e a marvellous display of goods of
an inferior quality, with laces and ribands of all colours, hanging down
in front, and twirling like pinnets in the wind. There was likewise the
allurement of some compendious show of wild beasts; in short, a swatch of
every thing that the art of man has devised for such occasions, to wile
away the bawbee.

Besides the fairs of this sort, that may be said to be of a pious origin,
there were others of a more boisterous kind, that had come of the times
of trouble, when the trades paraded with war-like weapons, and the
banners of their respective crafts; and in every seventh year we had a
resuscitation of King Crispianus in all his glory and regality, with the
man in the coat-of-mail, of bell-metal, and the dukes, and lord mayor of
London, at the which, the influx of lads and lasses from the country was
just prodigious, and the rioting and rampaging at night, the brulies and
the dancing, was worse than Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim's Progress.

To put down, and utterly to abolish, by stress of law, or authority, any
ancient pleasure of the commonality, I had learned, by this time, was not
wisdom, and that the fairs were only to be effectually suppressed by
losing their temptations, and so to cease to call forth any expectation
of merriment among the people. Accordingly, with respect to the fairs of
pious origin, I, without expounding my secret motives, persuaded the
council, that, having been at so great an expense in new-paving the
streets, we ought not to permit the heavy caravans of wild beasts to
occupy, as formerly, the front of the Tolbooth towards the Cross; but to
order them, for the future, to keep at the Greenhead. This was, in a
manner, expurgating them out of the town altogether; and the consequence
was, that the people, who were wont to assemble in the High Street, came
to be divided, part gathering at the Greenhead, round the shows, and part
remaining among the stands and the booths; thus an appearance was given
of the fairs being less attended than formerly, and gradually, year after
year, the venerable race of sweety-wives, and chatty packmen, that were
so detrimental to the shopkeepers, grew less and less numerous, until the
fairs fell into insignificance.

At the parade fair, the remnant of the weapon-showing, I proceeded more
roundly to work, and resolved to debar, by proclamation, all persons from
appearing with arms; but the deacons of the trades spared me the troubl