100 
ENGLISH MARKETS AND FAIRS. 
lx these days of the telephone, the telegraph, and the train we 
are perhaps apt to under-estimate the supreme importance 
which in a less advanced stage of civilisation attached to the 
provision of local facilities for the disposal of the produce of the 
soil. In a sense the farmer is still, and inevitably must be, the 
slave of his market, but in the olden days he was so in a much 
narrower and more absolute sense than now. When bujnng and 
selling were entirely matters of personal intercourse, the market 
or fair afforded practically the only means by which the producer 
and consumer came into contact. Consequently, all such institu- 
tions were of supreme importance, alike to the inhabitants of the 
towns and to the tillers of the land. 
The distinction between a market and a fair is well under- 
stood, though it is not very clearly defined. A market, viewed 
in its strictly legal aspect, is an authorised public concourse of 
buyers and sellers of commodities, meeting at a place more or 
less strictly limited or defined at an appointed time. A fair is 
a large market held less frequently, and commonly extending 
over a longer period. “ Every fair,” says Lord Coke, “ is a 
market, but every market is not a fair.” But though the term 
market is the more comprehensive, the fair is the older institu- 
tion. The word fair signifies a gathering at the time of one of 
the annual religious feasts, and is derived, according to Messrs. 
C. I. Elton and B. E. C. Costelloe,^ from feria, which is the 
proper ecclesiastical term for a saint’s day. These feasts were 
no doubt frequently a continuation of still older pagan festivals, 
which, in addition to their character as religious functions, were 
from the earliest times utilised for purposes of trade and com- 
merce as well as for pleasure. It appears to be impossible to 
dissociate the fair from the festival in early English history, and 
there is no doubt that, in their original form, the gatherings were 
held on those great occasions when the national sacrifices were 
offered and the public assemblies held. 
There is very little reference to fairs either in the collection of laws or 
oilier authorities relating to the period of English history preceding the 
Norman Conquest, although there is no douht that such annual gatherings 
took place in many parts of England throughout the whole period between 
the establishment of the Teutonic kingdoms in England and the imposition 
of the Norman constitution.''* 
' Itepoft to the Royal CommisHion on Market Rights and Tolls on Charters 
and Records relating to the History of Fairs and Markets in the United King- 
dom. 
^ Hid,, p. .S. 
