“In former times the education and employment of young gentlewomen was religious, sober, and serious, their carriage modest, and creditable was their habit and dress. When they were young they learned to read and to sew; as they grew up they learned to spin, to knit, to make up their own garments; they learned what belonged to housewifery.... And now the world is altered; young gentlewomen learn to be bold, talk loud and more than comes to their share, think it disparagement for them to know what belongs to good housewifery or to practise it.... They know the ready way to consume an estate and to ruin a family quickly, but neither know nor can endure to learn or practise the ways and methods to save it or increase it; and it is no wonder that great portions are expected with them, for their portions are commonly all their value.... If a fit of reading come upon them, it is some romance, or play book, or love story; and if they have at any time a fit of using their needle, it is some such unprofitable or costly work that spends their friends or husbands more than it is worth when it is finished.” Domestic life was changing, and the habits and customs of former times were being modified. The simple ways of old did not suffice. There were too many distractions, at least in London, for women to sit down contentedly with the resources of their grandmothers. Among the well-to-do country gentlemen it was becoming customary to bring their families to London for the season, which was then the winter, and this greatly altered the tone of domestic life. To women confined to a country village with little change of scene or occupation, it meant as much as the “grand tour” in the next century. A rebound naturally followed the gloomy days of the Commonwealth, when-- “there were no comedies or other diversions (which were forbidden not only as ungodly but for fear of drawing company or number together), and there was no business for any man that loved monarchy or the family of Stuart; so that the nobility and gentry lived most in the country.” The Puritan movement retarded the intellectual advance of women. The clearer thought which the Renaissance brought was obscured, the ideals that were beginning to enlarge the purpose of life were narrowed, and a check was put upon mental growth. As by the Roman Catholic Church women were taught to submit their minds and consciences to the priest, so under the sway of Puritanism they were taught that all nature’s gifts to mind or body were so many snares, that true life consisted in a crushing out of all aims and desires not connected with the saving of the soul, a process that was apparently facilitated by a constant contemplation of never-ending tortures supposed to be in reserve for the greater portion of mankind.