forth. Tolls were levied on every bridge and road leading to the fair, and thus brought in a large revenue, which went to the bishop. Wool was the principal commodity sold at this fair. But gradually, and especially in the time of Edward III., this fair became unimportant and declined, since the wool trade with Flanders and with Norfolk came to be carried on more in the east of England and from the eastern seaports.

The fair at Smithfield, or "the Smooth Field," in London, known as St. Bartholomew's Fair, was another great fair, which has lasted from the days of Henry I. to our own century. It was established by a monk who built there a priory in honour of St. Bartholomew, and gained leave from Henry I. to hold an annual fair upon the day before St. Bartholomew's Day, on the day itself, and the day after. Wool and cloth were the chief articles sold, and then sheep and cattle, the latter branch of trade surviving all the rest. The fair, which had degenerated into a mere carnival, was abolished in 1840.

The fair of Stourbridge, near Cambridge, was another of the greatest of English fairs. It was renowned all over Europe and lasted a whole month, from about the end of August to the end of September. Its importance was due to the fact that it was within easy reach of two ports, Lynn and Blakeney, which at that time were more accessible, and much more frequented than now by the small ships that went to and fro between England and Flanders or Germany. Hither, then, came the merchants of Venice and Genoa, with stores of eastern produce and their own manufactures of silks, velvets, cotton goods, and glass. The Flemish brought the fine linens and cloth of Bruges, Liège, Ghent, and other manufacturing towns. French and Spanish merchants came with their wines and fruits; the great traders of the Hansa brought furs and amber, iron, copper, and other metals, flax and timber and grain, and all the products of the north (§ 65). In the same way the English farmers, or traders acting on their behalf, carried to this fair hundreds of huge sacks of wool for the manufacturing towns of Europe, barley for the Flemish breweries,

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with corn, horses, cattle, and many other goods. came from the mines of Derbyshire, tin from far-off Cornwall, and wool from the Yorkshire wolds and the Cotswold Hills. All these goods were exposed, as at Winchester, in stalls, booths, and tents in long streets, some named after the various nations that traded there, others after the kinds of wares on sale. This vast fair lasted down to the eighteenth century in unabated vigour, and was then described by the well-known writer Daniel Defoe (1724); and not much more than a hundred years ago the Lancashire merchants alone used as many as a thousand pack-horses to send their goods to Stourbridge.

77. European Fairs.-Fairs like these just described were held all over Europe. That at Beaucaire in France, on the Rhone, and not very far from the Gulf of Lyons, was very famous, and indeed still continues to be held. It was founded in 1217, being held from the 22d to the 28th of July, and was much frequented by foreign merchants, especially from Italy and the south of Europe, owing to its convenient situation near the Mediterranean. Here the traders from the inland towns of southern and central Europe used to meet the Genoese merchants or the Venetian fleets (§ 47), and a good deal of raw and manufactured silk, as well as the agricultural products of France, was exchanged.

In Germany there was a great fair at Leipzig, which is still held, though now mainly as a book fair. The charter for holding fairs was granted to the town by its feudal lord, the Markgraf Otho, in the twelfth century, who allowed the fairs for Easter and Michaelmas. In 1458 a third fair, at

the New Year, was authorised, and the charter for three fairs was confirmed by the Emperor Maximilian in 1507. The Easter fair was the most frequented, and by merchants from every part of Europe. Saxony and other German states sent wool, cloth, glass, and leather wares; England, wool and woollen cloth. From France came silks, lace, and wines; from Flanders all kinds of rich cloths. Many goods also came from eastern Europe, from Russia, Austria, and Poland; and in fact Leipzig formed a very convenient com

mercial centre for the meeting of traders from the east and west of Europe.

The greatest European fair that still exists is that of Nijni-Novgorod in Russia. It owes its importance to the comparative scarcity of railways in that land, and to the more primitive economic condition of the people. This fair lasts for six weeks or so beginning from the 1st of July, and forms, as it has always done, a most useful meeting-place for merchants from Central Asia or Asiatic Russia, and those from European Russia, Germany, and Poland. It began originally at Kasan, the capital of the Tartars, but was removed to Makarieff (about fifty miles from Nijni-Novgorod) in 1648, and finally to Novgorod itself in 1817, owing to a great fire which occurred at Makarieff, and which gave the government the opportunity of fixing on a more convenient site. At Novgorod a town of stone, instead of wood as formerly, was erected solely for the convenience of those who came to the fair. It contained at first 2500 shops, together with a vast number of sheds, but now more than 5000 shops are used, which are divided into thirteen large streets. The shops are divided into certain quarters where special goods are sold, just as in the Winchester fair before quoted. In one division tea is sold, in another skins and furs, in another metals (chiefly Siberian iron). Some quarters are called, just as at Stourbridge, by the name of the nation whose merchants occupy it, such as the Persian quarter, where carpets, rugs, shawls, and silks are sold. But it is impossible here to give a full description of this great fair. It must suffice to state that goods to the value of seven or eight million pounds are exchanged here, three-quarters of them being Russian, and that some 300,000 persons frequent it.

With the exception of the Novgorod fair, all other European fairs have greatly sunk in importance or have even practically disappeared as trading centres since the introduction of railways and the improvement of canals.1

1 The following are the more important fairs which lasted down to a little before the middle of this century, i.e. till the time when railways became common both in England and Europe and caused their decay :

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Nevertheless they remain of some use in remote and sparsely populated districts where communication is difficult and infrequent. With the disappearance of fairs came the decay of the class of merchants who spent much of their time in travelling about from one fair to another. Their place has been taken by the commercial travellers of large business firms who go constantly, and not only at fixed periods of the year, from town to town and from merchant to merchant or shop to shop in every country of Europe, and even to the ends of the earth. But in the old days of the Middle Ages the great fairs were an integral part of the whole system of commercial life.

(1) England: Fairs of Bristol, Exeter, Weyhill in Hampshire (for sheep); Bartholomew Fair in London (see above); Saint Faith's near Norwich, Carlisle, Ormskirk (all three for Scotch cattle); Ipswich, Northampton, Nottingham; Horncastle in Lincolnshire and Howden (horses); Devizes in Wilts, Market Harborough in Leicestershire. Also Falkirk in Scotland and Ballinasloe in Ireland (both for cattle and sheep).

(2) France: Fairs of St. Germains, Lyons, Rheims, Chartres, Rouen, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Troyes, and Beaucaire (see above).

(3) Germany: Fairs of Frankfurt-on-the-Main (two yearly); Frankfurt-on-the-Oder (three yearly), and Leipzig (three yearly-books, Saxony wool, and cloth).

(4) Hungary: Fairs of Pesth and Debrezin.

(5) Italy: Fair of Sinigaglia on river Misa (for cottons, silks, colonial and Eastern produce), and many small local fairs.

(6) Russia: Fair of Nijni-Novgorod (see above), and Kiachta in Mongolia (for Chinese trade).

Most of these fairs were for general articles of trade, with special goods where mentioned.

CHAPTER VI

THE MANUFACTURING CENTRES OF EUROPE

78. The Manufacturing Districts generally.—If we glance at a map of Europe in the Middle Ages, we shall find that by far the greatest centres of manufacture were in the north-western corner of the Continent, the portion now occupied by Belgium, part of Holland, and a small part of north France. Linen and woollen fabrics were chiefly made there. The eastern counties of England, especially Norfolk and its great centre Norwich, and the western counties of Wiltshire and Somerset also made a good deal of woollen cloth. The main branch of manufacture in the south of Europe was that of silk, which was made in the north-east corner of Spain in the district round about Barcelona; in France, round about the great centre of Lyons; but more than anywhere else in Italy, round Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence, and Naples. The raw wool for making cloths of all kinds was sent to Flanders from two main sources-England and Spain; but English wool was superior to Spanish for fine cloths, and moreover, in most cloths Spanish wool required to be mingled with English before it could be worked up. England and Spain, then, provided the raw material, and Flanders did the manufacturing part of the woollen cloth trade. Wool, indeed, in the Middle Ages was the basis of England's wealth, and paid for many of her wars. The silk for the silk-manufacturing towns in Italy came chiefly from the East, though some was grown in Greece and the Ægean Islands, and also (as at Milan) in Italy itself