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The Feast of St. Michael (a.k.a. Michaelmas) being the last day of laborers’ employment agreements the first workday following presented a very big dilemma. If the agreement was not renewed (and most harvest labor agreements were not) the laborer was vulnerable to arrest for vagrancy / vagabondage. At least since the time of Richard II, statutes were regularly enacted and revised to forcefully discourage persons from being without a master. This from Richard’s Parliament, in 1388:
Item, that the wardens of the jails they are charged to receive these laborers, servants, beggars and vagrants in prisons and to detain them there without mainprise or bail upon pain of a 100s. fine for failure to do so.[1]
That the vagrant was looking for work was not an excuse. In this way, wages were kept down.[2] Even when labor was scarce the laborer was in no position to hold out for higher wages. He or she needed to be employed immediately in order to avoid the “statutes”.
This also prevented gambling among unemployed persons who simply ended up in a town or village because that’s where their last employment left them. They might clean the locals out or become drunk and assault them. They might even take to the area roads and become robbers.
In 1495, King Henry VII and Parliament revised the vagrancy statutes expressly to ease the harsh treatment under the statutes of Richard II.[3] Every sheriff, mayor and officer of a community was directed to search for vagrants after the end of every term[4] of the business year.
Furthermore be it enacted by the seid auctorite that the justices of the peace or ij of theym at the lest within their shires, and every maire shereff and baily within their citees townes and boroughes, shall have full power and auctorite to make iiij tymes in the yere, that is to say, every quarter ons or ofter as by their discression shalbe thought necessary throughowte all their shire, a dewe and diligent and a secrete serche, and if they or eny of them cane fynde by reason of the seid serch eny of the seid mysruled persons the seid misruled persons so founden to have lyke punysshment and correccion as is aforseid.[5]
Again fines were threatened if an official shirked this duty. Fines were set for anyone in the community who sheltered a vagrant to protect them from punishment.
Eight years later, Henry’s Parliament added “suspecte persons lyvyng suspiciously” and set their punishment at
to sette in stokkys there to remayne by the space of oon day and oon nyght, and ther to have noon other sustenaunce but bred and water; and after the seid day and nyght passed to be had out and sette at large, and then to avoide the towne or place wher they be take into such cite towne place or hundred wher they were borne, or ellis to the place wher they last made their abode by the space of iij yeres
The “mysdoer” was placed in the stocks for a day and night, on bread and water, then escorted to the city limits with directions to go to his or her place of origin or in which they had lived at least 3 years.
Henry’s statute was indeed far more humane than Richard II’s. Many a suspect person is likely to have been thankful he or she lived in a more civilized time. That said, the punishment was nothing to sneeze at.
For this reason, the next workday after Michaelmas (or a day soon after) many localities opened their annual “Statute Fairs”. Employers attended the fairs knowing that they would find many available laborers gathered together in one spot from which they could take their pick. Laborers attended in order to avoid the punishments of the vagrancy statutes by being taken into service.
Each laborer attending the fair pinned a symbol of their trade to their cap, or, if that was too unwieldy, to their shirt. According to Brand’s Popular Antiquities:
A carter exhibits a piece of whip-cord tied to his hat: a cow-herd has a lock of cow-hair in his: and the dairy-maid has the same descriptive mark attached to her breast.[6]
The prospective employer inspected the symbols looking for the skill they needed for the coming quarter or year. Other statutes forcefully encouraged those employment agreements that went beyond bringing in the harvest to extend from one Michaelmas to the next.
In the days after the fair ended, the local authorities did a sweep and gathered the unemployed for their punishment and escort to the city limits. Presumably, the vast majority of those who remained unemployed chose to start for their family homes or for life in the unincorporated areas outside of towns and cities immediately as the fair ended.
Statute fairs were called by other names in different times and places. Some seem to have been called Michaelmas fairs, hiring fairs, bush fairs, some goose fairs. Most of those names, however, were early modern revisions.
The most curious name by far, and the most persistent, it having become the popular name for such fairs, was the “mop fair,” or “the mop” for short. It was not an early modern revision. It seems to have existed as far back as the fairs themselves.
Why the fair became known as “the mop” has thus far escaped detection as far as I know. I would like to suggest that the answer is almost certainly that “mob” in Gaelic means a tuft, tassel or other decoration attached to clothing.[7] In Ireland and/or Scotland the badges worn to declare the laborer’s specialty were probably known as “mobs” for which reason the fairs were called “mob fairs”. The name so tickled the common Englishmen that they adopted it as “mop fairs” (jauntily shortened to “mops”) a slang for the English version of the fairs.
Next: The Other Side of the Mop.
[1] Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores, Volume 41, Issue 9 (1886) from 12 Richard II, chapter 9 : “Item que lez gardeìns de lez goals soient chargez de rescevier tielx laborers, servantz, mendinantz et vegarantz en prisons et lez deteîgner illeosqes sanz meinprise ou lesser en baille sur peine de paier au roy cent sold. ”
[2] Fixed wages were always established in these same statutes.
[3] The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, Vol. 2 (1914). A. F. Pollard ed. 239. 11 Henry VII, c. 2, “…of his pitie intending to reduce theym therunto by softer meanes then by such extreme rigour therfor purveied in a Statute made in the tyme of King Richard the second, considering also the great charges that shuld growe to his subgettis for bringing of vagabondse to the gaoles according to the same Statute…”
[4] During different periods of history there were three or four terms. See my “A Thousand Years of English Terms” https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-thousand-years-of-english-terms.html.
[5] Ibid. 239. 11 Henry VII, c. 2.
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