By an act passed May 11, 16!>3, "a public and open market" was appointed to be held every Wednesday at Westchester; and it was enacted that "there shall likewise be held and kept twice yearly and every year a fair, to which fair it shall and may be likewise lawful for all and every person to go and frequent, . . . the first to be kept at the Town of Westchester in the said county on the second Tuesday of May and to end on the Friday following, being in all four days, inclusive, and no longer; and the second fair to be kept at Rye in the said county on the second Tuesday in October yearly, and to end the Friday following," etc. From the foregoing survey of the progress of Westchester town up to the time of its conversion into a borough, the reader will see that it had well earned the right to that honor. The royal charter constituting it a borough town is a very elaborate document, which It if reproduced entire would occupy some fifteen of our pages.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

bears date the 16th of April, 1696, and is signed by Governor Benjamin Fletcher. After instancing the previous grants of patents to the town and describing it with extreme and redundant particularity (its bounds being specified as the westernmost part of tk Brunks land " at the west and the westernmost line of " Mr. Pell's pattent " at the east), the charter provides that the former Town of Westchester shall in future be styled "the borrough and town of Westchester." The requirement is made that the local authorities shall pay annually to the governor of New York, on the 25th day of March, " the sum of thirty shillings current money of N.