50 A MEDIAEVAL CITY

grave-slabs were made bearing finely designed
effigies.

Marketing, i.e. trading, was done mostly at the
frequent and regular markets and at the fairs. The
right to hold a market or a fair was among the
rights obtained by means of ro}^al charters. While
markets were held once or several times a week or
every day, fairs took place more rarely and at some
of the most important and popular holiday seasons
of the year, like Whitsuntide. Fairs attracted a
much larger public than the markets.

In the city there were markets in different places
for different kinds of produce on certain days. For
instance, in the fifteenth century there was a market
of live-stock at Toft Green every Friday. The
public squares, called Thursday Market and Pave-
ment, were tised as market-places. Some markets
were held in the streets. Stalls were set up on
which to exhibit the wares. The ordinary food-
stuffs and materials, just as in the open market held
at the present time in the long and broad Parliament
Street, formed of Thursday Market and Pavement
and the space formerly occupied by a compact mass
of old houses between the two originally distinct
squares, were the things sold and bought at the
mediseval markets: such as butter, meat, fish,
linen, leather, corn, poultry, herbs. Some, for
example butchers' 'shops, kept open market every
day. Craftsmen worked goods at the premises of
their merchant employers, which usually combined
the latters' home and workshop; it was chiefly at
the markets and f airs that these goods were sold.

Markets and fairs were controlled by theauthority,
whether municipal or archiepiscopal, that possessed
the right of holding them. Again, particular care
was taten to .ensure preference being obtained by