If we descend a step we find ourselves among the retailers and the craftsmen. The retailers or shopkeepers included many women—regratresses: there were alewives—brewsters—who made and brewed and sold their own beer; there were fish-wives—from time immemorial there have been fish-wives—there were “broiderers” and dressmakers of all kinds in immense numbers; there were weaverwomen—websters; women who baked—baksters; those who spun—spinsters; there were domestic servants; and there were many thousands of matrons who took care of the house, brought up the children, brewed the ale, bought and dressed the food, made and mended the clothes. A married woman could rent a house, or carry on business in a shop or a craft on her own account; if her husband had nothing to do with the business she was to be charged as a _femme sole_. She could be sued for debt and she could be cast into prison, her husband being untouched. [Illustration: MAKING TAPESTRY From MS. in British Museum. Add. 20,698.] The women who worked for their livelihood were cheated and defrauded, as they are now, for they had no companies or guilds, and no associations; they were paid in kind. Edward IV., for instance, passed an ordinance that the carders should pay their women servants in coin and should give them full weight of wool. Some of the women, as has happened since, occasionally got drunk; some played dishonest tricks, as that woman who was set in stocks for putting pitch into the beer measure, thereby lessening the quantity of the quart; or that fish-wife who sold stinking fish and stood in the stocks while her fish was burnt under her nose—a terrible punishment; there were scolds among them; there were in fact as many kinds of women as there are at present. In a poem called “The most Pleasant Song of Lady Bessy,” by Humphrey Brereton, are the following lines which illustrate the education of noble ladies. “Lady Bessy” is Elizabeth of York, and she thus speaks:— “Good father Stanley, hearken unto me, What my father King Edward, that King royal Did for my sister, my Lady Wells, and me. He sent for a scrivener to lusty London, He was the best in that City, He taught us both to write and read full soon If it please you full soon you shall see. Lauded be God! I had such speed That I can write as well as he, And also indite and full well read; And that—Lord—soon shall you see, Both English and alsoe French And also Spanish if you had need, The earle said, You are a proper wench.” (_Antiquary_, XV.) One little anecdote I must give to show the spirit that was then in the women of England. In the year 1404 the French effected a landing at Dartmouth, the landsmen turned against them armed; they were joined by their wives, who fought beside their husbands and drove off the invaders.