transform the last remnants of communal property into their private estates. The rotation of crops had been introduced, which provided for changes in the cultivation of the soil in definite periods of time. Tilled land was occasionally transformed into pasture which favored cattle-breeding and made it possible to diminish the number of workers. In the cities conditions were not much better than in the country. Formerly women had been permitted to acquire the title of master-workman and to employ journeymen and apprentices without any opposition from the male craftsmen. They were even compelled to join the guilds to force them to meet the same conditions of competition. So there were independent women workers among the linen-weavers, the cloth-weavers, the carpet-weavers and tailors. There were female gold-smiths, girdle-makers, harness-makers, etc. We find women employed as furriers in Frankfort and the Silesian cities; as bakers in the cities along the Rhine; as girdle-makers and embroiders of coats of arms in Cologne and Strassburg; as harness-makers in Bremen; as cloth-shearers in Frankfort as tanners in Nuremberg; as gold-smiths in Cologne.[43] But as the circumstances of the craftsmen grew more and more unfavorable, a sentiment of ill will against the female competitors arose. In France, women were excluded from the trades at the close of the fourteenth century; in Germany, not until the close of the seventeenth century. At first they were forbidden to become master-workmen--with the exception of widows--later on they were also excluded from becoming assistants. Protestantism, by abolishing the ostentatious Catholic cult, had seriously injured or entirely destroyed a number of artistic crafts, and these were the very crafts in which many women had been employed. The confiscation and secularization of church property resulted in a decline of charitable work, and widows and orphans were the main sufferers. The general economic decline that manifested itself during the sixteenth century, as a result of all the enumerated causes, and lasted through the seventeenth century, caused the marriage laws to become more and more severe. Journeymen and people employed in menial service (men and maid servants) were prohibited entirely from marrying, unless they could prove that there was no danger of their future families becoming a burden to the community in which they lived. Marriages contracted in opposition to the legal premises were punished frequently severely, sometimes barbarously. According to Bavarian law, for instance, the penalties were imprisonment and public flogging. Illegal marriages, that became more frequent as the marriage laws became more severe, were subjected to especially violent persecution. All minds were ruled by the prevailing fear of over-population, and to diminish the numbers of beggars and vagabonds, the various rulers enacted one law upon another, and each was more severe than the preceding one.