Copyright held by
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Further details of licences are available from our
Licences page. For more
information, contact the project director,
Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Fair Ground
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 7.0
PY - 2022
DA - 2022/05/05
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/FAIR6.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/FAIR6.xml
TY - UNP
ER -
Smithfield was an open, grassy area located outside the Wall. Because of its location close to the city centre, Smithfield was used as a site for markets, tournaments, and public executions. From
A priory of Augustinian canons once encompassing St. Bartholomew the Great, St. Bartholomew the Less, and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Dissolved by
According to
St. Bartholomew the Great was a church in Farringdon Without Ward on the south side of Long Lane, Smithfield. It was made a parish church at the Dissolution of the Monasteries and was declared a gift to the citizens of London for relieving of the Poore
in
Cloth Fair, as implied by its name, bears an innate connection to London’s mercantile culture. Henry A. Harben notes that it [d]erives its name from the clothiers and drapers who inhabited it in former times, and attended the famous Bartholomew Fair
(Harben 154). The location itself was on the Fair Ground between Long Lane and St. Bartholomew the Great.
The Fair sat [u]pon [a] portion of the ground now known as Smithfield (that is, smooth field), bordering upon the marsh, great elm trees grew, and it was known as The Elms. The king’s market perhaps was held among the trees; but on the marsh the Priory was founded, around which was held the fair
(Morley 9). According to Sugden:
[i]ts frequenters were called [Bartholomew] Birds
The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.
The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes
referred to as
The Anno Mundi (year of the world
) calendar is based on the supposed date of the
creation of the world, which is calculated from Biblical sources. At least two different
creation dates are in common use. See Anno Mundi (Wikipedia).
Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch.
Our practice is to tag such dates with
Research Assistant, 2020-2021. Managing Encoder, 2020-2021. Jamie Zabel was an MA student at the University of Victoria in the Department of English. She completed her BA in English at the University of British Columbia in 2017. She published a paper in University College London’s graduate publication
Research Assistant, 2018-2021. Lucas Simpson was a student at the University of Victoria.
Project Manager, 2020-2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019-2020. Research Assistant, 2018-2020. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. She published papers in
Junior Programmer 2018-2020. Research Associate 2020-2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the
Research Assistant, 2018. Carly was a graduate student in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. Her primary research interests included early modern literature, specifically drama and performance. She had a special interest in contemporary adaptations of early modern drama, especially the portrayal of onstage violence.
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Research Assistant, 2017-2019. Chase Templet was a graduate student at the University
of Victoria in the Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) stream. He was specifically
focused on early modern repertory studies and non-Shakespearean early modern drama,
particularly the works of
Research Assistant, 2016-2018. Brooke Isherwood was a graduate student in the Department of English at the University of Victoria, concentrating on medieval and early modern Literature. She had a special interest in Shakespeare as well as lesser-known works from the Renaissance.
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland
King of England
King of England and Ireland
King of England
Poet and playwright.
Playwright.
Naval officer and diarist. Husband of
First Baron Rich and Speaker of the House of Commons. Lord Chancellor of England
Founder of St. Bartholomew’s Priory. Buried at St. Bartholomew’s Priory.
Companion of
Wife of
Maid of
Most MoEML documents, or significant fragments with mol:
prefix and accessed through the web application
with their id + .xml
.
The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on MoEML’s OpenLayers3-based rendering of the Agas Map.
Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey
Links to page-images in the
The mdt (MoEML Document Type) prefix used on
The mdtlist (MoEML Document Type listing) prefix used in linking attributes points to a listings page constructed from a category in the central MDT taxonomy in the includes file. There are two variants, one with the plain _subcategories
, meaning all subcategories of the category.
The molgls (MoEML gloss) prefix used on
This molvariant prefix is used on
This molajax prefix is used on
The molstow prefix is used on
The molshows prefix is used on
The sb prefix is used on
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
The Fair sat [u]pon [a] portion of the ground now known as Smithfield (that is, smooth field), bordering upon the marsh, great elm trees grew, and it was known as The Elms. The king’s market perhaps was held among the trees; but on the marsh the Priory
(Morley 9). According to Sugden:
[i]ts frequenters were called [Bartholomew] Birds
The Fair began in confirmed with his charter and seal
that with the same freedoms that [the king’s] crown is libertied with, or any other church in England that is most y-freed; and released it all customs, and declared it for to be free from all earthly service, power, and subjection, and gave sharp sentence against contrary malignants
(Morley 14). Included within this was the Fair, to which the King granted:
firm peace to all persons coming to and returning from The Fair which is wont to be celebrated in that place at the Feast of St. Bartholomew; and [he] forbid any of the Royal servants to implead any of their persons, or without the consent of the canons, on those three days, to wit, the eve of the feast, the feast itself, and the day following, to levy dues upon those going thither.
In passed through the king’s hands, and were for ever sundered from each other
(Morley 112). When the king tried to establish a new hospital on the site of the Hospital of St. Bartholomew in courtiers and others eagerly put forward their requests to purchase houses and lands taken from the several religious bodies
(Morley 113, 115). Priory in West Smithfield, with all that was upon the ground within its enclosure, and all rights thereto pertaining
(Morley 116). Morley further notes that
the king farther granted to
all that Our Fair and Markets commonly named and called Bartholomew Fair, holden and to be holden every year within the aforesaid close, called Great St. Bartholomew Close and in West Smithfield aforesaid, to continue yearly for three days
.
The details of said grant, however,
saves all the rights of the city to the Fair outside St. Bartholomew’s enclosure. It gave
In reduction to the old term of Three Days was ordered, as a check to vice, and in order that the pleasures of the Fair might not choke up the avenues of traffic
(Morley 336). It is further noted that:
In
for the suppression of vicious practices in Bartholomew Fair, as obscene, lascivious, and scandalous plays, comedies, and farces, unlawful games and interludes, drunkenness
But there was no suppression of the puppet theatres.
Debates over the length of the Fair hit their stride in the early 1700s. The Fair, at the time, only lasted three days, but calls were made for the Fair to be once again extended. One predominant argument to maintain the Fair’s three day length, however, was the fact that [a]ll charters and writs, from the
—the one exception being the charter granted by mere Carnival, a season of the utmost Disorder and Debauchery, by reason of the Booths for Drinking, Music, Dancing, Stage-plays, Drolls, Lotteries, Gaming, Raffling, and what not
(Morley 381). In
The Fair was ultimately suppressed
Most notably, the Fair is mentioned in
stagekeeper ridicules the idea of the play: the author, he says,(Sugden 48). Inhas not hit the humours, he does not know them; he has not conversed with the [Bartholomew] birds, as they say
a usurer is described as one that would flay his father’s skin off(Sugden 48).and sell it to cover drums for children at [Bartholomew] Fair
On the 29th of August, 1668 Mr Pepys , having found poor entertainment at the playhouse, was dull.So I out, and met my wifeI.e., in a coach, and stopped her going thither to meet me; and took her andElizabeth Pepys .Mercer andDeb . to Bartholomew Fair, and there did see a ridiculous obscene little stage-play, calledMarry Audrey , a foolish thing, but seen by everybody.