But all this is still outdone at least in show, by two articles,
which are the peculiars of this fair, and do not begin till the
other part of the fair, that is to say for the woollen manufacture
begins to draw to a close. These are the wool and the hops; as for
the hops, there is scarce any price fixed for hops in England, till
they know how they sell at Stourbridge fair; the quantity that
appears in the fair is indeed prodigious, and they, as it were,
possess a large part of the field on which the fair is kept to
themselves; they are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex,
from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent, and from Farnham in Surrey,
besides what are brought from London, the growth of those and other
places.
Enquiring why this fair should be thus, of all other places in
England, the centre of that trade; and so great a quantity of so
bulky a commodity be carried thither so far; I was answered by one
thoroughly acquainted with that matter thus: the hops, said he,
for this part of England, grow principally in the two counties of
Surrey and Kent, with an exception only to the town of Chelmsford
in Essex, and there are very few planted anywhere else.
There are indeed in the west of England some quantities growing:
as at Wilton, near Salisbury; at Hereford and Broomsgrove, near
Wales, and the like; but the quantity is inconsiderable, and the
places remote, so that none of them come to London.
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