9. HOLDSWORTH: THE LAW MERCHANT 299 a corporate town.^ Sometimes they belonged to a lord. Of the latter class was the fair of St. Ives. ^ We can see that merchants from all parts of England, and even from abroad, attended this fair. In the pleadings of the court of this fair we have mention of the communitates of Stamford, Not- tingham, Leicester, Huntingdon, Godmanchester, Bury St. Edmunds, Wiggenhall, and Ypres. These fairs were not peculiar to England. " By means of them almost all foreign trade was for centuries conducted. In the fairs of Cham- pagne . . . Besan^on and Lyons in France . . . Antwerp in the Low Countries, and not least in the fairs of Winchester and Stourbridge in England, goods were bought and sold; orders were given and taken; outstanding payments were made there ; and there obligations to be discharged at future fairs were contracted. To these gatherings, which lasted for several days, flocked merchants from all parts of Europe. The dealings of the merchants necessitated the use of simple rules; no technical jurisprudence peculiar to any country would have been satisfactory to traders coming from many different countries."^ The customs of different places may have slightly varied;* but the law, in its broad lines, as laid down by the merchants in these courts, was necessarily of the international character which has always been its chief characteristic. The towns had in many cases the right, either by charter or by prescription, to hold various courts, of pie powder and otherwise, in which the Law Merchant was administered, in addition to many other kinds of jurisdiction, civil and criminal. The Domesday of Ipswich distinguishes many different kinds of pleas. Those which concern the Law Merchant are clearly distinct from the others.^ The Red
- For the curious right of the Cinque Ports to hold a fair at Yarmouth
see Arch. Cantiana xxiii 161-183. » Select Pleas in Manorial Courts (S. S.) 130. •Smith, Mercantile Law (Ed. 1890) Introd. Ixix, Ixx,
- The Carta Mercatoria (Munimenta Gildhallae (R. S.) ii pt. i 206, 207)
implies this, " Et si f orsan supra contractu huj usmodi contentio oriatur, fiat inde probatio vel inquisitio, secundum usus et consuetudines feri- arum et villarum mercatoriariarum ubi dictum contractum fieri con- tigerit et iniri." "Black Book of the Admiralty (R. S.) ii 23. "The plees be twixe straunge folk that man clepeth pypoudrus," " The pleas in tyme of fayre be twixe straunge and passant," " The pleas yoven to the law maryne."
