Lewd women could not testify in criminal cases. Respectable women were permitted to testify, but the judge was obliged to wait on them at their homes, as they were not allowed to attend court. Learning to write was discouraged in females, as they could then have it in their power to scribble love-letters to their gallants. Queen Isabella did much to elevate and purify both religion and morals. The court of Enrique IV., her predecessor, has been described as but little better than a brothel, where "the queen, a daughter of Portugal, lived openly with her parasites and gallants, as the king did with his minions and mistresses." Maids of honor were trained courtesans, and the noblemen of the court occupied their time in illicit amours and love intrigues. From the king on his throne to his lowest subject, all who could afford it kept a mistress. Ware states that within a century the widows of Madrid were "compelled to pass the whole first year of their mourning in a chamber entirely hung with black, where not a single ray of the sun could penetrate, seated on a little mattress with their legs always crossed. When this year was over, they retired to pass the second year in a chamber hung with grey." This savagism is paralleled by the Thlinkeets of Alaska, who at certain times confine women in a little kennel for six months, giving them one a size larger for the second six months; likewise by the Tacullies of New Caledonia, who make the widow carry the deceased husband's ashes upon her back in a bag for one or two years. [Sidenote: EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN GENERAL.] A glance at English and French society shows us, however, that the character of the Spanish women of this epoch compared favorably with that of their northern sisters. Though perhaps no chaster than the French, they were not street-brawlers like the English women. These latter, we are told, from whom the men would separate themselves in their debauches, would likewise assemble at the public house, drink their ale, talk loudly and lewdly, and gossip, swear, and fight. In a religious play of the period, representing the deluge, Noah, when ready to enter the ark, seeks his wife, and finds her carousing with her gossips at the public drink-house. "Young ladies, even of great families," says Wright, "were brought up not only strictly but even tyrannically by their mothers, who kept them constantly at work, exacted from them almost slavish deference and respect, and even counted upon their earnings." A mother in those days was accounted a little severe who beat her daughter "once in the week, or twice, and sometimes twice a day," and "broke her head in two or three places," or still worse, permitted her to "speak with no man, whosoever come."