FISHERMEN AND FISHERIES. 157 



evidently feared than the hostelers of Yarmouth would 

 retaliate by refusing to accommodate fishermen, or mer- 

 chants, or both ; and that the fishers and mariners of 

 Blakeneye would "leave or refuse to go in fishing," as a 

 protest against interference with the customs of their trade. 

 At any rate, " hostelers " and " fishers " were especially 

 warned not to be " resistant in any point against " these two 

 statutes respectively. As an inducement to both classes to 

 observe the law, certain concessions were made to each, the 

 most important being an enactment that no one was to 

 " buy nets, hooks, nor other instruments pertaining to fishing 

 in the county of Norfolk, but owners, masters, and mariners 

 of ships that use the mystery of fishing, and which have to 

 do with such things" the object being apparently to 

 reduce the price of fishing gear as well as of fish. 



Experience proved that the remedy, in the case of Yar- 

 mouth at least, was worse than the disease, and in 1360 we 

 find a fresh Act passed on the subject of the Yarmouth 

 herring fair, which swept away the greater part of the law 

 made only three years before. A petition was now pre- 

 sented to Parliament, setting forth " that the sale of herring 

 is much decayed and the people greatly damaged by the 

 points" insisted on in the previous statute; that "many 

 merchants coming to the fair, as well labourers and servants 

 as other, do bargain for herring, and every one of them by 

 malice and envy increase upon other and if one proffer 

 forty shillings another will profer (sic) ten shillings more, 

 and the third sixty shillings, and so everyone surmounteth 

 other in the bargain, and such proffers extend to more than 

 the price of the herring upon which the fishers proffered it to 

 sell at the beginning " ; that the fishermen, being obliged 

 to look to several buyers for payment, instead of receiving 

 a lump sum for their fish from one of the much-abused 



