To separate Winchester from the history which is enshrined within her is a thing impossible and unthinkable. It is in the light of her historic past alone that Winchester can be rightly viewed; and attractive and fair as are her buildings and her natural surroundings, it is only in their historical setting that they can be adequately appreciated. Let us, before we set foot within any of her streets, endeavour to get some general mental picture of the city in which so many associations are centred and enshrined; let us take our stand on the bold hill which dominates the city towards the east, St. Giles’s Hill. Had we mounted up here on the 1st of September--the feast of St. Egidius--some six or seven centuries ago, it would have been a busy and motley throng that we should have had to elbow our way through. Englishmen from every county, foreigners from every land--Frenchmen, Germans, Poles, and Jews--all mingled together in hopeless confusion. A city in miniature--street after street of wooden booths, all enclosed in a wooden wall or palisade--would meet the eye. And the inhabitants! What varied types should we see--merchants and chapmen, citizens and countrymen, pedlars and ballad-mongers, all eager and excited, bargaining, jesting, quarrelling--a babel of tongues, peoples, and languages; while here and there a bailiff or officer wearing a bishop’s mitre figured on his livery passes along and scrutinizes the merchandise. No friendly reception does he meet with, for this is the Great Fair held in honour of St. Giles, where merchants from all parts of Europe congregate to buy the wool for which the south of England is so famous, and during the sixteen days that the fair lasts no merchant or shopman in Winchester, or ten miles round, may buy or sell except within the fair itself, and whoever is a welcome and popular figure, it is not the Lord Bishop of Winchester nor the bishop’s bailiff, for all merchandise must first pay toll--and heavy toll--for the bishop’s exclusive benefit, before it may pass within the barriers, and be exposed for sale.