As England emerged from its commercial insignificance, an improvement naturally took place in the material conditions of domestic life. Luxuries that had hitherto belonged exclusively to the aristocracy, were introduced into the homes of the middle classes. Houses were better furnished, dress became more sumptuous, the table was better provided. Indeed, the quality of the food was in advance of the other conditions of life. With the growth of towns was created a more marked difference between the rural and urban population. The burgher’s wife who had glass windows to her house and went to church in a silken hood, felt herself on a different plane from the farmer’s wife with her shuttered lattices and linen coif. The trading class naturally lived an in-door life, and became sensitive to hardships endured without question by the agricultural class. Women who dwelt in cities fell into a different groove of occupations and amusements from their rural sisters, whom they began to regard with some disdain. Field and farm work were looked upon with a little scorn by women who had been brought up in the more sheltered atmosphere of town life. The dance on the village green and the harvest revels were superseded for town dwellers by feasts and shows. There were hardly any books in the houses even of prosperous traders, whose literature was confined to their account-books. As for the women, they were busy enough with their household affairs, and sought their recreation in a gossip with their neighbours. Few of them ever wrote a letter or found any use for a pen. Even to this day there are good housewives in country districts who would be puzzled to make out a receipt or cast up a column of figures. In the fourteenth century there were few persons outside the ranks of the clergy who could write. There was a considerable improvement in the following century, which affords a convenient starting-point from which to commence the study of town life.[5] Letter-writing was becoming usual among the well-to-do of the middle classes, those who would now be called the gentry. Education was spreading. The gulf between the aristocracy and the democracy was being bridged over by a thriving, intelligent middle class. As we approach the sixteenth century, the old manner of life is fast seen to be disappearing. The castle is no longer the power that it was once. The sovereignty of the nobles is weakened, in many cases completely shattered, and the system of tyrannical protection on the one side and slavish dependence on the other passes away. CHAPTER IV. WOMEN AND THE ANCIENT GILDS.