About this time it appears to have been the custom at weddings and other festive occasions to invite people to the feast--which was held at an alehouse--and then collect from them a sum of money to defray the expenses, and to stop this practice the court ordered that no one should be called upon to pay more than 4d. for such entertainment. No doubt the fairs of Manchester were now resorted to by considerable numbers, hence the order made in 1565 that every burgess was to find an able-bodied man, furnished with a bill (or axe) or a halberd, to wait upon the steward of the manor at these gatherings. At this time fruits, particularly apples, were sufficiently an article of commerce as to necessitate the appointment an overseer to regulate their sale. The manufacturers of "rugs" (a kind of coarse woollen cloth) were now forbidden to wet their good "openly in the stretes," but to do it either within their respective houses or behind the same. Alehouses were frequently the subject of the court's regulation, gaming, selling of ale during "tyme of morning prayer," and the like offences being severely dealt with, whilst drunken men found abroad in the streets at night were not only imprisoned in the "dungeon," but had to pay 6d. to the constable for the poor, and the unfortunate ale-house keeper, if found in a state of intoxication, was "discharged from ale-house keeping." The wearing of daggers and other weapons was found to lead to disorder, and forbidden, and the law forbidding the wearing of hats[110] on Sundays and holidays was enforced. Apprentices and male and female servants were to be fined if found in the streets after nine o'clock at night in the summer and eight o'clock in the winter. The practice of archery towards the end of the century began to fall off, and notwithstanding the Acts of Parliament passed to encourage it here in Manchester, officers had to be appointed to see the burgesses "exceryse [exercise] shootinge accordinge to the statute." Although Manchester was not at the time a borough, yet it is evident that the court leet was alive to many of the requirements of a growing town, and that, although its industries were now only in infancy, it had become a commercial centre, and was beginning to emerge from the obscurity to which it had been relegated during the feudal system. The plague of 1565 was succeeded in the year following by a great dearth, when a penny white loaf only weighed 6 or 8 ounces. Even at this date the Manchester church was often selected as the place to be married at, although neither the bride nor the bridegroom lived in the town, and on these occasions they were accompanied by "strange pipers or other minstrels," who played up to the church doors and after the ceremony at the ale-house. This raised the jealousy of the "town waytes," who persuaded the court to order that they should come no more.