| Description | An Act of 1555-56 ordered that registers should be kept of horses bought and sold at markets and fairs. In Chester, the sheriffs kept these records. The names of buyers and sellers, their place of origin, a description of the horse and its price are given. Traders came from as far afield as Buckinghamshire, Kent and Ireland. To 1640, entries were made in the sheriffs' court books (SBC), but a few stray folios were bound into a register which dates from c.1568 to 1579, in the 1930s. A separate register was kept from 1655 to 1723. |