fair was held” (pp. 61-2).
1348. In the preceding century license had been given by Edward I. to the brethren of the Hospital of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield to cover with stone and wood the stream running through the midst of the hospital to Holborn Bridge, “on account of the too great stench proceeding from it.” The large influx of persons at the Fair must have made matters worse. In the year 1348 the pestilence broke out in London at the time of the fair, and ended about fair-time in the following year. During the interval between fair and fair, so great had been the mortality that, in addition to the burials in churches and other churchyards, fifty thousand bodies had been buried in the graveyard of the Carthusians, adjoining the fair ground. Mr. Morley may well assume that it must have been the great object of interest and terror to the slender throng of men who hardly dared assemble; and who—missing from the annual crowd so many familiar faces—spoke to each other with a feeble hope of the apparent lifting of the plague. “What mirth was there in that handful of the living camped so near the silent congregation of the dead?” See 1593.
New Charter.—Edward III. under date August 1, 1376, granted to the Prior, &c., the following charter, which has heretofore escaped observation, probably because in the records of the City it had been endorsed as a “Writ to proclaim the Fair of the Prior of Saint Bartholomew in Smethefelde,” whereas it is seen to be a most important grant or confirmation of previous charters. I give a full translation, marking certain passages with italics:—Edward by the grace of God King of England and of France, and Duke of Ireland, to the Mayor and sheriffs of London and Middlesex, Greeting. Whereas among other liberties and quittances granted to our beloved in Christ the Prior and Convent of the church of Saint Bartholomew of Smethefelde, London, by charters of our progenitors, former Kings of England, which we have confirmed, it is granted to the same—That they may have all manner of freedom for ever, and that the church aforesaid shall be as free as any church in the whole of England that is most free, and as free as our demesne chapel, which church also our said progenitors granted to will, maintain and defend in manner like as our very crown; and, moreover, they gave firm peace to those coming to the Fair that is much frequented at the feast of Saint Bartholomew in the said place of Smethefelde, So that in those three days’ space, namely, the eve of the feast, or the day itself, or the day following, from such comers, whether without the City or within, or in passing along the ways or over the bridges, no one shall require any customs, but that all things which arise out of the right of fairs shall be to the said church and the Canons serving God there, and that is any one shall presume in any thing to contravene this Royal privilege, or shall offend the Prior Canons or laymen of that place, he and his men, and all that he has, shall devolve into our Royal right: and also lord Richard, formerly King of England, our progenitor, by his letters ordered the then sheriffs of London and Middlesex, and all their bailiffs, that they should neither vex nor allow to be vexed the foresaid Canons of the church of saint Bartholomew (which is our demesne chapel) concerning their fair which they have at the feast of the same church, nor require from those coming to the Fair of saint Bartholomew for the purpose of selling or buying, whether without the City or within, or also in passing along the ways or over the bridges, customs or services, or anything that may diminish the liberty of the said church of saint Bartholomew—as in the charters, letters and our confirmation aforesaid more fully is contained: and now we have understood that some by sinister covin and conspiracy previously had between them have knavishly designed to hinder merchants and others who wish to come and have been wont to come to the said fair with their merchandise, so that they cannot come thither and do their business therein, as well to the loss of them the Prior and Convent and overthrow and weakening of their right as to the manifest letting and hindrance of our common people: We, duly heeding the fervent devotion and affection which our foresaid progenitors had towards the said church, as by the charters and letters aforesaid more fully doth appear, and willing (as we are bounden) to maintain and defend the said fair, which for so long time hath endured and was granted by our said progenitors to the honour of God in subvention of Holy Church, and all other rights and privileges, lest in our time they perish, have taken into our special protection and defence the said Prior and Canons, and their men and servants, and merchants whomsoever and others wishing to come with their goods and things to the said fair, there tarrying and therefrom returning whither they will; and so we command you to maintain, protect and defend the said Prior and Canons, their men and servants, merchants and others whomsoever coming to the said fair with their goods and things, there tarrying and therefrom returning, and to permit the Prior and Convent to hold their said fair in form aforesaid, and to receive and have freely and without any hindrance, from those coming to the said fair and returning therefrom, the customs and all other the profits which pertain to them in right of the said fair according to the form of the charters, letters and confirmation aforesaid, and as they ought to hold the same fair and to have and receive the customs and other things which pertain to that fair, and as they and their predecessors have until now held that fair and have been wont to have and receive the customs and other things which to that fair pertain. And, concerning any pleas or other things to the said fair for the said three days appertaining, do you in no wise intermeddle, neither requiring any thing for customs and other things to that fair appertaining, nor hindering, molesting, nor in any way aggrieving the Prior and Canons of the said place as to the receiving of the customs and profits aforesaid, nor, as much in you lies, permitting them to be molested or aggrieved. And if any shall presume to diminish the customs and rights of the said fair, then be you in aid to the said Prior and Canons, or their bailiffs of the said fair, when hereupon you shall be requested by them or any one of them, by such ways and methods as shall seem to you the more expedient, to compel and distrain those who would diminish the said customs and rights to yield and pay the said customs and rights to the said Prior and Convent: and this do you in no wise omit. And, that those all and every the premises may come to the knowledge of all, and that no one, of what state or condition soever he be, under grave forfeiture to us, and under the peril incumbent thereon, may presume in any manner to practise any covin or any other acts calculated to disturb in any way that fair or the profit of the fair, or the merchants or others, so that they cannot lawfully, without damage and in peace come to that fair with their merchandise, and do their business there, and return therefrom, do you cause the same to be publicly proclaimed, observed and held within your bailiwick and districts, where it shall seem to you most expedient, as often as and when hereupon by the said Prior and Convent, or any one of them, you shall on our behalf be requested. Witness Ourself at Westminster the first day of August in the fiftieth year of our reign of England, but of our reign of France the thirty-seventh. Faryngton.
¶ This proclamation was made.
Miracle Plays.—This Fair of St. Bartholomew was long the scene of “miracle plays.” The Company of Parish Clerks—an incorporated company or gild who had charge of the records, the burials, and afterwards of the births in London, during a very long period—played at Skinners’ Well (near Smithfield) before Richard II. and his Queen and Court, towards the close of the fourteenth century; and early in the following they played before Henry IV. at the same place, during eight days, “Matter from the Creation of the world.” The early plays at this fair are believed to have been representations of great miracles ascribed to St. Bartholomew. Later came the “mysteries,” and finally the “moralities,” out of which our modern drama has been developed. All these in their turns were presented at this once famous fair.
Slaves.—In this same Fair of Smithfield, as well before as after the period upon which I am now writing, men and women—i.e., slaves and captives—were sold among the articles of merchandise. And on a part of the site over which the fair extended, after the accession of Henry IV., men and women were burnt alive as heretics. The martyr fires were usually kindled on that spot of ground outside the Priory gates, over which the lighter portion of the fair spread—ground occupied by the holiday makers, and the tumblers, jesters, and dancers by whom they were entertained.
Tolls.—1445. At the close of the thirteenth century there had arisen a dispute between the City of London and the Prior regarding the tolls of this Fair, which was then decided in favour of the Priory. When the matter came up for adjudication again does not seem clear. The fair had continued to grow, and its greatest expansion was in the direction of the City. Indeed, at this or a later period, it extended down the West side of Aldersgate nearly as far as St. Martin’s-le-Grand, or to St. Paul’s itself. On the other side the jurisdiction of the City extended only to Smithfield Bars. In 1399 Henry IV. had granted to the Citizens of London the office of gathering tolls in Smithfield. Probably in consequence of this arrangements were come to between the Priory and the City. Certain is it that forty-six years later, or in 1445 (23rd Henry VI.), four persons were appointed by the Court of Aldermen as keepers of Bartholomew Fair and of the Court of Piepowder. In that Court, therefore, the City then became represented as joint lord of the Fair with the Priory, the lordship of the City being founded on its right over the ground beyond the jurisdiction of the Canons. See 1538 and 1593.
Dissolution of Monasteries.—1538. This is an eventful year in the history of the Fair—the Dissolution of the Monastery was declared. The Fair itself indeed remained—it was the Priory which created it that had melted away.
Reviewing the fair as it had existed during the four centuries passed since its origin—but many of the details of which I have necessarily passed over in the preceding outline—we may adopt the picture thus freely drawn by Mr. Morley: Thus we have in the most ancient times of the Fair a church full of worshippers, among whom were the sick and maimed, praying for health about its altar; a graveyard full of traders, and a place of jesting and edification, where women and men caroused in the midst of the throng; where the minstrel and the story-teller and the tumbler gathered knots about them; where the sheriff caused new laws to be published by loud proclamation in the gathering places of the people; where the young men bowled at nine pins, while the clerks and friars peeped at the young maids; where mounted knights and ladies curvetted and ambled, pedlars loudly magnified their wares, the scholars met for public wrangle, oxen lowed, horses neighed, and sheep bleated among their buyers; where great shouts of laughter answered to the Ho! Ho! of the devil on the stage, above which flags were flying, and below which a band of pipers and guitar beaters added music to the din. That stage also—if ever there was presented on it the story of the Creation—was the first wild-beast show in the fair: for one of the dramatic effects connected with this play, as we read in an ancient stage direction, was to represent the creation of beasts by unloosing and sending among the excited crowd as great a variety of strange animals as could be brought together; and to create the birds by sending up a flight of pigeons. Under foot was mud and filth, but the wall that pent the city in shone sunlit among the trees; a fresh breeze came over the surrounding fields and brooks, whispering among the elms that overhung the moor glittering with pools, or from the Fair’s neighbour, the gallows! Shaven heads looked down on the scene from the adjacent windows of the buildings bordering the Priory enclosure; and the poor people whom the friars cherished in their hospital, made holiday among the rest. The curfew bell of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the religious house to which William the Conqueror had given with its charter the adjacent moorland, and within whose walls there was a sanctuary for loose people, stilled the hum of the crowd at nightfall, and the Fair lay dark under the starlight.
Change produces change; and so other events followed at this period. For instance, the disputations of the scholars in the Mulberry Garden at the time of the Fair ceased after the suppression of the Monastery. John Stow had witnessed these when a lad, and he furnishes the following account of the same, and of some events preceding: “As for the meeting of the schoolmasters on Festival Days at Festival Churches, and the disputing of the scholars logically, &c., whereof I have before spoken, the same was long since discontinued; but the arguing of the schoolboys about the principles of grammar hath been continued even till our time; for I myself, in my youth, have yearly seen, on the eve of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers Grammar schools repair unto the Churchyard of St. Bartholomew ... where upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer taking the place did like as the first. And in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not but it made good schoolmasters and also good scholars diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these exercises amongst others, the masters and scholars of the free schools of St. Paul’s in London, of St. Peter’s at Westminster, of Thomas Acon’s Hospital, and of St. Anthonie’s Hospital; whereof the last named commonly presented the best scholars and had the prize in those days. This priory of St. Bartholomew being surrendered to Henry the Eighth, those disputations of scholars in that place surceased; and was again, only for a year or twain, revived in the Cloister of Christ’s Hospital, where the best scholars, then still of St. Anthonie’s school, howsoever the same be now fallen both in number and estimation, were rewarded with bows and arrows of silver, given to them by Sir Martin Bower, goldsmith. Nevertheless however, the encouragement failed—the scholars of St. Paul’s meeting with those of St. Anthonie’s would call them Anthonie’s Pigs, and they again would call the others Pigeons of Paul’s because many pigeons were bred in St. Paul’s Church, and St. Anthonie was always figured with a pig following him; and mindful of the former usage, did for a long season disorderly provoke one another in the open street with ‘Salve tu quoque, placet mecum disputare?’—‘Placet.’ And so proceeding from this to questions in grammar, they usually fell from words to blows with their satchels full of books, many times in great heaps, that they troubled the streets and passengers; so that finally they were restrained with the decay of St. Anthonie’s school.”
It was during this reign of Henry VIII. that Grotwell (or Cartwell), himself a common hangman—for there were then many of this occupation, and plenty of employment—was hanged with two others, for robbing a booth at the Fair. They were executed in the wrestling place at Clerkenwell.
I may resume the historical narration. When the King had taken the estates of the greater monasteries, they were put under the management of a Royal Commission, with Sir Richard Rich—under the style of Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations—at its head. The Prior’s house became Lord Rich’s town mansion; and with this mansion in Great St. Bartholomew there had been assigned to him and his for ever, the Close of the said late monastery or priory called Great St. Bartholomew Close, and all the limits and precincts of the said Close; also all those closes, edifices, called the fermery, the dorter, the frater, the cloisters, the gallery, the hall, the kitchen, the buttery, the pantry, the old kitchen, the woodhouse, the garner, and the Prior’s stable, of the said late monastery and priory belonging; and also all that water and the aqueduct and water-course coming from the conduit-head of St. Bartholomew in the manor of Canonbury.
By the same Letters Patent the King farther granted to Sir Richard Rich, knight, his heirs and assigns, “all that Our Fair and Markets, commonly named and called Bartholomew Fair, holden and to be holden every year within the aforesaid Close called Great St. Bartholomew Close, and in West Smithfield aforesaid to continue yearly for three days,” &c. And also all the stallage, piccage, toll, and customs of the same Fair and Markets; and also all our Courts of Piepowders within the same; also the scrutiny of weights and measures and things exposed to sale, and the Assize of bread, wine, and ale, and other victuals. This grant included the tolls of the Cloth Fair, but not, of course, the rights of the City to the tolls for the fair outside St. Bartholomew’s enclosure.
Growth of London.—1590. During the reign of Elizabeth various attempts had been made to stop the growth of London. Proclamations had been issued forbidding under heavy displeasure the building of new houses. But the Elizabethan era was an important one in the development of commerce, as it had been in the fostering of learning; and with the development of commerce there came a greater influx of strangers into the city. Thus it came about that more houses in the city were imperative. It was found that the lines of trade marked at Bartholomew Fair by the standings of the clothiers and others, would yield more money as streets of houses than as streets of booths, and so, before the close of the century, as Stow tells us, “notwithstanding all proclamations of the prince, and also the act of parliament, in place of booths within the churchyard (only let out in the fair time and closed up all the year after) be many large houses built, and the north wall towards Long Lane taken down, and a number of tenements are there erected for such as will give great rents.” This last line of trading-houses was substituted for the profitless dead wall. Parallel with it, through the ground vacant of building north of the church, which that wall had enclosed, parallel also with one of the church walls, a street of considerable houses occupied the site and kept the name of Cloth Fair.
Plague.—1593 (53rd of Elizabeth). The plague being now prevailing in the city, the queen issued a proclamation on 6th August, about three weeks before the usual time of the fair, in substance as follows:—Whereas there was a general resort of all kinds of people out of every part of the realm to the said fair; but that (on this occasion) in the usual place of Smithfield there should be no manner of market for any wares kept, nor any stalls or booths for any manner of merchandise, or for victuals, suffered to be set up; but that the open space of the ground called Smithfield, be only occupied with the sale of horses and cattle, and of stall wares, as butter, cheese, and such like in gross, and not by retail, the same to continue for the space of two days only.
And for the vent of woollen cloths, kerseys, and linen cloth, to be all sold in gross and not by retail; the same should be brought within the close-yard of St. Bartholomew (afterwards known as the Cloth Fair) where shops were there continued (i.e. not deserted by reason of the plague) and have gates to shut the same place in the nights, and then such to be offered to sale, and to be bought in gross and not by retail; the same market to continue but three days—that is to say Even, the Day of St. Bartholomew and the Morrow after.
And that the sale and vent of leather be kept in the outside of the ring of Smithfield, as had been accustomed, without erecting of any shops or booths for the same, or for any victualler or other occupier of any wares whatsoever.
And that notice hereof be given to such of H. M.’s good subjects as for lack of knowledge of this H. M.’s princely ordonnance might resort to London to sell or buy small wares by retail, and there receive infection, and carry the same into their countries, H. M. commanded that the Lord Mayor of London should cause this proclamation to be presently published in all the usual places in the City, in the time of two or three market days, and to be also Proclaimed by the Sheriffs of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, and Essex, in some places of those Counties near to the said City, whereby none might resort to the City at this Feast of St. Bartholomew, by pretence of any Fair, but such as should have cause to sell or buy the commodities in gross.
Imprisonment, without bail, during the Queen’s pleasure, or further punishment, was to be the penalty for the infraction of this ordinance. Mr. Morley, reviewing this proclamation, says the inference to be drawn from it was that the fair, as a place of wholesale commerce, was not to be suppressed without more injury to trade than the fear of plague would force the Queen’s advisers to inflict. But this consideration must be qualified by the fact that the chief risk came from the throng of pedlers, hawkers, stall-keepers, showmen, and holiday-makers from the country round about; and that the soberer resort of merchants to the fair, while it was certainly in one respect a greater good, was in the other respect also a lesser evil. Also, there was a wealthy nobleman at court unwilling to part with a year’s tolls from the Cloth Fair and the Close, and able to urge actively, from motives of self-interest, considerations that were, at the same time, not wanting in justice.
1596. A formal agreement was made between Lord Rich and the Corporation of London, establishing a composition of the tolls of the fair; and, as to jurisdiction, placing both parties nearly in the relative position occupied by the Priory and the Corporation in 1445.
A Foreigner’s View of the Fair.—1598. Paul Hentzner, a German tutor, travelled this year through Germany, France, Italy, and England, and kept an “Itinerarum,” of which many editions have been published. I quote the following description of Bartholomew Fair from the Aungervyle Society’s translation (1881):—“It is worthy of observation that every year upon St. Bartholomew’s Day, when a fair is held, it is usual for the Mayor, attended by the twelve principal Aldermen, to walk in a neighbouring field dressed in his Scarlet Gown, and about his neck a Golden Chain, to which is hung a Golden Fleece, and besides that particular ornament, which distinguished the most noble Order of the Garter ... himself and they on horseback; upon their arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, where a tent is pitched, the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a time; the conquerors receive rewards from the magistrates. After this is over, a parcel of live rabbits are turned loose among the crowd, which are pursued by a number of boys who endeavour to catch them, with all the noise they can make. While we were at this show, one of our company, Tobias Salander, Doctor of Physic, had his pocket picked of his purse, with nine crowns du soleil, which without doubt was so cleverly taken from him by an Englishman who always kept close to him, that the Doctor did not the least perceive it.”