ecause of the paucity of
works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No
thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the
other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily
accessible in English, as in the following works:--

Riley: _Memorials of London and London Life_.

Smith, Toulmin: _English Gilds_.

Various documents illustrative of town and gild history will also be
found in Vol. II, No. 1, of the _Translations and Reprints_,
published by the Department of History of the University of
Pennsylvania.

Better descriptions exist for the position of the gilds in special
towns than for their general character, especially in London by
Herbert, in Hull by Lambert, in Shrewsbury by Hibbert, and in Coventry
by Miss Harris.

CHAPTER IV

MEDIAEVAL TRADE AND COMMERCE

*19. Markets and Fairs.*--Within the towns, in addition to the ordinary
trading described in the last chapter, much buying and selling was
done at the weekly or semi-weekly markets. The existence of a market
in a town was the result of a special grant from the king, sometimes
to the burgesses themselves, sometimes to a neighboring nobleman or
abbey. In the latter case the tolls paid by outsiders who bought or
sold cattle or victuals in the market did not go to the town or gild
authorities, but to the person who was said to "own" the market. Many
places which differed in scarcely any other way from agricultural
villages possessed markets, so that "market towns" became a
descriptive term for small towns midway in size between the larger
boroughs or cities and mere villages. The sales at markets were
usually of the products of the surrounding country, especially of
articles of food consumption, so that the fact of the existence of a
market on one or more days of the week in a large town was of
comparatively little importance from the point of view of more general
trade.

Far more important was the similar institution of periodical fairs.
Fairs, like markets, existed only by grant from the king. They
differed from markets, however, in being held only once a year or at
most semi-annually or quarterly, in being invariably in the possession
of private persons, never of town governments, and in the fact that
during their continuance as a rule all buying and selling except at
the fairs was suspended within a considerable circuit. Several hundred
grants of fairs are recorded on the rolls of royal charters