COUNTRY FAIRS AND REVELS. 
GO 
those three days, to wit, the eve of the feast, the feast itself, and the day- 
following, to levy dues upon those going thither." 
The granting of the king's " firm peace " to all persons coming 
to, staying in, or returning from, a fair, was not a mere technical 
form, but as real as the protection rendered an ambassador. 
By a statute* in the 3rd year of Edward I., it was enacted that 
traders were free from arrest on their way to or from a fair, or 
while in a fair, except for debts arising from transactions in the 
fair itself. 
Fairs having become places of special privilege, in which for a 
time the laws of the realm were superseded by a code of charter 
usages, it became necessary to provide a special court, which should 
have jurisdiction at such times. This Court of Pie-powder seems 
to have always been a part and parcel of a fair. No fair in Europe 
has been known without such a court, and there is no record to be 
found of any ordinance by which the Court of Pie-powder was 
established in this country. t The court had jurisdiction only in 
commercial questions, and it tried them before a jury of traders 
formed on the spot, and was presided over by a person appointed 
by the lord of the fair. It could only entertain a case of slander 
relating to wares, not of person. It could hold pleas for amounts 
above forty shillings, and judgment could be deferred until the 
next fair ; but it could sit only during fair time, could take cogni- 
zance only of things happening during fair time and within the 
fair, could try a thief who had committed robbery in the fair, only 
when he had also been captured within its bounds. The king 
himself, if he sat in the Court of Pie-powder, could not extend its 
powers ; neither was it in the king's power to resume a charter that 
had once been granted, so that a fair once granted is good against 
the king. Such was the tribunal of commerce, known to fair- 
goers as the Court of " Pie-powder." Its name is corrupted from 
" pied-poudreux," dusty feet, because, says one antiquary,;]; "justice 
is administered in it more quickly than dust can be shaken from the 
feet;" another, "because most fairs being in the summer the feet 
were dusty." But it is generally understood that " pied-puldreaux" 
was the old French name for pedlar, one who travelled from place to 
* 3 Edward I., c. 23. a.d. 1275. 
f "Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair," p. 75-77- 
I "On Courts of Pypowder," hy John Pettingall, d.d. " Archaeologia," 
vol. i. pp. 190-203. 
