Rural markets c. 1200–c. 1350: a late start?

Around 1280 the villages of Akersloot, Uitgeest and Wormer in Kennemerland received exemption from the river tolls in Holland as a reward for supporting Count Floris V in his war against the Frisians.¹ The toll privilege suggests an early involvement of the villages in regional or even interregional trade, but for the next fifty years or so the sources remain silent on the subject of rural commerce in Kennemerland. Then, in the year 1347, at the outbreak of the succession conflict between the later Count Willem V and his mother Margaretha, Willem signed a document that prohibited weekly markets in