ld or with a new master for the coming twelve
months. Sturbitch fair is not the only place which has been proclaimed
by dignified officials, for in the old time many country fairs, which
had no Mayor and Corporation to fall back upon, were thought of
sufficient importance to engage the services of the Town Crier or
Beadle, and in some places this was the kind of proclamation that
ushered in the fair:--

O yez! O yez! the fair is begun,
There shall be no arrest, till the fair is done.

Arrest for debt should, I suppose, be understood, for the Stocks
invariably received as much company as they could hold on such
occasions.

In some cases the "Statty," or fair, was proclaimed by printed notice
issued by the chief constable of the hundred, and others even by those
responsible for obtaining situations for pauper children, to whose
interest it was that such a convenient means of bringing people
together should be kept up. In the year 1788 I find the Royston Parish
Committee passing this resolution:--

"Ordered that for the future such Boys and Girls as are in the
Workhouse and fit for service be taken to the Neighbouring Statutes for
the purpose of letting them for service."

{98}

Generally each printed announcement by the Chief Constable of
a statute fair for hiring within his hundred concluded with the
intimation--"Dinner on Table at two o'clock, price 2s. 6d. each." From
the last named item I conclude that the dinner on the table was
intended for employers who could afford the 2s. 6d., and also, I
believe, for the parish constables of the hundred whose "2s. 6d. for
the constabel's fest" so frequently occurs in parish accounts. A
number of these announcements before me all end in a similar strain,
but I give one specimen below--

PUCKERIDGE STATUTE
FOR HIRING SERVANTS,
will be held at the
BELL INN,
On FRIDAY, the 23RD of SEPTEMBER, 1796,
_THOMAS PRIOR, Chief Constable._
Dinner on the Table at Two o'clock.

May-day observances may perhaps appear a too hackneyed topic for a
place in these Glimpses, and yet they were very different from present
day observances. The "May-dolling" by children in the streets of
Royston as every first of May comes round is clearly a survival of the
more picturesque mummeries of the past. There is this in common, in
all the procession of Mayers through the ages, that their outward
equipment has always sought some little bit of promise of greenery from