1298. To all stewards, bailiffs, and officers of the fair of St. Botolph and other faithful of Christ to whom the present letters shall come, Henry le Galeys, mayor of the city of London, as well as the whole commune send greeting. Know ye that we have made and constituted our beloved in Christ Elyas Russel, John de Armenters, William de Paris and William de Mareys, our wardens and attorneys at the present fair of St. Botolph, to demand and claim and exact all our citizens who are for any cause arrested or impleaded in any of your courts, and for executing full justice in all plaints against them according to the law merchant, ratifying and holding good anything they or any one of them may do in the premises, and in all other things which they or any one of them shall deem to affect in any way the liberties of the city and our citizens. In witness whereof we have set our common seal to these presents. London, Sunday the Feast of St. Margaret the Virgin, 26 Edward I. Sharpe, _Cal. Letter Books of Corporation_, B. 219. PROFITS. Besides fines the _tolls_ were the most general source of profit. They were duties which the tenant of a market might exact on goods brought into the market and sold there. 1275. _Statute against exorbitant tolls._ Touching them that take outrageous toll, contrary to the common custom of the realm, in market towns, it is provided that if any do so in the king's town, which is let in fee-farm, the king shall seize into his own hand the franchise of the market; and if it be another's town, and the same be done by the lord of the town, the king shall do in like manner; and if it be done by a bailiff or any mean officer, without the commandment of his lord, he shall restore to the plaintiff as much more for the outrageous taking as he had of him, if he had carried away his toll, and shall have forty days' imprisonment. _Statute, 3 Edward I._, cap. 31. Tolls were not necessarily levied. In later mediæval times it was held illegal for the holder of a market to exact them unless he could prove his prescriptive right to do so, or unless, in the case of a market erected by a charter, such right had been explicitly granted. 1233. Because it has been certified to the king, by an enquiry made in accordance with his precept, that in the fair of Shalford, which is held there every year on the feast of the Assumption of Blessed Mary, it has never been customary to take toll or custom, except at the time when John of Gatesden was sheriff of Surrey, who of his own will ruled that toll should there be taken: therefore the sheriff of Surrey is commanded that he take no custom in that fair nor suffer it to be taken, and that he cause public proclamation and prohibition to be made, that in future none take toll on the occasion of that fair. _Cal. of Close_, 1231-5, 245. Stallkeepers made payments called _stallage_ for the sites they occupied to the holder of the market or fair.