2 28 Histo7'y of the English Landed Interest. 



of John and Henry III., 1,400 grants of markets and fairs 

 were made, and double that amount in the 285 years a.d. 1199- 

 1483, From the Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls of Edward I. 

 we gather that 202 private individuals, 116 religious houses, 

 15 burgesses and trade associations, and 32 nondescript parties 

 claimed market rights.^ 



It is obvious that every fresh grant, unless inquired into (as 

 was the usage) by a jury on a writ ad quod damnum^ might 

 have interfered with existing rights. Two or three of these 

 trade resorts in too close juxtaposition would have done so. It 

 was suggested by Bracton that few market folk would care to 

 be benighted, and that it would take a third of the daylight 

 alike in going to, bartering at, and returning from a fair dis- 

 tant from home between six and seven miles. It came there- 

 fore to be recognised that no new grant of market or fair could 

 be made in a locality where that limit was transgressed. 



Passing from the discussion of these inland centres of trade 

 with their merccdores ."^tellatl, who with the toll-owner's steward 

 constituted respectively the suitors and judge of the " Pye 

 Poudre " Court, it is interesting to inquire next how the 

 heavier goods were conveyed in winter, and what substitutes 

 for purchasing the necessaries of life occurred during the 

 severer weather of our English climate. There is very little 

 evidence that either any really practical means of transit or 

 efficient substitute existed. People who were cut off from the 

 centres of trade by bad roads, had to provision their larders 

 before winter came upon them. The common carrier was 

 generally employed to convej^ goods to and from the villages; 

 and his charges, though small, were supposed to cover possible 

 loss or damage sustained by goods in transit, and for which he 

 was liable by common law. There was, too, possibly an oppor- 

 tunity for purchase in the trade of the pedlar, which, however, 

 though undoubtedly of great antiquity, cannot be traced so 

 far back as the era of which we are speaking. 



Perhaps one of the most marked features of this age was 

 the violent fluctuations in the price of wheat. In 1243, 1244, 



* Vide Eeport of the lioyal Commission on Market Eights and Tolls, 

 1891. 



