ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



there is good reason to believe that the real motive was of a different 

 nature. In 1300 Isabel de Fortibus, countess of Albemarle, was sum- 

 moned to show by what right she held a market at Crosthwaite without 

 the King's licence, to which charge she replied by her attorney that she 

 held no market and exacted no toll, stallage, nor any other profit, but 

 that the men of that neighbourhood were accustomed to meet at the 

 church there on festival days for the sale of flesh and fish. 1 As the 

 practice was continued, the people of Cockermouth complained to 

 Parliament in 1306 that the congregation of Crosthwaite bought and 

 sold every Sunday in their churchyard corn, flour, beans, peas, linen, 

 cloth, meat, fish and other merchandise to the detriment of the Cocker- 

 mouth market, and in contravention of the rights of the Crown therein. 

 In response to this petition the sheriff of Cumberland was ordered to 

 stop the holding of the market in Crosthwaite churchyard on Sunday or 

 any other day.* 



If the interests of commerce weighed with Parliament in forbidding 

 Sunday markets in churchyards, another consideration altogether was 

 present in the minds of the clergy of Carlisle. By a fourteenth century 

 constitution of the diocesan synod, pleas and markets were forbidden to 

 be held in churchyards. The canon declared that as our Lord and 

 Saviour ejected those who bought and sold in the Temple that the 

 house of prayer might not be made into the den of a thief, so it was 

 justifiable for the synod to decree that public markets or pleas should 

 not be held in churches, porches or churchyards on Sundays or other 

 days, and that buildings should not be erected therein unless the time of 

 war demanded it, and if they had been so erected they should be thrown 

 down. Parish priests were also enjoined to forbid lewd dances (luitas 

 choreas) or other shameful plays, specially on festivals of the church and 

 vigils of saints, for those who did such things were accounted to sacrifice 

 to demons and desecrate holy places and sacred seasons. 3 But the statute 

 of the diocesan synod was not sufficient to check the custom in Carlisle. 

 In 1379 Bishop Appleby learned that fairs and markets were held on 

 Sundays and festival days in churches and churchyards throughout his 

 diocese, and that owing to the tumult caused thereby it was impossible 

 for rightly disposed persons to attend to their devotions. 4 In the bishop's 

 opinion the time had come for the discontinuance of the custom, and in 

 consequence the machinery of the diocese was put in motion to abate 

 the nuisance. Many centuries were destined to elapse before the bishop's 

 hopes were realized. 6 



1 Placita de Quo Warranto (Rec. Com.), p. 115. 



2 Rot. Parl. (Rec. Com.), i. 197 ; Ryley, Placita Parliamentaria, 332-3. 



3 Carl. Epis. Reg. Welton MS. f. 132. 



Ibid. Appleby MS. f. 313. 



6 Hutchinson relates a story of Thomas Warcop, Vicar of Wigton 1612-1653, in connection with 

 the butcher market held in that town on Sundays during his incumbency. ' The butchers,' he said, 

 ' bring up their carcases even at the church door to attract the notice of their customers as they went in 

 and came out of church ; and it was not infrequent to see people who had made their bargains before 

 prayer began, to hang their joints of meat over the backs of the seats until the pious clergyman had 

 finished the service ' (Hist, of Cumberland, ii. 479). 



II 41 6 



