Women also were among the first Publishers of Truth and helped to spread the message. Even before Burrough and Howgill reached London, two women had been there, gently scattering the new seed. It is recorded that one of them, named Isabella Buttery, 'sometimes spoke a few words in this small meeting.' Two Quaker girls from Kendal, Elizabeth Leavens and 'little Elizabeth Fletcher,' were the first to preach in Oxford, and a terrible time they had of it. 'Little Elizabeth Fletcher' was then only seventeen, 'a modest, grave, young woman.' Jane Waugh, one of the 'convinced' serving-maids at Cammsgill, was a friend of hers; but Jane Waugh's turn for suffering had not yet come. She was still in the North when the two Elizabeths reached Oxford. This is the account of what befell them there: 'The 20th day of the 4th month [June] 1654 came to this city two maids, who went through the streets and into the Colleges, steeple and tower houses, preaching repentance and declaring the word of the Lord to the people.... On the 25th day of the same month they were moved to go to Martin's Mass House (_alias_) Carefox, where one of those maids, after the priest had done, spake something in answer to what the priest had before spoken in exhortation to the people, and presently were by two Justices sent to prison.' The Mayor of Oxford seems to have been pleased with the behaviour of the two girls and caused them to be set at liberty again. But the Vice-Chancellor and the Justices would not agree to this, and 'earnestly enquired from whence they came, and their business to Oxford. They answered, "they were commanded of the Lord to come"; and it being demanded "what to do," they answered, to "declare against Sin and Ungodliness, which they lived in." And at this answer the Vice-Chancellor and the Justices ordered their punishment, to be whipped out of town, and demanding of the Mayor to agree to the same, and for refusing, said they would do it of themselves, and signing a paper, the contents whereof was this: To be severely whipped, and sent out of Town as Vagrants. And forthwith, because of the tumult, they were put into the Cage, a place common for the worst of people; and accordingly the next morning, they were whipped, and sent away, and on the backside of the City, meeting some scholars, they were moved to speak to them, who fell on them very violently, and drew them into John's College, where they tied them back to back and pumped water on them, until they were almost stifled; and they being met at another time as they passed through a Graveyard, where a corpse was to be buried, Elizabeth Holme spake something to the Priest and people, and one Ann Andrews thrust her over a grave stone, which hurt she felt near to her dying day.'