. Vanishing England . ousand were interred in the burial ground ofthe Carthusians, and few dared to attend the fair for fearof the pestilence. Other terrible things the gateway saw : the burning ofheretics. Not infrequently did these fires of persecutionrage. One of the first of these martyrs was John Bedley,a tailor, burnt in Smithfield in 1410. In Foxs Book ofMartyrs you can see a woodcut of the burning ofAnne Ascue and others, showing a view of the Prioryand the crowd of spectators who watched the poorlady die. Not many days afterwards the fair-folkassembled, while the ground was still blac
. Vanishing England . ousand were interred in the burial ground ofthe Carthusians, and few dared to attend the fair for fearof the pestilence. Other terrible things the gateway saw : the burning ofheretics. Not infrequently did these fires of persecutionrage. One of the first of these martyrs was John Bedley,a tailor, burnt in Smithfield in 1410. In Foxs Book ofMartyrs you can see a woodcut of the burning ofAnne Ascue and others, showing a view of the Prioryand the crowd of spectators who watched the poorlady die. Not many days afterwards the fair-folkassembled, while the ground was still black with herashes, and dogs danced and women tumbled and the 356 VANISHING ENGLAND devil jeered in the miracle play on the spot wheremartyrs died. We should need a volume to describe all the sights ofthis wondrous fair, the church crowded with worshippers,the halt and sick praying for healing, the churchyard fullof traders, the sheriff proclaiming new laws, the youngmen bowling at ninepins, pedlars shouting their wares,. An Old English Fair players performing the miracle play on a movable stage,bands of pipers, lowing oxen, neighing horses, and bleat-ing sheep. It was a merry sight that medieval Bartholo-mew Fair. We still have Cloth Fair, a street so named, with aremarkable group of timber houses with over-sailingstoreys and picturesque gables. It is a very dark andnarrow thoroughfare, and in spite of many changes itremains a veritable bit of old London, as it was inthe seventeenth century. These houses have sprung up VANISHING FAIRS 357 where in olden days the merchants booths stood for thesale of cloth. It was one of the great annual markets ofthe nation, the chief cloth fair in England that had norival. Hither came the officials of the Merchant TailorsCompany bearing a silver yard measure, to try themeasures of the clothiers and drapers to see if they werecorrect. And so each year the great fair went on, andpriors and canons lived and died and were buried in thechurch or bene
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