The word "Fair" calls up to our minds all sorts of wonderful sights and sounds—the stalls with their wonderful "fairings" and "goodies"; the shows and the shooting-galleries; the "flying horses", the "conjurors", the performing dogs, and Punch and Judy; the wonderful caravans and coco-nuts; the musical instruments of all sorts, from the mouth-organ and "squeaker" to the steam-organ of the roundabout.

Many such fairs are still held in every county and they connect the present day very closely with the life of bygone days. It is "all the fun of the fair" which draws people to them mostly nowadays, but in some of them there is still important business done; people are attracted to them for trade as well as for pleasure.

Some of these fairs are held in big towns, such as Lincoln and Carlisle. At Barnet a great horse fair is held every year in September. But some big fairs are held away from any large town, such as the big sheep fair at Weyhill, in Hampshire. At Stourbridge, in Cambridgeshire, a fair is still held; it is quite an ordinary one now, but in the Middle Ages it was one of the most important fairs, not only in England, but in Europe—a great gathering, where East and West met to do business with each other.

In some places the business part of the fair has quite died out, and a few stalls, a roundabout, a shooting-gallery, and swings are all that can be seen on a fair-day.

The word "fair" comes from an old word which means a "feast" or festival. There are many villages which still have their annual village feast, more important to the village than Christmas or a "Bank Holiday". Houses are turned out and cleaned from top to bottom; everything must be made fit to be seen "for the feast". It is a great meeting-time for families, and the boys and girls who have gone away to work in some big town try to get back for a few hours to their native village, to "the old house at home".

In the beginning the village feast was connected with the parish church—it was the festival of the saint after whom the church was named. That day was a holiday, and all the people went to church as a matter of course. The church was the gathering-place, and, in the porch and the churchyard, and on the village green, friends, neighbours, and relatives met and had a time of rejoicing.

So many people coming together attracted pedlars and hawkers, who spread out their goods on the green, in the churchyard, and in the church porch itself. People who met but seldom used the chance of doing a little business with each other. Little by little, then, the "feast" became a "fair", and in many cases was a very important business and trading meeting.

Now it did not suit the ideas of people in those days that outsiders should come into their village and buy and sell as they chose. You know how the boys living in one street even nowadays object to the boys from another street coming to play in their street—"You go and play in your own street". So in very early times the lord of the manor began to regulate these things. Outsiders who brought their goods for sale had to pay a "due" or "toll" to the lord of the manor to be allowed to trade; and the right of receiving tolls for fairs became one of an overlord's privileges.

The people in the towns, who were more interested in trade than the people in the villages, saw how very important and profitable a fair was—that it was something "with money in it"—and the towns were very anxious to get the right to hold one or more annual fairs. But the overlord, the king, had a voice in the matter, because each stall set up, and each bale of goods, brought in "by right" an income.

The king had the right to grant, almost to whom he pleased, the privilege of holding a fair; and the privilege was much sought after. Towns, as we saw in a former chapter, got charters from the king, which very often gave to them this right. But it was quite a common thing for the king to make a grant of an annual fair to a religious house which he wanted to benefit without much cost to himself, and the profits of the fair went to support the house. The king's nobles did the same kind of thing in their own domains.

All the shops in the place where the fair was held had to be shut while the fair was on, and nothing could be bought or sold except in the fair. The tradesmen of the place had to pay their tolls to the person or public body to whom the fair had been granted, just as the strangers coming into the town did.

Fairs lasted in some cases for only one day; in others for two, three, or more days, and sometimes as long as a fortnight, during which time, whether the inhabitants liked it or not, all trade had to be carried on only in the fair. That was one of the things which caused jealousy between the trading class and the religious houses, and often led to much ill-feeling and disorder.

Then, too, the king could grant to any person the right to go to any fair in the country without paying toll and duty. Of course those persons to whom the king granted this right had to pay him very heavily for this privilege, but you can see that it was quite worth their while. Foreign merchants and Jews[16] often had such privileges granted to them, and that partly accounts for the great dislike there was to these classes of people.

Many of the religious houses had entered into trade too, and very often the same privilege of putting their goods on the market was granted to them. Members of a religious house could often travel from place to place without having to pay any of the tolls and duties which other folk had to pay. That might be quite right and reasonable when they were on some religious duty or errand of mercy, but when it was connected with buying and selling the goods produced or manufactured on the monastery lands it was "rather hard", as we should say, on the traders. The grievance grew up gradually, but it caused very often a bitter feeling between the towns and the religious houses in them, which over and over again led to riots and bloodshed.