VIII.
THE FAIRS AND MARKETS.
I. FAIRS.
THERE is no very rigid distinction between a "fair" and a "market"; but, when a market is larger, and recurs at more distant intervals than the ordinary daily or weekly mart, and particularly when it is frequented to some extent by persons coming from outside the place of meeting, it is generally called a "fair." Moreover, fairs, as the name denotes (Latin, feriae), are, or were, usually holidays, and the ordinary market is not.
A Fair of unknown origin used to be held at Leicester in June, for fiffteen days, "on the eve, day, and morrow of St. Peter, &c."; but by a grant of Henry III, made in the year 1228-9, the date was altered to the second day of February, or the day of the Purification of Our Lady, and fourteen days after. It looks as if this were a popular institution, founded on ancient custom, for the King's Grant is addressed not to the Earl, but to the community at large, to the "good men of Leicester," "probis hominibus."
The Earl of Leicester had a fair of his own, granted in 1307, which was held on the morrow of the Feast of the Holy Trinity, and fourteen days following. The Charter is printed by Nichols. It was not granted in 1305 by Edward I, as Thompson states in his History, but by Edward the Second, in the first year of his reign. The writer of the article on "Leicester" in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica goes still further astray in ascribing it to Edward III, and giving its duration as 17 days.
The two fairs afterwards granted by Henry the Eighth to the Town of Leicester may have been given in substitution for this fair of the Earl and the old people's fair. At any rate, the new sixteenth century fairs superseded them.
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