_Gloves at Fairs_ (Vol. vii., p. 455.).--The custom of "hanging out the glove at fair time," as described by E. G. R., is, in all probability, of Chester origin. The annals of that city show that its two great annual fairs were established, or rather confirmed, by a charter of Hugh Lupus, the first Norman Earl of Chester, who granted to the abbot and convent of St. Werburgh (now the cathedral) "the extraordinary privilege, that no criminals resorting to their fairs at Chester should be arrested for any crime whatever, except such as they might have committed during their stay in the city." For several centuries, Chester was famous for the manufacture of gloves; and in token thereof, it was the custom for some days before, and during the continuance of the fair, to hang out from the town-hall, then situate at the High Cross, their local emblem of commerce--a _glove_: thereby proclaiming that non-freemen and strangers were permitted to trade within the city, a privilege at all other times enjoyed by the citizens only. During this period of temporary "free trade," debtors were safe from the tender mercies of their creditors, and free from the visits of the sheriff's officer and his satellites. On the removal of the town-hall to another part of the city, the leathern symbol of "unrestricted competition" was suspended, at the appointed season, from the roof of St. Peter's Church; until that reckless foe to antiquity, the Reform Bill, aimed a heavy blow at all our prescriptive rights and privileges, and decreed that the stranger should be henceforth on a footing with the freeborn citizen. Notwithstanding this, the authorities of the city still continued to "hang out their banner on the outward walls;" and it is only within the last ten years that the time-honoured custom has ceased to exist. T. HUGHES. Chester.