Fairs were held, as has been said, throughout Europe. The journeys of the crusaders had shown what comforts and luxuries there were in the world. People had developed new tastes and they made new demands. They would have thought themselves ill-treated indeed if they had had to depend upon a town market to supply their wants. In England, the largest fair was that of Stourbridge, near Cambridge. Its streets and booths were spread over an area half a mile square. Some of these streets were named for the trades represented and others for the nations represented. Stourbridge fair lasted a month, and during this time there were immense sales of both English and foreign productions. Two seaports specially liked by merchants on the Continent were near Stourbridge, and vessels came in by scores loaded with foreign goods. Italy sent silks and velvets and glass of her own manufacture, and also cotton, spices, and manufactured articles from the East. From France and Spain came quantities of wine. Flemish ships brought fine linen and woolen cloth. The Hanseatic League, or union of German towns that ruled the commerce of northern Europe, brought many products of the north, such as iron, copper, timber, salt fish, and meat, furs, grain, amber, dried herring, resin, and pitch. As time passed, the business of the League spread to the south and west, and then this great mercantile union brought wine and oil and salt from France and Spain and Portugal. At Stourbridge the League merchants bought barley for the breweries of Flanders, together with large numbers of horses and cattle. Most of all, however, they wanted wool to sell to the various towns where it was to be woven into cloth. England raised such vast quantities of wool that its sale brought in large amounts of money. It was looked upon as an important source of the country's wealth, and to this day when the Lord Chancellor enters the House of Lords, he takes his seat upon a large square bag of wool covered with red cloth.

Another famous English fair was held at Winchester. This dates from the time of William the Conqueror. He allowed the Bishop of Winchester to hold it for one day in the year; but William's greatgrandson, Henry II, allowed it to be held for sixteen days. Whoever traveled on a road leading to the fair or crossed a bridge had to pay toll. The fair was a valuable bit of property in those days; but its chief dependence was upon the sale of wool. This sale gradually passed to the eastern ports, and the fair dwindled away.

Often fairs became noted for the sale of some one thing. People in England who wanted to buy geese went to Nottingham; those who wanted to enjoy every kind of amusement that was dear to the folk of the time could hardly wait for the opening of the Greenwich fair. Probably no one ever made a long journey to Birmingham expressly to buy gingerbread and onions; but those were certainly the two articles that had won fame for the Birmingham fair. At Smithfield, where the Londoners went for their sports, St. Bartholomew's fair was held. This was famous for some time for wool and cloth. Later, the chief sales were of wool and cattle. Gradually the character of the fair changed, and it became simply a place for wild and rollicking amusements.

It is only seventy years since Saint Bartholomew's fair was given up; and some of the great fairs have continued to this day. There is one at Beaucaire in France seven hundred years old, where all sorts of rare merchandise may still be found. The fair of Leipsic in Germany is even older. It has a most excellent location, because it is so central that it can be easily reached from any part of Europe. It is still held, and is well known for its sales of books.

The most famous fair that is still in existence is that of Nijni-Novgorod, or Lower Novgorod, in Russia. This began, no one knows when, in an old custom of Russian merchants and merchants from the East meeting on the Volga River to exchange goods. The place of meeting moved from one site to another, and about one hundred years ago it was permanently settled at Nijni-Novgorod. When the time of the fair draws near, the Volga River swarms with boats, and the quays for ten miles along the river front are heaped up with goods, protected as best they may be by sheds until they can be removed to the shops made ready for them. There are about six thousand of these shops, most of them built of stone. To this fair Asia sends tea, cotton, silk, madder, and various manufactured wares, made chiefly of leather. Western Europe sends groceries, wines, and manufactured articles. Russia herself four-fifths of the goods sold; and she makes a fine display of iron, grain, salt, furs, and pottery. The fair continues for a month. It is estimated that the value of the goods sold there each year now amounts to about three hundred million dollars.

An enormous quantity of merchandise was carried over Europe every year, and always by water whenever there was a convenient river or sea. In the thirteenth century goods from India were brought up the Persian Gulf and the Tigris River until the point nearest to Antioch and Seleucia was reached. Some merchants then went directly to these cities, and there put their goods on board Venetian vessels. Others went from the Tigris northward to Trebizond on the Black Sea by caravans. At Trebizond they met Venetian vessels, and the spices, silks, cottons, oils, sugar, gums, and precious stones of the East were carried through the Black Sea, the sea of Marmora, around Greece, into the Adriatic Sea, and then to Venice. A third route was to go by water from India to Aden, at the southeast end of the Red Sea, make a nine-days' journey to the Nile, down the Nile to Cairo, through a canal to Alexandria, and there transfer the cargo to Venetian vessels. It was chiefly through this trade that Venice and, a little later, Genoa, became wealthy and powerful; but in 1497 three small vessels set sail from Portugal to make a long voyage. When they returned, they had rounded Africa and so had discovered a new route to India and the East. The people of the East were no longer obliged to send their goods to Europe by wearisome and dangerous caravan journeys; they could load them upon ships and dispatch them directly to Portugal. The power of Venice grew less. Genoa was forced to yield to Milan, which, like Florence, had won wealth and fame by its manufactures.

So it was that goods were brought from the East to Europe. The traders who carried them from southern to northern Europe must have been glad that there were two such rivers as the Danube and the Rhine; for they could load their vessels on the Black Sea and float them up the Danube and the Waag, if they were going to Russia; or they could continue up the Danube as far as it was navigable, go by land to the Rhine River, and then down the Rhine to "the quaint old Flemish city" of Bruges. They could also go northwest from Venice to the Rhine if they wished, and then to Bruges, which was for a long while the centre of commerce in the north. Many Venetian merchants were accustomed to go all the way by sea, passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and up the coasts of Portugal and France to Flanders.

At a time when no one seemed to think it possible to do any special thing unless he was a member of a society for doing that thing, of course all this buying and selling was carried on in great degree, not by individuals, but by companies of merchants. This was far more than a mere custom. Traders usually had to make long stays in the countries where they went to sell goods. It was often next to impossible for a foreigner to obtain justice, if any disagreement arose between him and a native; but many merchants united in a strong company could win not only justice, but valuable privileges of trade. One of the most important of these associations in England was known as the "Merchants of the Staple." The articles exported from England in largest quantities, such as wool, tin, and lead, were called staples. In order to make sure of collecting the duty on them, laws were made forbidding any one to export these things from any other place in England except the ten "staple towns," Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristol. The staple goods were taken to these towns to be weighed and taxed, and then they might be shipped to other countries. Wool was the most important staple, for until the middle of the fourteenth century, the English wove only coarse, heavy cloth, and imported their fine cloth, chiefly from the Netherlands. Some town in the Netherlands was chosen as a "foreign staple," and there the English goods must be carried before they could be sold. The plans of the government, however, for staples were very uncertain. Just as merchants became well accustomed to one foreign staple town, another one was chosen. Then it was decided to remove the staple to England, then to the Netherlands again; and more than once the whole plan of staples was given up for a time, and merchants were free to carry what they liked wherever they chose to take it.

Traders who imported or exported goods in their own vessels were called "adventurers," and in England there was a famous association called the "Merchants Adventurers." Fine weaving had at length been introduced into England, and the exports which they carried from England to the Netherlands were chiefly cloth. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the "Adventurers" were great folk indeed, with their governor and twenty-four assistant governors, their great wealth, and also their brand-new charter and their coat of arms, both granted to them by the king.