Stourbridge is a good mile beyond Jesus College. In the field close by the Leper’s Chapel was held the famous Stourbridge Fair, the English counterpart of Beaucaire and Nijni-Novgorod. There is no doubt that the medieval Cambridge owed its fame in a very large measure to this annual mart. It was the most important of a series of fairs in the Eastern Counties—Tombland Fair at Norwich and the marts of Lynn and Wisbech have still a certain celebrity—and its interest is largely enhanced by the fact that, after the dissolution of the leper’s hospital, its original proprietor under a charter of King John, the University had an official connection with it. It lasted for a month, from August 24th to September 28th, and during that period received visits from all the principal merchants in England. It was opened by the Vice-Chancellor in person and was patronised, perhaps rather noisily, by the University generally. Its commercial importance is to be gathered from a passage in Defoe’s _Tour of Great Britain_, quoted by Mr Atkinson in his interesting account of the fair. Hops and wool were the two great staples of trade, and Stourbridge Fair determined the price of hops in England. It was thus not a mere place of pleasure, but resembled the great nomadic markets of the east. Anybody who has been to Lynn Mart or to Stourbridge Fair itself in its sorry old age knows that to-day the great business of the fairs consists in steam roundabouts and side-shows. The roundabout is a late development, but the side-show has an honourable antiquity. Stourbridge Fair boasted, within the last century, a theatre where legitimate Shaksperian drama was admirably performed by a Norwich company. The performances were largely attended by the University, and enterprising ladies like Mrs Frere of Downing were to be seen there with fashionable parties. The story is often told of “rare Richard Farmer,” Master of Emmanuel, how he and a few friends, ardent lovers of Shakspere, attended the Stourbridge Theatre night after night, occupying a bench especially reserved for them.