Aug. 24.]

ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY.

Bartholomew Fair—The origin of Bartholomew Fair was a grant from Henry I., in 1133, to a monk named Rayer, or Rahere, who had been his jester, and had founded the Priory of St. Bartholomew, in later times transformed into a hospital. The fair was annually held at the festival of St. Bartholomew, and, like all other ancient fairs, was originally connected with the Church, under whose auspices miracle-plays, founded on the legends of saints, were represented, which gave place to mysteries, and these again to moralities; afterwards, profane stories were introduced, the origin of the modern English drama. It was discontinued after 1855, having flourished for seven centuries and a half. Established originally for useful trading purposes, it had long survived its claim to tolerance, but, as London increased, became a great public nuisance, with its scenes of riot and obstruction in the very heart of the city. After the opening of the fair, it was customary anciently for wrestlers to exercise their art, of which Paul Hentzner, a German tutor, travelling in the year 1598 through England has given an account. He says, “that every year upon St. Bartholomew’s day, when the 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 distinguishes the most noble Order of the Garter. When the mayor goes out of the precincts of the city a sceptre and sword and a cap are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal aldermen in scarlet gowns with gold chains, 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 receiving 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.” In a proclamation, made in 1608, we find the following command laid down in reference to the wrestling: “So many aldermen as dine with my Lord Mayor and the sheriffs, be apparelled in their scarlet gowns lined, and after dinner their horses be brought to them where they dine, and those aldermen which dine with the sheriffs, ride with them to my lord’s house, to accompany him to the wrestling. Then when the wrestling is done, they take their horses, and ride back again through the fair, and so in at Aldersgate, and so home again to the said Lord Mayor’s house.” Mr. Samuel Pepys (1663) alludes to this wrestling in his diary.

The scholars from the different London schools met at the Priory for disputations on grammar and logic, and wrangled together in verse. John Stow says: “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, the Priory in Smithfield, 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 his place did like as the first. And in the end, the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not but it made both 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 St. 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 VIII., 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 them of St. Anthonie’s, would call them Anthonie’s Pigs, and they again would call the other 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.”

In the first centuries of its existence Bartholomew Fair was one of the great annual markets of the nation and the chief cloth fair of the kingdom. It was the great gathering in the metropolis of England, for the sale of that produce upon which England especially relied for her prosperity. Two centuries after the Conquest our wealth depended upon wool, which was manufactured in the time of Henry II., in whose days there arose guilds of weavers. In King John’s reign there was prohibition of the export of wool and of the import of cloth. A metropolitan cloth fair was therefore a commercial institution, high in dignity and national importance. There was a trade also at Bartholomew Fair in live stock, in leather, pewter, and in other articles of commerce, but cloth ranked first among the products of our industry. The clothiers of England, and the drapers of London, had their standings during the fair in the Priory churchyard. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, however, Bartholomew Fair ceased to be a cloth fair of any importance; but its name and fame is still preserved in the lane running parallel to Bartholomew Close, termed “Cloth Fair,” which was generally inhabited by drapers and mercers in the days of Strype.

A Pedlars’ Court of Piepowder was held within the Priory gates, for debts and contracts, before a jury of traders formed on the spot, at which the prior, as lord of the fair, presided by his representative. It remained always by its original site, being held in Cloth Fair to the last. There is no record to be found of any ordinance by which the court of Piepowder was first established in this country. There never had been known a fair in Europe to which such a court was not by usage attached. Such courts were held in the markets of the Romans, which some writers regard as fairs, and in which they find the origin of modern fairs. The court of Piepowder in Bartholomew Fair, or the corresponding court in any other fair in England, had jurisdiction only in commercial questions. It could entertain a case of slander if it was slander of wares, not slander of person: not even the king, if he should sit in a court of Piepowder, could extend its powers. In 1445 four persons were appointed by the court of aldermen as keepers of the fair and of the court of Piepowder, the city being thus in that case represented as joint lord of the fair with the prior. As the fair prospered it was rendered attractive by a variety of popular amusements. All manner of exhibitions, theatrical booths, &c., thronged the fair, and tumblers, acrobats, stilt-walkers, mummers, and mountebanks, resorted to it in great numbers. Shows were exhibited for the exhibition of puppet-plays, sometimes constructed on religious history, such as “The Fall of Nineveh,” others were constructed on classic story, as “The Siege of Troy.” Shows of other kinds abounded, and zoology was always in high favour. In 1593 the keeping of the fair was for the first time suspended, by the raging of the plague. The same thing happened in 1603, in 1625, in 1630, in 1665, and in 1666. The licence of the Restoration mainly arising from the low personal character of the king, but greatly promoted by the natural tendency to reaction after the excess of severity used by the Puritans in suppressing what was not to be suppressed, at once extended Bartholomew Fair from a three days’ market to a fortnight’s—if not even at one time to a six weeks’—riot of amusement. In 1678 the civil authorities had already taken formal notice of the “Irregularities and Disorders” of Bartholomew and Lady Fairs, and referred it to a committee “to consider how the same might be prevented, and what damages would occur to the city by laying down the same.” This is the first hint of suppression that arises in the history of the fair, and its arising is almost simultaneous with the decay of the great annual gathering as a necessary seat of trade. In 1685 the fair was leased by the city to the sword bearer for three years at a clear rent of £100 per year. At the expiration of two years a committee having reported that the net annual profit for those years had amounted to not more than £68, the city fair, then lasting fourteen days, was, on his application, leased to the same sword-bearer for twenty-one years at the same rent. As time went on, however, the Corporation of London was still setting daily against the evil that was in the fair. In 1691, and again in 1694, a reduction to the old term of three days was ordered, as a check to vice, and in order that the pleasures of the fair might not choke up the avenues of the traffic. In 1697, the Lord Mayor, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, published an ordinance recorded in the Postman “for the suppression of vicious practices in Bartholomew Fair, as obscene, lascivious, and scandalous plays, comedies and farces, unlawful games and interludes, drunkenness, etc., strictly charging all constables and other officers to use their utmost diligence in persecuting the same.” But there was no suppression of the puppet-theatres. Jephthah’s Rash Vow was performed that year at Blake’s Booth, as in the following years at Blake and Pinkethman’s. Again on the 18th of June, 1700, stage-plays and interludes at the fair were for that year prohibited: they were again prohibited by the mayor who ruled in the year 1702. In 1698, a Frenchman, Monsieur SorbiÈre, visiting London, says, “I was at Bartholomew Fair. It consists most of toy-shops, also fiacres and pictures, ribbon shops, no books; many shops of confectioners, where any woman may be commodiously treated. Knavery is here in perfection, dextrous cut-purses and pickpockets. I went to see the dancing on the ropes, which was admirable. Coming out, I met a man that would have took off my hat, but I secured it, and was going to draw my sword, crying out “Begar! damn’d rogue! morbleu!” &c., when on a sudden I had a hundred people about me, crying, “Here, monsieur, see Jephthah’s Rash Vow;” “Here, monsieur, see The Tall Dutchwoman;” “See The Tiger,” says another; “See The Horse and No Horse, whose tail stands where his head should do;” “See the German Artist, monsieur;” “See The Siege of Namur, monsieur;” so that betwixt rudeness and civility I was forced to get into a fiacre, and, with an air of haste and a full trot, got home to my lodgings.”

In 1701 Bartholomew Fair was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of London, and in 1750 it was reduced to its original three days. By the alteration of the calendar in 1752, the fair, in the following year, was, for the first time, proclaimed on September 3rd.

On the 3rd of December, 1760, the London Court of Common Council referred to its City Lands Committee to consider the tenures of the City fair, with a view to their abolition. The subject was then carefully discussed, and a final report sent in, with the opinion of counsel, upon which the court came to a resolution, that, owing to the interest of Lord Kensington in Bartholomew Fair, that was a nuisance which they could endeavour only by a firm practice of restriction to abate. In 1769 plays, puppet-shows, and gambling were suppressed. In 1798, when the question of abolishing the fair was discussed, a proposal to restrict it to one day was made and set aside, because the measure might produce in London a concentrated tumult dangerous to life. In the course of a trial at Guildhall in 1817, involving the rights of Lord Kensington, it was stated on Lord Kensington’s behalf, that considering the corrupt state of the fair, and the nuisance caused by it in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, he should throw no obstacle in the way of its removal, and was ready to give up his own rights over it, on being paid their value. His receipts from toll were stated to be 30l. or 40l. a year, and their estimated value 500l. or 600l. In the year 1830 the Corporation of London did accordingly buy from Lord Kensington the old Priory rights, vested in the heirs of Chancellor Rich, and all the rights and interests in Bartholomew Fair then became vested in the City. Having thus secured full power over the remains in question, the Corporation could take into its own hands the whole business of their removal. The fair at this time had long ceased to be a place of traffic, and was only a haunt of amusement, riot, and dissipation. Latterly it had only been attended by the keepers of a few gingerbread stalls; and consequently in 1839 measures were for the first time seriously adopted for its suppression, and in the following year the exhibitions were removed to Islington. In 1850 the last proclamation by the Lord Mayor took place, and in 1855 the once famous Bartholomew Fair came to an end.—History and Origin of Bartholomew Fair, published by Arliss and Huntsman, 1808; Chambers’ EncyclopÆdia (1860), vol. i. p. 719; Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, 1859; Chambers’ Book of Days, vol. ii. pp. 263-267.

Lincolnshire.

In the morning a number of maidens, clad in their best attire, went in procession to a small chapel, situated in the parish of Dorrington, and strewed its floor with rushes, from whence they proceeded to a piece of land called the “Play-Garths,” where they were joined by most of the inhabitants of the place, who passed the remainder of the day in rural sports, such as foot-ball, wrestling and other athletic exercises, with dancing, &c.—History of County of Lincoln, 1834, vol. ii. p. 255.

It was customary at Croyland Abbey to give little knives to all comers on St. Bartholomew’s Day. Mr. Gough, in his History of Croyland Abbey, p. 73. says that this abuse was abolished by Abbot John de Wisebech, in the time of Edward IV., exempting both the abbot and convent from a great and needless expense. This custom originated in allusion to the knife wherewith St. Bartholomew was flayed. Three of these knives were quartered, with three of the whips so much used by St. Guthlac, in one coat borne by this house. Mr. Hunter had great numbers of them, of different sizes, found at different times in the ruins of the abbey and in the river.

Yorkshire.

Dr. Johnston, quoted by Hampson (Med. Ævi Kalend. vol. i. p. 342), has preserved an account of a pageant exhibited at Dent on the rush-bearing (St. Bartholomew’s Day) after the Restoration, in which, among other characters, Oliver and Bradshaw, Rebellion and War, were represented, all decked by times with vizardes on, and strange deformities; and Bradshaw had his tongue run through with a red hot iron, and Rebellion was hanged on a gibbet in the market-place. Then came Peace and Plenty, and Diana with her nymphs, all with coronets on their heads, each of which made a several speech in verses of their loyalty to their king.