Lord the King of England we dared not move a hand toward the seizing of their bodies, or send the said burgess and others out of the Realm of England. Therefore we request and earnestly entreat your lordships that at present in this charge you will hold us excused from the actions abovesaid, and deign to write to our Lord the illustrious King of England upon the aforesaid debts and requests; and those things which shall be commanded us for the advantage of the said creditors, and for your good pleasure, we will dispatch without delay, and to the utmost of our power. Farewell in Him who is the salvation of all men. Given at London on Saturday next after the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the year of Our Lord 1300. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XX. OTHER FAIRS OF FRANCE. I have now to notice some of the other great fairs of France. And here it has to be remarked that while the later sovereigns—certainly down to Louis XV.—adopted the regulations already reviewed, for their model in the government of fairs, yet that there were some necessary deviations, according as time, place, and other circumstances demanded. The chief of these deviations will be noted in the following summary, wherein I review the provincial fairs first, and afterwards those in and around Paris. Postlethwayt, in his “Dictionary of Trade,” from which some of the preceding and following details are drawn, remarks, not with entire clearness: “Though it be not essential to these meetings of traders to have comedians, rope-dancers, and the like, yet there are few considerable ones without enough of them; and, perhaps, is what greatly contributes to the trade of them—the nobility and country gentry greatly flocking to them, more for their diversion than what they buy there, which might be had, perhaps, better and cheaper at home. It is well known how the nobility of Languedoc flock to the fair of Beaucaire, and those of Normandy to that of Guibray; but it is nothing in comparison to the assembly of German princes and nobles at the three fairs of Leipzic, and the two of Frankfort-on-the-Main.” He was writing in the first half of the last century. Things are now much changed.