_An unauthorised Proclamation._—O yez! O yez! O yez! All manner of persons may take notice that in the Close of St. Bartholomew the Great and West Smithfield, London, and the streets, lanes and places adjoining, is now to be held a Fair for this day and the two days following, to which all people may freely resort and buy and sell according to the Liberties and Privileges of the said Fair, and may depart without disturbance, paying their duties. And all persons are strictly charged and commanded in His Majesty’s name, to help the peace, and to do nothing in the disturbance of the said Fair, as they will answer the contrary at their peril; and that there be no manner of arrest or arrests but by such officers as are appointed. And if any person be aggrieved, let them repair to the Court of Pie-Powder, where they will have speedy relief according to Justice and Equity. God save the King. This irregular proclamation seems to have been accepted as a legal act by the Lord Kensington who had become owner of one-half of the tolls of the fair, and it continued down to 1839. It was but a repetition of the double jurisdiction claimed in Sturbridge Fair. There is in the library of the British Museum a doggrel ballad, printed as a broad-sheet, called “The Dagonizing of Bartholomew Fair,” which describes, with coarse humour—the grossness of which may be attributed in part to the mingled resentment and contempt which underlies it—the measures taken by the civil authorities for the removal from the fair of the showmen who had pitched there in spite of the determination of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen to suppress with the utmost rigour everything which could move to laughter or minister to wonder. Among these are mentioned a fire-eating conjuror, a “Jack Pudding,” and “wonders made of wax,” being the earliest notice of a waxwork exhibition which I have been able to discover.—FROST’S _Old Showman_, &c., p. 31. In “A Caveat for Cut-purses,” a ballad of the time of Charles I., there is the following:— “The Players do tell you, in Bartholomew Faire, What secret consumptions and rascals you are; For one of their Actors, it seems, had the fate By some of your trade to be fleeced of late.” In another ballad, “Ragged and Torn and True,” there is this:— “The pick-pockets in a throng At a market or a faire, Will try whose purse is strong, That they may the money share.”