Chapter III (3)
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MEDIEVAL TRADE, MARKETS, AND FAIRS
BUT although agricultural pursuits chiefly occupied the people of Stratford in the thirteenth century, several of them also turned their attention to trade, and in an account of the settlement rendered to the Bishop of Worcester about 1251, we can trace the rise of several industries that acquired importance later. There. were already numerous weavers, tanners, and tailors.) There were carpenters and dyers, whitesmiths and blacksmiths, wheelwrights and fleshmongers, shoemakers and coopers. The mill employed a number of labourers as millers and fullers. 1
The Bishops of Worcester were anxious to encourage such pursuit clearly before
1 Cf. a survey of Stratford made for the Bishop of Worcester in 125 I, privately printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps at the Middlehill Press.
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the close of the twelfth century they obtained for the town from Richard I. the special privilege of a weekly market upon the Thursday, a privilege for which the citizens paid the bishops an annual toll of sixteen shillings. At first the Thursday market was with difficulty maintained, and it almost died within a century of its birth. But in 1314 it was reinaugurated, and became a permanent feature of Stratford medieeval life.
The pasture-land within and without the manorial boundaries must have grown since the date of the Domesday Survey, for cattle was
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certainly a staple commodity of the earliest Stratford market. From time immemorial on~ of the chief thoroughfares in the town has been known by its present name of Rother Market, and it was doubtless there that the first market was held. Rother represents the Anglo-Saxon word" Hreother," £.e. cattle (from the Teutonic" Hrinthos," whence the modern German rind). The ancient word long survived in Warwickshire, and was familiar to Shakespeare, who employed it in the line. The pasture lards the rothers' sides.”1 It is a more significant mark of commercial progress that early in the thirteenth century the various dues of such inhabitants as were anxious to engage in trade. were commuted by the lord of the manor for a fixed annual sum of twelve-pence, payable quarterly. The holdings of these traders consisted of little more than a house and very small gardens, and were known as burgages, while their holders were called burgesses.
Such a tenure bore, in the west of England, the name of "the custom of Bristol," a commercial port only second in importance at the time to London; and its introduction
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1 Timon of Athens, IV. iii. 12.
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into Stratford proves the growth of mercantile pursuits.
Meanwhile the national records do not concern themselves with Stratford very much. The Hundred Rolls of Edward L, which were drawn up in many counties to form a survey as complete as that of the Domesday Book, barely deal with Warwickshire; and all they tell us concerning Stratford is ,that the king's justices had regulated by standard the manufacture of beer in the town, and that the steward of the Bishop of Worcester had not enforced the regulation. The entry adds that] John, a clergyman and bailiff of the Bishop of Worcester, had taken ten shillings from a man of Aston-Cant low, doubtless a political offender, who was in prison at Stratford, as a bribe to permit him to escape. Both these illegal episodes are dated after the battle of Evesham. They seem to imply some local discontent. Perhaps the "people of Stratford, or the bishop's steward there, had not favoured Henry III's cause in his contest with the barons, or it may be that the law had fallen into contempt amid the confusion into which the Midlands were plunged by the strife which closed in favour of the king at Evesham in 1265. [End Page 27]
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Further commercial privileges were conferred upon the town at frequent intervals in the thirteenth century. Stratford was then endowed with a series of annual fairs, the chief stimulants of trade in the middle ages. As early as 1216 a grant was obtained by the Bishop of Worcester for the holding of a yearly fair, "beginning on the eve of the Holy Trinity"- i.e. on the Saturday following Whitsuntide-" and to continue for the two next
days ensuing." Other fairs were added as the century progressed. I n 1224 a fair was permitted on the eve of St. Augustine, the 26th of May, "and on the day and morrow after." In 1242 and in 1271 a similar distinction was conferred on both the eve of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross- 14th of September-" the day, and two days following," and" for the eve of the Ascension of our Lord, commonly called Holy Thursday, and upon the day and morrow after." The grant of the earliest fair on Trinity Sunday was renewed in 1272, and in medieval times it always proved the busiest of the four
gatherings, although that of the Holy Cross in September has continued longest. Early in the following century permission was secured by [End Page 28]
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the townsfolk to hold another fair for the long period of fifteen days, to begin yearly on the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul, at the latter end of ] June. Out of each of these celebrations the Bishop of Worcester made an annual profit of about nine shillings and four pence.
The choice of Trinity Sunday for the earliest of the Stratford fairs was doubtless due to the facts that the parish church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and that Trinity Sunday being "the festival of the church's dedication," had at Stratford, as in other parts of the country, long been celebrated by a "wake," which brought many neighbouring villagers to the town. The spiritual side of medieval life had a tendency
to merge itself in the worldly side, and there is nothing exceptional in a Sunday of specially sacred character being turned to commercial uses. In most medieval towns, moreover, traders exposed their wares at fair-time in the churchyard, and chaffering and bargaining were conducted in the church itself. The Statute of Winchester attempted in vain in 1285 to restrain this extravagance, but it persisted till the Reformation. In an early printed "Comment on the Ten Commandments by way of dialogues [End Page 29]
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between Dives and Pauper" (1493), the" profane custom" is forcibly condemned Dives asks Pauper, "What sayest thou of them that hold markets and fairs in Holy Church and in Sanctuary? " Pauper replies, " Both the buyer and the seller, and men of Holy Church that maintain them, or suffer them when they might let [i.e. hinder] it, be accursed. They make God's house a den of thieves." To which Dives answers, "And I dread me that full often by such fairs God's house is made a tavern of gluttons. For the Merchants and Chapmen keep there with them their wives and lemans both night and day." The riotous times spent at Stratford a century later, when the fairs were in process, makes this a very pertinent description.
Thus the close of the thirteenth century guaranteed the future prosperity of Stratford. The rivalry with Alveston was then practically over, and its development was assured. The Bishops of Worcester had shown themselves exceptionally vigilant over its interests, and it was proving year by year more profitable to them. In 1251 the arable land returned to them more than £40; in 1299 more than £57. [End Page 30]
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The mills had grown in number; there were three for grinding corn by the river, and one for fulling elsewhere. They yielded at times as much as £ 13 : 6 : 8, an enormous increase on their ancient profits. Arable, meadow, and pasture all became richer with cultivation. The lords of the manor found it convenient to make a park in the neighbourhood for hunting purposes, and therefore paid it frequent visits. One bishop anticipating Justice Shallow, and not always with more effect, threatened all who "broke his park and stole his deer" with excommunication.
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End Chapter III (3)