The Disposal of Farm Produce. 235 



plete police precautions, daring individuals dug their way 

 through the walls to escape the tolls, or lingered on after the 

 fair was closed to sell their goods free of stallage dues. Pro- 

 tected by the armed tenants of this spiritual lord, the marshal 

 stationed guards at all the bridges and other approaches to the 

 town, for the purpose of securing their master's proper pontage 

 and passage dues, and prevent illegal barter of goods in transit. 

 In the Court of Piepowder justices fixed the assize of all 

 victuals, and servants tested weights and measures. The 

 Flemish tongue in loud tones of barter arose from one wooden 

 street, while that of France might be heard raised in lively 

 altercation in another. Here were the goldsmiths, and there 

 the drapers. Bales of wool cumbered the ground on another 

 site. Now a pillory, at which some fraudulent baker or brewer 

 was undergoing summary justice, attracted the eye ; and now 

 officers in the episcopal livery hurried by, carrying to the jury 

 of the Dusty Feet Court in the pavilion the notched wooden 

 tallies which in those primitive days represented the invoiced 

 goods of the merchants. 



This noisy scene continued for sixteen days and terminated 

 at a specified hour, beyond which any further negotiations not 

 only endangered the liberty of the vendor but the franchise of 

 the seignorial president.^ It is a conspicuous sign of the law- 

 lessness of these days, that at an age when the repairs to the 

 highways were entirely neglected by the national code, a 

 special legislative enactment provided that a clearance of all 

 brushwood likely to conceal marauders was to be made two 

 hundred feet on either side of highways leading from market 

 to market.^ This was not an unwise precaution when a noise- 

 less bolt might place the successful trader on his way home- 

 wards defenceless and at the mercy of any unscrupulous and 

 indigent vagabond who could draw a bow or handle the 

 arbalist. There was, too, a class of legislation which policed the 

 markets, in which we do not find anything very objectionable, 

 but rather the reverse, to the community at large ; though 

 possibly the motives that induced the king and his barons to 



^ Ashley, Economic History, Bk. I., ch. ii. 

 2 33 Ed. /., Stat, of Winchester, 1265. 



