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Title
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Grant of weekly market and two annual fairs...
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Date
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1554-04-24
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Summary
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Document signed ('Marye the quene'). 17 lines in a neat secretary hand, on paper, countersigned by Sir John., A grant of a weekly Friday market and two annual fairs to Lyme Regis. Mary gives a warrant to an unidentified official to draw up the grant for the town of ’Kings Lyme’ [Lyme Regis] of a weekly Friday market and two annual three-day fairs in February and September: the grants to include all stallage, piccage [a fee for breaking ground at a fair], tollage and customs with the court of piepowder [a special tribunal for actions during the market or fair], as well as the right of correcting weights and measures; those attending the fairs may not be ’suyd arrested or molested in any suyte ... except it be for acc[i]ons and suyts onely rysyng... w[i]t[h]in the seid Fayers’. ’Where at the humble suyte and peticion of the Burgesses of our Towne of Kings Lyme in our Countie of Dorsett, we are right welle contented and pleaced ... to give and graunte unto the Burgesses of our seid Towne and to their Successours forev[er] one m[ar]kett to be kepte weekely w[ith]in our seid Towne on the Friday forev[er], And also t[w]o Fayres yerely there to be holden and kept, that is to say thone Fayre to begynne the firste day of February yerely forev[er], And there to conynue three dayes then next folowyng, And thother Fayre to begynne the xx [20th] day of September yerely and there to continue for three days then next folowyng’. The grant for Lyme Regis was formally issued on 14 June. This charter falls at a lull in the turbulent first year of Mary's reign, between the quelling of Wyatt's Rebellion in February and the preparations for her marriage to Philip of Spain in July.
