But All This Is Still Outdone At Least In Show, By Two Articles,
Which Are The Peculiars Of This Fair, And Do Not Begin Till The
Other Part Of The Fair, That Is To Say For The Woollen Manufacture
Begins To Draw To A Close.
These are the wool and the hops; as for
the hops, there is scarce any price fixed for hops
In England, till
they know how they sell at Stourbridge fair; the quantity that
appears in the fair is indeed prodigious, and they, as it were,
possess a large part of the field on which the fair is kept to
themselves; they are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex,
from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent, and from Farnham in Surrey,
besides what are brought from London, the growth of those and other
places.
Enquiring why this fair should be thus, of all other places in
England, the centre of that trade; and so great a quantity of so
bulky a commodity be carried thither so far; I was answered by one
thoroughly acquainted with that matter thus: the hops, said he,
for this part of England, grow principally in the two counties of
Surrey and Kent, with an exception only to the town of Chelmsford
in Essex, and there are very few planted anywhere else.
There are indeed in the west of England some quantities growing:
as at Wilton, near Salisbury; at Hereford and Broomsgrove, near
Wales, and the like; but the quantity is inconsiderable, and the
places remote, so that none of them come to London.
As to the north of England, they formerly used but few hops there,
their drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which required no hops,
and consequently they planted no hops in all that part of England,
north of the Trent; nor did I ever see one acre of hop-ground
planted beyond Trent in my observation; but as for some years past,
they not only brew great quantities of beer in the north, but also
use hops in the brewing their ale much more than they did before;
so they all come south of Trent to buy their hops; and here being
quantities brought, it is great part of their back carriage into
Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and all
these counties; nay, of late, since the Union, even to Scotland
itself; for I must not omit here also to mention, that the river
Grant, or Cam, which runs close by the north-west side of the fair
in its way from Cambridge to Ely, is navigable, and that by this
means, all heavy goods are brought even to the fair-field, by water
carriage from London and other parts; first to the port of Lynn,
and then in barges up the Ouse, from the Ouse into the Cam, and so,
as I say, to the very edge of the fair.
In like manner great quantities of heavy goods, and the hops among
the rest, are sent from the fair to Lynn by water, and shipped
there for the Humber, to Hull, York, etc., and for Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, and by Newcastle, even to Scotland itself.
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