Early Trading Conditions 27 



manufactured, from the Sussex forges. And besides these, 

 there were great stores of those kinds of agricultural produce 

 which, even under the imperfect cultivation of the time, 

 were gathered in greater security, and therefore in greater 

 plenty, than in any other part of the world, except Flanders." 

 Other leading fairs, besides that of Sturbridge, included 

 Bartholomew Fair, in London, and those of Boston, Chester 

 and Winchester ; while Holinshed says of the conditions in 

 the second half of the sixteenth century, " There is almost 

 no town in England but hath one or two such marts holden 

 yearlie in the same." In the case of Bartholomew Fair, its 

 decay was directly due to the fact that there came a time 

 when English manufacturers could produce cloth equal in 

 quality to that from Bruges, Ghent and Ypres which had been 

 the chief commodity sold at this particular fair, thenceforward 

 no longer needed. But the eventual decline alike of Sturbridge 

 and of most of the other fairs carrying on a general trade was 

 mainly due to the revolutionary changes in commerce, in- 

 dustry and transport to which improved facilities for dis- 

 tribution inevitably led. 



