Chief-Justice Lee said a woman is allowed to be a Constable, an Overseer, a Governor of a Poorhouse, a Gaoler, a Keeper of a Prison, a Churchwarden, a Clerk of the Crown in the King’s Bench. Very high offices have been held by Ladies. In regard to the Church, women have been allowed to baptise; there have been Deaconesses, and female servants _circa sacra_. (Romans xvi. 21.) Women have presented to churches. He decided that a woman _could be sexton_. The others concurred. (Leach’s “Modern Term Reports,” vol. vii.) Strange, the opposing counsel, in reporting the case shortly and confusingly, says that he knew many women sextons at the time. (_See_ 27 Strange.) In the case of Rex _v._ Chardstock, where “the parish was obstinate in not having another Overseer than a woman,” Justice Powell had testily declared that a woman cannot be Overseer of the Poor, that there _can be no custom of the parish to appoint her, because it is an Office_[16] _created_ _by Act of Parliament_. To the petitioner’s election he replied that there was _not to be a woman Overseer_, an _obiter dictum_ reversed in the King’s Bench in 1788 in Rex _v._ Stubbs. “Can a woman be Overseer of the poor?” the only qualification necessary by the Statute[17] (43 Eliza.), is that the Overseer be “a substantial householder.” A woman can be “a substantial householder, and therefore she is eligible.” Justice Ashurst referred to the other offices that women had held, as quoted above. “This office has no reference to sex. The only question is whether there be anything in the nature of the office that should make a woman incompetent, and we think _there is not_” (Durnford and East’s “Term Reports”). Footnote 16: Yet before the said creation of the Statute (43 Eliz.; even in 7 Eliz.) there were Overseers of the poor in Westminster, (_see_ p. 148 _Athenæum_, No. 3458, February 3rd., 1894). Footnote 17: _Ibid._ Yet before the time that male rivals contested the election with a woman, women had exercised the office without objection. “In the township of Gorton, parish of Manchester, 1748, Widow Waterhouse was overseer of the poor. In 1775 Sarah Schofield played the flute in the chapel choir. In 1826 Mary Grimston appointed sexton. In 1829 the vestry sent for Ruth Walker to come and break stones” (_Notes and Queries_, 5th series, vol. iv., p. 269). In the Parish Register, Totteridge, Middlesex, March 2nd, 1802, entry—burial. Mrs. Elizabeth King, widow, for 46 years Clerk of this Parish, in her 91st year. _Note._—As long as she was able she attended, and with great strength and pleasure to her hearers, read prayers. (p. 493.) Mrs. Anne Bass of Ayleston, Leicestershire an excellent churchwarden for many years. (_Notes and Queries_, 5th series, vol. iv., 269, 493.)