(2) _Stourbridge Fair_—But the greatest of all English fairs, and that which kept its reputation and importance the longest, was the Fair of Stourbridge, near Cambridge.[21] It was of European renown, and lasted for a whole month, from the end of August to the end of September. Its importance was due to the fact that it was within easy reach of the ports of the east coast, which at that time were very accessible and much frequented. Hither came the Venetian, and Genoese merchants, with stores of Eastern produce—silks and velvets, cotton, and precious stones. The Flemish merchants brought the fine linens and cloths of Bruges, Liège, and Ghent, and other manufacturing towns. Frenchmen and Spaniards were present with their wines; Norwegian sailors with tar and pitch; and the mighty traders of the Hanse towns exposed to sale furs and amber for the rich, iron and copper for the farmers, flax for their wives; while homely fustian, buckram, wax, herrings, and canvas mingled incongruously in their booths with strange, far-off Eastern spices and ornaments. And in return the English farmers—or traders on their behalf—carried to the fair hundreds of huge wool-sacks, wherewith to clothe the nations of Europe; or barley for the Flemish breweries, with corn and horses and cattle also. Lead was brought from the mines of Derbyshire, and tin from Cornwall; even some iron from Sussex, but this was accounted inferior to the imported metal. All these wares were, as at Winchester, exposed in stalls and tents in long streets, some named after the various nations that congregated {64} there, and others after the kind of goods on sale. This vast fair lasted down to the eighteenth century in unabated vigour, and was at that time described by Daniel Defoe, in a work now easily accessible to all,[22] which contains a most interesting description of all the proceedings of this busy month. It is not much more than a hundred years since the Lancashire merchants alone used to send their goods to Stourbridge, upon a thousand pack-horses, but now the pack-horses and fairs have gone, and the telegraph and railway have taken their place. [21. See note 10, p. 246, on Stourbridge Fair.] [22. _Tour through the Eastern Counties_ (Cassell’s National Library, 3_d._).]