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The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering from the witness-box: in your small-debt pie-powder court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect "detects" him. For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was a man at all.
During the closing decade of the famous Bartholomew Fair an annual medley of commerce and amusement which had its origin in the days when it was the great cloth exchange of all England and attracted clothiers from all quarters the scene of what was known as the Pie-Powder Court was located in a 'tavern known as the Hand and Shears.
In the town there is a much-modernized town hall, and near it the old-fashioned Booth Hall, a half-timbered building, now used as shops and cottages, where formerly courts were held, including the court of pie-powder, the usual accompaniment of every fair. Bridge Street is one of the most attractive streets in the borough, with its quaint old house, and the famous inn, "The Crown."
Concerning this court Blackstone offered this interesting explanation: "The lowest, and, at the same time, the most expeditious court of justice known to the law of England, is the Court of Pie-Powder, curia pedis pulverizati, so called from the dusty feet of the suitors."
We find mention made in the records of one court of pie-powder of men from a dozen or twenty English towns, from Bordeaux, and from Rouen. The men who came from any one town, whether of England or the Continent, acted and were treated as common members of the gild merchant of that town, as forming a sort of community, and being to a certain extent responsible for one another.
To prevent offences and settle disputes arising in the midst of the busy trading the officials of the lord formed a court which sat continually and followed a summary procedure. This was known as a court of "pie-powder," that is pied poudré, or dusty foot, so called, no doubt, from its readiness to hear the suits of merchants and wayfarers, as they were, without formality or delay.
The law which the court of pie-powder administered was often referred to as the "law merchant," a somewhat less rigid system than the common law, and one whose rules were generally defined, in these courts and in the king's courts, by juries chosen from among the merchants themselves.
Yet I had the rogues up at the court of pie-powder, and they will harm no more peaceful traders." "You travel much then!" "To Winchester, Linn mart, Bristol fair, Stourbridge, and Bartholomew's in London Town.
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