Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/76

74 These regulations were probably intended in part to prevent fraud and disputes, and they might perhaps be in some measure serviceable for that purpose in an age when writing was not in common use; but there can be no doubt that they had principally in view the protection of the revenue of the king and the lord of the manor; to each of whom, it appears from Domesday Book, a certain proportion of the price of everything sold for more than twenty pennies was paid, the one-half by the buyer, and the other by the seller. The amount here specified would prevent the rule from affecting the ordinary purchases of the people in shops, to which it must be supposed they were permitted to resort for the necessaries of life without any of these annoying formalities. The transactions to which it applied would chiefly take place at the public markets or fairs, which appear to have been established in various parts of the country, and which in all the greater towns were probably held every week. Originally the Sunday seems to have been the usual market-day; but the repeated efforts of the church at length effected the general substitution of Saturday. Besides the weekly markets, however, there were probably others of a more important kind held at greater intervals. At many of the markets, besides the duties exacted upon all sales, a toll appears to have been demanded either from every individual frequenting the market, or at least from all who brought goods to dispose of. Most of these commercial usages of the Anglo-Saxons were inherited from their predecessors the Romans.

They had also, to a certain extent, the advantage of the facilities of communication between the different parts of the country, which had been created while it was in the occupation of that great people. The four great highways appear to have received Saxon names, and they were undoubtedly maintained in use during the whole of the Saxon period, as were also, it may be presumed, most of the other roads, or streets, as they were called, with which the country was intersected in all directions. And, besides the navigable rivers, it has