1376. This year the Corporation of Cambridge made an Ordinance, prohibiting any burgess to take Sturbridge Chapel to farm, except to the use of the mayor and bailiffs, or to keep market there, under the penalty of 10 marks, or to make any booth there, or let any place for the building of a booth, under the penalty of 10s.; and any burgesses convicted of a breach of this Ordinance before the twenty-four [members of the Common Council] was to be deprived of his freedom at their discretion.
1382. The King being informed that many false weights and measures had been theretofore used in Steresbrigge Fair, to the deception of his subjects resorting thereto, issued a Writ on 3rd Sept. requiring the Chancellor of the University to be vigilant in exercising in that fair the powers conferred on him by the late Charter [1381] respecting weights and measures.
Two years later a dispute arose between the Corporation and the University regarding the exercise of this right. The King confirmed the privilege of the University.
1395. Richard II. made order that the sheriff was to apprehend all persons who broke the peace in Bernwell Fair, whether scholars or townsmen.
1397. On Hoch Tuesday the commonalty of Cambridge made Ordinances to the following effect: ...
ii. That all burgesses having any booths at the Fair of Sterebrigge, and who should let them to farm to any outcomers or foreigners for certain sum agreed upon between them, should pay to the mayor and bailiffs the third part of the sum for which the same should be so let.
iii. That no freeman should occupy two booths of one art.
1403. The Corporate Ordinances made by Cambridge this year contain (inter alia) the following:
Item ... Every man burgess of the town of Cambridge, may freely have one booth in the fair of Stirbridge, without rendering any thing therefore to the mayor and bailiffs for the time being, whether he occupy it or let it to farm. And that no burgess have in the fair aforesaid more than one booth, unless he render therefore to the mayor and bailiffs for the time being, toll and custom as others do who are not burgesses.
Item. It is ordained on the same day, that if any bailiff or other burgess of the town aforesaid, in future, lease or lend to any Citizens of London, the place for the booth called the Tolbooth, in the fair aforesaid, that the bailiffs pay to the commonalty of the Town of Cambridge £10, and the burgesses 100s. for every default, namely tociens quociens, to lose their freedom.