DURING the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and especially during the recession of 1440–70, a large number of the small village markets disappeared. In Surrey and Sussex trade became concentrated in urban markets, but in Kent local markets retained their importance. They provided an outlet for the surplus goods of small-scale rural producers and allowed townspeople and others to buy small quantities of grain, butter, eggs, geese, capons, and other goods at reasonable prices. In addition, by 1400 every town had several permanent shops, usually on the ground floor of a house, at which butchers and bakers sold goods on a daily basis and at which local tradesmen and artisans — the tailor, the shoemaker, the barber — plied their trade. Over the next century and half the number and significance of these shops grew, reducing the overall reliance on the market-place. None the less, even in the early sixteenth century markets, together with fairs, were seen as the normal sites for everyday transactions. An injured yeoman, seeking damages after an assault, claimed that he had been so badly injured that he could not go about his business ‘to oversee and govern his economy and agriculture, to collect his debts, and, at fairs and markets (ferias, nundinas et mercatis), to buy and provide victuals and other necessities for himself, his wife, and household’.