298 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S Commercial Courts. The courts which administer the commercial law of the period necessarily present features very similar to the courts which administer the maritime law. The law merchant applied both to the domestic trader and to the foreign mer- chant.^ Both formed in a sense a separate class. But, as we might expect, the separation is far more clearly marked in the latter than in the former case. The courts which administer this branch of the Law Merchant are chiefly the courts of fairs, the courts of the more important towns, and the courts of the Staple. In the fairs of the Middle Ages much of the internal and foreign trade of the country was conducted. The right to hold a fair meant the right to hold a court of pie powder for the fair.^ A statute of 1477^ recites that in this court, " it hath been all times accustomed, that every person coming to the said fairs, should have lawful remedy of all manner of contracts, trespasses, covenants, debts, and other deeds made or done within any of the same fairs, during the time of the said fair, and within the jurisdiction of the same, and to be tried by the merchants being of the same fair." Later cases confined the jurisdiction of the fair strictly within these bounds.* Sometimes these courts were held by the mayor of
- The term merchant at this period was not confined to large traders.
It embraced all who traded. The distinction between the craftsman and the merchant is later, Gross, Gild Merchant, i 107 and n. 2.
- The style of such court is. Curia Domini Regis pedis pulverisati tenta
apud civitatem X, coram majore et duobus convicibus secundum consue- tudines civitatis a tempore cujus etc., ac sec', privilegia et libertates con- cessa et confirmata (or if a franchise fair, coram A. B. senescallo feriae). Bracton f. 334 a speaks of persons, qui celeram habere debent justitiam, sicut sunt mercatores quibus exhibetur justitia pepoudrus; Coke, 4th Instit. 272; Rastell's Entries f. 168 b, 169. » 17 Ed. IV. c. 2 § 3.
- Howel V. Johns (1600) 1 Cro. 773. Error of a judgment in the court
of the fair of Gloucester, in an action on the case for words. The error assigned was that the words were spoken before the market began. Judgment reversed, " they cannot meddle with any matter in that court, but with what happens in the market the same day. They also held that this was not an action proper for that court; for it is only for matters of contracts, and for matters arising within the market, and by occasion of the market, as batteries or disturbances happening therein. But if the words were by occasion in the same market it might peradventure be otherwise." Cp. Goodson v. Duffield (1612) Cro. Jac. 313; Hall v. Pyndar (1556) Dyer 132 b, pi. 80, and cases cited in the margin.
