SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



also in the fifty-fourth year of the same reign a fair and market granted to 

 Kirkham.^** The northern towns were then, as they still are, great cattle 

 marts. We find the Clitheroe bailiff visiting Bolton market to buy oxen or to sell 

 them,^" and the abbot of Chester sent as far as Preston fair for cattle.^" At Roch- 

 dale Edmund de Lacy had a grant of market and fair in 1 25 i ^" Clitheroe fair 

 is entered in the De Lacy Inquisition as being only worth 6j-. 8d., but the joint 

 tolls of Clitheroe, Blackburn, and Bowland were worth £^ 1 3 j. 4^'."* Stallage of 

 Formby, indicating a market there, in 1325-6 was worth 1 8 J."' The stallage 

 of Liverpool fairs and markets of the same date was farmed for >Ci05"'' proving 

 the transaction of considerable business in the early fourteenth century. The 

 stallage of the market and two fairs of Salford "' in the sixteenth year of 

 Edward II is entered at 42J. of^/. A small market was held at Tottington, 

 loj. being the rent of the stallage."' At Rochdale the market and fair 

 brought in 40J. in the same year."' Manchester had a weekly market (on 

 Saturday according to Professor Tait) and a fair of three days once a year, 

 granted by Henry III in 1227."* The joint receipts there as given at the 

 inquisition of 1282 were £6 1 3J. 4^'."'' The Butlers had a grant of a fair 

 at Warrington in 1255, and a weekly market there from the previous year."* 



Among the great economic grievances, increased by local wars and 

 expeditions of conquest, was the prohibition of markets so that wares might 

 be the more readily and plentifully brought to the king when he was in the 

 neighbourhood. Edward I ordered the sheriff of Lancashire to prohibit 

 the holding of markets in the county during the Welsh expedition, to enforce 

 the carriage of merchandise to the army in Wales."^ 



The existence of fairs and markets and the king's proclamation that 

 merchants should bring provisions to the army some fifty or a hundred miles 

 away, suggests that by the close of the thirteenth century the channels of 

 internal communication in the country, and even of wild upland Lancashire, 

 were fairly open and passable. There seems to have been a great deal of local 

 riding to and fro. The bailiff of the Lacy lands often had to come and go or 

 send messengers, letters, horses, cloth or cattle from Clitheroe to Pontefract,"^ 

 between which places there was obviously some well-recognized route."* 

 From a study of the old Bodleian map of mediaeval roads it may be 

 inferred that this route was in part of its length probably the old Roman 

 road from Carlisle through Skipton to Isurium (Aldborough), of which 

 one branch went on to York and another turned towards Doncaster viS 



'" Placita de quo Warranto, Lane. Rot. loi/, Quoted in Fishwick's Hist. ofKirkhom (Chet. Soc). 



"' De Lacy Compotus R. (Chet. Soc. cxii), 126. '" Pat. 1 1 Edw. I, m. 8. 



"' Cal. Chart. 1226-57, p. 362. Also Plac. de quo Warranto apud Lane. 20 Edw. I, Rot. 9. 



'" Inq. p.m. 4 Edw. II, No. 51. In the sixteenth year they had increased to ^^5 6s. %d. ; L.T.R. 

 Misc. Enr. Aects. 14, m. 68 (second skin). 



"' L.T.R. Misc. Enr. Aects. 14. Accounts of John de Lancaster. 



"" Ibid. Residue of accounts of John de Lancaster (19 Edw. II), castle and town of Liverpool, m. 34</. 

 second skin. 



'" Ibid. 14, m. 68 (16 Edw. II), second skin. Salford. 



"' Ibid. m. 69, second skin. '" Ibid. Rochdale (16 Edw. II). 



'" Tait, Mediaeval Manchester, if.i^. '" Mamecestre, i, 145. 



"' Abbr. Rot. Orig. 40 Hen. Ill, p. 16. There were other markets and fairs. One at North Meols 

 was disallowed as injurious to others in the neighbourhood. 



■" Cal. Close, 1272-9, p. 426. 



'^' See De Lacy Compotus entries such as p. 126. ' Carrying money five times to Pontefract,' ' Carry- 

 ing alms cloth from Pontefract to Clitheroe,' &c. 



'" The paekhorse route was over ' Nick of Pendle,' w3 Sabden, Burnley, Todmorden, &c. 



2 281 36 



