Early in the seventeenth century, one Mary Woods, of Norwich, a person who professed skill in palmistry, came to London in the way of her vocation, and lodged at the house of one Crispe, a barber, in Clerkenwell. Having received such a valuable inmate, the barber soon afterwards removed "Cunning Mary" and her husband to the more fashionable neighbourhood of the Strand, and there the barber became a willing agent in procuring subjects or patients for his female lodger. One branch of her business consisted in furnishing ladies who desired to become mothers with charms and medicines which would assist them in attaining their end. In the next house to Somerset Place dwelt a Mrs. Isabel Peel, wife of a tradesman, who to her great grief was childless. The barber, at his lodger's suggestion, whispered in her ear, that the very skilful person who was an inmate of his house could provide her with means to help forward her desires. An interview was arranged, and by "fair speech and cozening skill" Mary Woods persuaded Mrs. Peel of her power, but demanded no less a sum than twenty pounds for its exercise. In cash, the amount was beyond the patient's means, but she delivered to her adviser "two lawn and other wrotte (wrought) wares," and received in return a small portion of an infallible powder, which the cunning woman sewed in a little piece of taffeta, and bade the aspirant after maternity wear it round her neck. The news that a woman of such marvellous skill had come to lodge in Westminster soon spread. Anxious ladies in many of the neighbouring mansions sent for her, and she specially got a footing in Salisbury House. Mrs. Jane Sacheverell, who attended on Lady Cranborne, was one of her victims. The Countess of Essex had several interviews with her in the same friendly mansion, and gave her a diamond ring worth fifty or sixty pounds, sent by her husband the Earl, out of France, with directions to pawn it, in order to procure a portion of the infallible powder, "which was very costly." The Countess also bestowed upon Mrs. Woods "certain pieces of gold worth between thirty and forty pounds." When the affair was called in question, Mrs. Woods asserted that the Countess gave her these things to procure "a kind of poison that would be in a man's body three or four days without swelling," and that this poison was to be given to the Earl of Essex. But Mrs. Woods was an infamous person, whose uncorroborated assertion was worth nothing, and she had previously mentioned to Mrs. Peel that her employment by the Countess had relation merely to the child-giving powder.