a market place, called the King’s Mexon.” A large accumulation of matter of great local and antiquarian interest is to be found in the Northwich Book of Orders, the Court Rolls, and the Walling Booke of Northwich, which consist of documents and records relating to the government of the town and the regulation of its salt industry about the middle of the seventeenth century. The “Ancient Customes of the Burrow and Town of Northwich,” the inventory of “The Liberties and Priviledges of Burgesses,” and the Orders “concerning the making of salt,” were collected and set down by Peter Warburton, of Chester, Esquire, Steward of Northwich, and afterwards a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster. At a Court held on 18th December, 1608, this compilation, “so full of interest and instruction,” was ratified and confirmed by Thomas Berrington, Gentleman, Steward of the said Court, and a jury of Burgesses, and Thomas Poole, Gentleman, Clerk of the said Court, was instructed to write them into a Booke “to the end the same may remain upon record to future ages.” The Nine Customes, numbered 10 to 18, which were written in 1638, were supplemented in 1641 by other Nine Customes, numbered 1 to 9, which had been “heretofore omitted merely through forgetfulness.” Of the eighty-four Orders relating to salt-making which appear in these records, the first sixty-one were agreed upon by “The Steward and Jury at Diverse Courts” up to 1629, the seven following were added in 1630, and seven more appeared on the rolls before Master Poole made a fair copy of the Orders in 1638. In the following year eight further regulations were issued. Order No. 84 bears the date of December, 1656, and only three subsequent unnumbered enactments were included up to 1666, when the record comes to an end. Although these old Orders (1629–1666) include directions relating to the general behaviour of the townspeople, injunctions concerning the sales of liquor and butchers’ meat, the malpractices of begging at men’s doors, piking or stealing wood, “scoulding or chideing ... to the trouble or disquietness of the good and honest neighbours,” and rules for the maintenance of cleanliness in the streets and public places and the publication and preservation of Proclamations put forth by the King, the bulk of the laws are framed in the interests of the staple industry of the district. No detail connected with salt-making, from the drawing of the brine to the transport of the manufactured product, is left to chance or the discretion of the individual. The rights and privileges of Burgesses, and particularly of such as occupy salt-houses or wallings, are set forth in the Ancient Customes, but in all particulars relating to the making of salt, the Orders are paramount and precise. Space does not permit of the reproduction here of the whole of the regulations, but a few of the Items may be quoted as evidence of the care and thoroughness with which they were framed.