Defoe's journey took him into Cambridge during the height of Stourbridge Fair.
This was an annual fair held on Stourbridge Common during early September.
The fair originated in 1199, when King John granted Cambridge's Leper Chapel dispensation to hold a three-day fair to raise money to support the lepers. By the time of Defoe's visit, Stourbridge Fair was the largest fair in Europe, and was a major source of income for the Borough of Cambridge.
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A plan of Stourbridge Fair drawn up in 1725, very close to the time when Daniel Defoe visited it. (Cambridgeshire Archives)
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"It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstances of this fair exactly," Defoe wrote; "the shops are placed in rows like streets; scarce any trades are omitted, goldsmiths, toy shops, brasiers, turners, milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china-warehouses, and in a word all trades that can be named in London; with coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, and eating-houses, innumerable, and all in tents and booths."
Most of the visitors, Defoe discovered, stayed overnight in Cambridge. "There are sometimes no less than fifty hackney coaches which come from London, and ply night and morning to carry the people to and from Cambridge, where the gross of the people lodge." Most of these people were then ferried to the Fair by hundreds of rowboats along the Cam.