CHAPTER III. 



ENGLISH MARKETS AND FAIRS. 1 



In these days of the telephone, the telegraph, and the train 

 we are perhaps apt to underestimate the supreme im- 

 portance which in a less advanced stage of civilisation 

 attached to the provision of local facilities for the disposal 

 of the produce of the soil. In a sense the farmer is still, 

 and inevitably must be, the slave of his market, but in the 

 olden days he was so in a much narrower and more absolute 

 sense than now. When buying and selling were entirely 

 matters of personal intercourse, the market or fair afforded 

 practically the only means by which the producer and 

 consumer came into contact. Consequently, all such 

 institutions were of vital importance, alike to the 

 inhabitants of the towns and to the tillers of the land. 



The distinction between a market and a fair is well 

 understood, though it is not very clearly defined. A 

 market, viewed in its strictly legal aspect, is an authorised 

 public concourse of buyers and sellers of commodities, 

 meeting at a place, more or less strictly limited or defined, 

 at an appointed time. A fair is a large market held less 

 frequently, and commonly extending over a longer period. 

 " Every fair," says Lord Coke, " is a market, but every 

 market is not a fair." But though markets are now the 

 most numerous, the fair is the older institution. The 

 word " fair " signifies a gathering at the time of one of the 

 annual religious feasts, and is derived, according to Messrs. 

 C. I. Elton and B. F. C. Costelloe, 2 from fena, which is the 



i Journal Royal Agricultural Society, Vol. IIT., 3rd series, 1892. 



2 Report to the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls 

 on Charters and Records relating to the History of Fairs and 

 Markets in the United Kingdom. 



