Chapter IV: Mediæval Trade

It is difficult at first to believe it possible that the internal trade of mediæval England was carried on chiefly at great annual fairs for the wholesale business, at weekly markets for the chief towns, and by means of itinerant traders, of whom the modern pedlar is the degenerate representative, for the length and breadth of the country. In order to understand the possibility, we must recall to our minds how small comparatively was the population of the country. It was about two millions at the Norman Conquest, it had hardly increased to four millions by the end of the fifteenth century, it was only five millions in the time of William III. Nearly every one of our towns and villages then existed; but the London, and Bristol, and Norwich, and York of the fourteenth century, though they were relatively important places in the nation, were not one-tenth of the size of the towns into which they have grown. Manchester, and Leeds, and Liverpool, and a score of other towns, existed then, but they were mere villages; and the country population was thinly scattered over a half-reclaimed, unenclosed, pastoral country.

To begin with the fairs. The king exercised the sole power of granting the right to hold a fair. It was sought by corporations, monasteries, and manorial lords, in order that they might profit, first by the letting of ground to the traders who came to dispose of their wares, next by the tolls which were levied on all merchandise brought for sale, and on the sales themselves; and then indirectly by the convenience of getting a near market for the produce the neighbourhood had to sell, and for the goods it desired to buy.

The annexed woodcut, from the MS. Add. 24,189, represents passengers paying toll on landing at a foreign port, and perhaps belongs in strictness to an earlier part of our subject. The reader will notice the picturesque custom-house officers, the landing-places, and the indications of town architecture. The next illustration, from painted glass at Tournay (from La Croix and Seré's "Moyen Age et la Renaissance") shows a group of people crossing the bridge into a town, and the collector levying the toll. The oxen and pigs, the country-wife on horseback, with a lamb laid over the front of her saddle, represent the country-people and their farm-produce; the pack-horse and mule on the left, with their flat-capped attendant, are an interesting illustration of the itinerant trader bringing in his goods. The toll-collector seems to be, from his dress and bearing, a rather dignified official, and the countryman recognises it by touching his hat to him. The river and its wharves, and the boats moored alongside, and the indication of the town gates and houses, make up a very interesting sketch of mediæval life.

There were certain great fairs to which traders resorted from all parts of the country. The great fair at Nijni Novgorod, and in a lesser degree the fair of Leipsic, remain to help us to realise such gatherings as Bartholomew Fair used to be. Even now the great horse-fair at Horncastle, and the stock-fair at Barnet, may help us to understand how it answered the purpose of buyers and sellers to meet annually at one general rendezvous. The gathering into one centre of the whole stock on sale and the whole demand for it, was not only in other ways a convenience to buyers and sellers, but especially it regulated the general prices current of all vendibles, and checked the capricious variations which a fluctuating local supply and demand would have created in the then condition of the country and of commerce. The king sometimes, by capricious exercises of his authority in the subject of fairs, seriously interfered with the interests of those who frequented them--_e.g._ by granting license to hold a new fair which interfered with one already established; by licensing a temporary fair, and forbidding trade to be carried on elsewhere during its continuance. Thus in 1245 A.D. Henry II. proclaimed a fair at Westminster to be held for fifteen days, and required all the London traders to shut up their shops and bring their goods to the fair. It happened that the season was wet; few consequently came to the fair, and the traders' goods were injured by the rain which penetrated into their temporary tents and stalls. He repeated the attempt to benefit Westminster four years afterwards, with a similar result.

Of course when great crowds were gathered together for days in succession, and money was circulating abundantly, there would be others who would seek a profitable market besides the great dealers in woolfels and foreign produce. The sellers of ribbands and cakes would be there, purveyors of food and drink for the hungry and thirsty multitude, caterers for the amusement of the people, minstrels and jugglers, exhibitors of morality-plays and morrice-dancers, and still less reputable people. And so, besides the men who came for serious business, there would be a mob of pleasure-seekers also. The crowd of people of all ranks and classes from every part of the country, with the consequent variety of costume in material, fashion, and colour--the knight's helm and coat of mail, or embroidered _jupon_ and plumed bonnet, the lady's furred gown and jewels, the merchant's sober suit of cloth, the minstrel's gay costume and the jester's motley, the monk's robe and cowl, and the peasant's smockfrock, continually in motion up and down the streets of the temporary canvas town, the music of the minstrels, the cries of the traders, the loud talk and laughter of the crowd--must have made up a picturesque scene, full of animation.

When the real business of the country had found other channels, the fairs still continued--and in many places still continue--as mere "pleasure-fairs;" still the temporary stalls lining the streets, and the drinking-booths and shows, preserve something of the old usages and outward aspect, though, it must be confessed, they are dreary, desolate relics of what the mediæval fairs used to be. The fair was usually proclaimed by sound of trumpet, before which ceremony it was unlawful to begin traffic, or after the conclusion of the legal term for which the fair was granted. A court of _pie-poudre_ held its sittings for the cognizance of offences committed in the fair. Many of our readers will remember the spirited description of such a fair in Sir Walter Scott's novel of "The Betrothed."

In the great towns were shops in which retail trade was daily carried on, but under very different conditions from those of modern times. The various trades seem to have been congregated together, and the trading parts of the town were more concentrated than is now the case; in both respects resembling the bazaars of Eastern towns. Thus in London the tradesmen had shops in the Cheap, which resembled sheds, and many of them were simply stalls. But they did not limit themselves to their dealings there; they travelled about the country also. The mercers dealt in toys, drugs, spices, and small wares generally; their stocks being of the same miscellaneous description as that of a village-shop of the present day. The station of the mercers of London was between Bow Church and Friday Street, and here round the old cross of Cheap they sold their goods at little standings or stalls, surrounded by those belonging to other trades. The trade of the modern grocer was preceded by that of the pepperer, which was often in the hands of Lombards and Italians, who dealt also in drugs and spices. The drapers were originally manufacturers of cloth; to drape meaning to make cloth. The trade of the fishmonger was divided into two branches, one of which dealt exclusively in dried fish, then a very common article of food. The goldsmiths had their shops in the street of Cheap; but fraudulent traders of their craft, and not members of their guild, set up shops in obscure lanes, where they sold goods of inferior metal. A list of the various trades and handicrafts will afford a general idea of the trade of the town. Before the 50th of Edward III. (1376 A.D.) the "mysteries" or trades of London, who elected the Common Council of the city, were thirty-two in number; but they were increased by an ordinance of that year to forty-eight, which were as follows:--grocers, masons, ironmongers, mercers, brewers, leather-dressers, drapers, fletchers, armourers, fishmongers, bakers, butchers, goldsmiths, skinners, cutlers, vintners, girdlers, spurriers, tailors, stainers, plumbers, saddlers, cloth-measurers, wax-chandlers, webbers, haberdashers, barbers, tapestry-weavers, braziers, painters, leather-sellers, salters, tanners, joiners, cappers, pouch-makers, pewterers, chandlers, hatters, woodmongers, fullers, smiths, pinners, curriers, horners.

As a specimen of a provincial town we may take Colchester. A detailed description of this town in the reign of Edward III. shows that it contained only 359 houses, some built of mud, others of timber. None of the houses had any but latticed windows. The town-hall was of stone, with handsome Norman doorway. It had also a royal castle, three or more religious houses--one a great and wealthy abbey--several churches, and was surrounded by the old Roman wall. The number of inhabitants was about three thousand. Yet Colchester was the capital of a large district of country, and there were only about nine towns in England of greater importance. In the year 1301 all the movable property of the town, including the furniture and clothing of the inhabitants, was estimated, for the purpose of a taxation, to be worth £518, and the details give us a curious picture of the times. The tools of a carpenter consisted of a broad axe, value 5_d._, another 3_d._, an adze 2_d._, a square 1_d._, a _noveyn_ (probably a spokeshave) 1_d._, making the total value of his tools 1_s._ The tools and stock of a blacksmith were valued at only a few shillings, the highest being 12_s._ The stock-in-trade and household goods of a tanner were estimated at £9 17_s._ 10_d._ A mercer's stock was valued at £3, his household property at £2 9_s._ The trades carried on there were the twenty-nine following:--Baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass-seller, glover, linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes-seller, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. Our woodcut, from the MS. Add. 27,695, which has already supplied us with several valuable illustrations, represents a mediæval shop of a high class, probably a goldsmith's. The shopkeeper eagerly bargaining with his customer is easily recognised, the shopkeeper's clerk is making an entry of the transaction, and the customer's servant stands behind him, holding some of his purchases; flagons and cups and dishes seem to be the principal wares; heaps of money lie on the table, which is covered with a handsome tablecloth, and in the background are hung on a "perch," for sale, girdles, a hand-mirror, a cup, a purse, and sword.

Here, from "Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine," in the French National Library,[412] is another illustration of a mediæval shop. This is a mercer's, and the merceress describes her wares in the following lines:--

"Quod sche, 'Gene[413] I schal the telle
Mercerye I have to selle
In boystes,[414] soote oynementes,[415]
Therewith to don allegementes[416]
To ffolkes which be not gladde,
But discorded and malade.
I have kyves, phylletys, callys,
At ffestes to hang upon walles;
Kombes no mo than nyne or ten,
Bothe for horse and eke ffor men;
Mirrours also, large and brode,
And ffor the syght wonder gode;
Off hem I have ffull greet plenté,
For ffolke that haven volunté
Byholde himselffe therynne.'"

In some provincial towns, as Nottingham, the names of several of the streets bear witness to an aggregation of traders of the same calling. Bridlesmith Gate was clearly the street in which the knights and yeomen of the shire resorted for their horse-furniture and trappings, and in the open stalls of Fletcher Gate sheaves of arrows were hung up for sale to the green-coated foresters of neighbouring Sherwood. The only trace of the custom we have left is in the butcheries and shambles which exist in many of our towns, where the butchers' stalls are still gathered together in one street or building.

But the greater part of the trade of the towns was transacted on market-days. Then the whole neighbourhood flocked in, the farmers to sell their farm produce, their wives and daughters with their poultry and butter and eggs for the week's consumption of the citizens, and to carry back with them their town-purchases. In every market-town there was usually a wide open space--the market-place--for the accommodation of this weekly traffic; in the principal towns were several market-places, appropriated to different kinds of produce: _e.g._ at Nottingham, besides the principal market-place--a vast open space in the middle of the town, surrounded by overhanging houses supported on pillars, making open colonnades like those of an Italian town--there was a "poultry" adjoining the great market, and a "butter-cross" in the middle of a small square, in which it is assumed the women displayed their butter. In an old-fashioned provincial market-town, the market-day is still the one day in the week on which the streets are full of bustle and the shops of business, while on the other days of the week the town stagnates; it must have been still more the case in the old times of which we write. In some instances there seems reason to think a weekly market was held in places which had hardly any claim to be called towns--mere villages, on whose green the neighbourhood assembled for the weekly market. Round the green, perhaps, a few stalls and booths were erected for the day; pedlars probably supplied the shop element; and artificers from neighbouring towns came in for the day, as in some of our villages now the saddler and the shoemaker and the watchmaker attend once a week to do the makings and mendings which are required. There are still to be seen in a few old-fashioned towns and remote country places market-crosses in the market-place or on the village-green. They usually consist of a tall cross of stone, round the lower part of whose shaft a penthouse of stone or wood has been erected to shelter the market-folks from rain and sun. There is such a cross at Salisbury; a good example of a village market-cross at Castle Combe, in Gloucestershire, one of wood at Shelford, in Cambridgeshire, and many others up and down the country, well worthy of being collected and illustrated by the antiquary before they are swept away. Our illustration, from the painted glass at Tournay, represents a market scene, the women sitting on their low stools, with their baskets of goods displayed on the ground before them. The female on the left seems to be filling up her time by knitting; the woman on the right is paying her market dues to the collector, who, as in the cut on p. 505, is habited as a clerk. The background appears to represent a warehouse, where transactions of a larger kind are going on.

But the inhabitants of rural districts were not altogether dependent on a visit to the nearest market for their purchases. The pursuit of gain enlisted the services of numerous itinerant traders, who traversed the land in all directions, calling at castle and manor house, monastery, grange, and cottage; and by the tempting display of pretty objects, and the handy supply of little wants, brought into healthy circulation many a silver penny which would otherwise have jingled longer in the owner's _gypcire_, or rested in the hoard in the homely stocking-foot. An entry in that mine of curious information, the York Fabric Rolls, reveals an incident in the pedlar's mode of dealing. It is a presentation, that is, a complaint, made to the Archbishop by the churchwardens of the parish of Riccall, in Yorkshire, under the date 1519 A.D. They represent, in the dog-Latin of the time: "_Item, quod Calatharii_ (_Anglice_ Pedlars), _veniunt diebus festis in porticum ecclesiæ et ibidem vendunt mercimonium suum_." That _Calatharii_--that is to say, Pedlars--come into the church-porch on feast-days, and there sell their merchandise. From another entry in the same records it seems that sometimes the chapmen congregated in such numbers that the gathering assumed the proportions of an irregular weekly market. Thus among the presentations in 1416, is one from St. Michael de Berefredo, St. Michael-le-Belfry, in the city of York, which states, "The parishioners say that a common market of vendibles is held in the churchyard on Sundays and holidays, and divers things and goods and rushes are exposed there for sale." The complaint is as early as the fourth century; for we find St. Basil mentioning as one abuse of the great church-festivals, that men kept markets at these times and places under colour of making better provision for the feasts which were kept thereat.

The presentation from Riccall carries us back into the old times, and enables us to realise a picturesque and curious incident in their primitive mode of life. A little consideration will enable us to see how such a practice arose, and how it could be tolerated by people who had at least so much respect for religion as to come to church on Sundays and holidays. When we call to mind the state of the country districts, half reclaimed, half covered with forest and marsh and common, traversed chiefly by footpaths and bridle-roads, we shall understand how isolated a life was led by the inhabitants of the country villages and hamlets, and farmhouses and out-lying cottages. It was only on Sundays and holidays that neighbours met together. On those days the goodman mounted one of his farm-horses, put his dame behind him on a pillion, and jogged through deep and miry ways to church, while the younger and poorer came sauntering along the footpaths. One may now stand in country churchyards on a Sunday afternoon, and watch the people coming in all directions, across the fields, under copse, and over common, climbing the rustic styles, crossing the rude bridge formed by a tree-trunk thrown over the sparkling trout-stream, till all the lines converge at the church porch. And one has felt that those paths--many of them ploughed up every year and made every year afresh by the feet of the wayfarer--are among the most venerable relics of ancient times. And here among the ancient laws of Wales is one which assures us that our conjecture is true: "Every habitation," it says, "ought to have two good paths (convenient right of road), one to its church, and one to its watering-place." Very pleasant in summer these church-paths to the young folks who saunter along them in couples or in groups, but very disagreeable in wet wintery weather, and in difficult at all times to the old and infirm. Another presentation out of the York Fabric Rolls, gives us a contemporary picture of these church paths, seen under a gloomy aspect: In A.D. 1472, the people of Haxley complain to the Archdeacon that they "inhabit so unresonablie fer from ther parisch cherche that the substaunce (majority) of the said inhabitauntes for impotensaye and feblenes, farrenes (farness == distance) of the way, and also for grete abundance of waters and perlouse passages at small brigges for peple in age and unweldye, between them and ther next parische cherche, they may not come with ese or in seasonable tyme at ther saide parische cherche as Cristen people should, and as they wold," and so they pray for leave and help for a chaplain of their own.

We must remember, too, that our ante-Reformation forefathers did not hold modern doctrines concerning the proper mode of observing Sundays and holydays. They observed them more in the way which makes us still call a day of leisure and recreation a "holiday;" they observed them all in much the same spirit as we still observe some of them, such as Christmas-day and Whitsuntide. When they had duly served God at _matins_ and mass, they thought it no sin to spend the rest of the day in lawful occupations, and rather laudable than otherwise to spend it in innocent recreations. The Riccall presentation gives us a picture which, no doubt, might have been seen in many another country-place on a Sunday or saint-day. The pedlar lays down his pack in the church-porch--and we will charitably suppose assists at the service--and then after service he is ready to spread out his wares on the bench of the porch before the eyes of the assembled villagers and make his traffickings, ecclesiastical canons to the contrary notwithstanding, and so save himself many a weary journey along the devious ways by which his customers have to return in the evening to their scattered homes. The complaint of the churchwardens does not seem to be directed against the traffic so much as against its being conducted in the consecrated precincts. Let the pedlar transfer his wares to the steps of the village-cross, and probably no one would have complained; but then, though they who wanted anything might have sought him there, he would have lost the chance of catching the eye of those who did not want anything, and tempting them to want and buy--a course for which we must not blame our pedlar too much, since we are told it is the essence of commerce, on a large as on a small scale, to create artificial wants and supply them.

In the late thirteenth-century MS. Royal, 10 Ed. IV., are some illuminations of a mediæval story, which afford us very curious illustrations of a pedlar and his pack. At f. 149, the pedlar is asleep under a tree, and monkeys are stealing his pack, which is a large bundle, bound across and across with rope, with a red strap attached to the rope by which it is slung over the shoulder. On the next page the monkeys have opened the wrapper, showing that it covered a kind of box, and the mischievous creatures are running off with the contents, among which we can distinguish a shirt and some circular mirrors. On f. 150, the monkeys have conveyed their spoil up into the tree, and we make out a purse and belt, a musical pipe, a belt and dagger, a pair of slippers, a hood and gloves, and a mirror. On the next page, a continuation of the same subject, we see a pair of gloves, a man's hat, a woman's head-kerchief; and again, on p. 151, we have, in addition, hose, a mirror, a woman's head-dress, and a man's hood. These curious illuminations sufficiently indicate the usual contents of a pedlar's pack.

In the Egerton MS., 1,070, of the fourteenth century, at f. 380, is a representation of the flight into Egypt, in which Joseph is represented carrying a round pack by a stick over the shoulder, which probably illustrates the usual mode of carrying a pack or a pedestrian's personal luggage. Other illustrations of the pedlar of the latter part of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will be found in the series of the Dance of Death.

A former illustration has shown us a pack-horse and mule, the means by which those itinerant traders chiefly carried their merchandise over the country. But some kinds of goods would not bear packing into ordinary bundles of the kind there shown; for such goods, boxes or trunks, slung on each side of a pack-saddle, were used. We are able to give an illustration of them from an ancient tapestry figured in the fine work on "Anciennes Tapisseries" by Achille Jubinal. It is only a minor incident in the background of the picture, but is represented with sufficient clearness. Another mode of carrying personal baggage is represented in the fifteenth-century MS. Royal, 15 E. V., where a gentleman travelling on horseback is followed by two servants, each with a large roll of baggage strapped to the croupe of his saddle. The use of pack-horses has not even yet (or had not a few years ago) utterly died out of England. The writer saw a string of them in the Peak of Derbyshire, employed in carrying ore from the mines. The occasional occurrence of the pack-horse as the sign of a roadside inn also helps to keep alive the remembrance of this primitive form of "luggage-train." Many of our readers may have travelled with a valise at their saddle-bow and a cloak strapped to the croupe; the fashion, even now, is not quite out of date.