92 History of the English Landed Interest. 



frequented the metropolis, the niajority had probably never 

 been there in their lives.^ Feasting and gambling, dancing 

 and music could be carried on in the country as well as in the 

 town. County and subscription balls were almost as frequent 

 occurrences as they are now. The frolicing and fun at the 

 fair held on Angel Hill, in Bury St. Edmonds, was just as 

 jovial and a good deal more refined than that held on St. 

 Bartholmew's Day in London. Puppet shows and merry- 

 andrews were quite as sufficient attractions to the innocent 

 tastes of the bumpkins at the country wake, as the gallery of 

 obscene pictures in Bartholomew Fair was to the more vitiated 

 palate of the London citizen. In fact, this latter institution, 

 what with its profanity, debauchery, and thieving, must have 

 become, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, almost an 

 outrage on public morality. And yet, when an institution has 

 a charter dating back to Edward I., a name fraught with 

 historical memories, a famous market place but recently 

 paved ^ at a huge expense, and had become one of the chief 

 avenues whereby the countryman's spare cash found its way 

 into the Londoner's pockets, there is ample cause why the 

 City authorities allowed it to linger on until the middle of the 

 present century.^ And, if we come to think, some annual 

 meeting ground like this was absolutely essential between 

 the producers and purveyors of marketable produce, in times 

 when facilities of locomotion were practically the same as in 

 the days of Julius Caesar.* If the consumer required mutton, 

 he sought it in Newgate ; if beef, in Leadenhall ; if veal, in 

 St. James' ; if fruit, in Covent Garden ; and if dairy produce, 

 in Thames Street; but when the shopkeeper required fresh 



^ The local gentry spent their season in the county towns. Both 

 Shrewsbury and Preston were full of their town houses, and became quite 

 gay at particular periods of the year. VidQ Defoe's Tour through 

 Britain, 1769. 



2 Paved in 1614. Vide " The Great Snowstorm," Old Book Collector's 

 Aliscellany, vol. i. 



^ Abolished in 1855. 



* Transport from London to Birmingham was £7 a ton, from London 

 to Exeter £12. Vide "Jethro Tull, his Life, etc," by Earl Cathcart, 

 Journal R.A.S.E., Third Series, vol. ii. pt. 1. 



