In 1372 a Yorkshire woman spinner was summoned for taking "too much wages, contrary to the Statute of Artificers." In 1437 John Notyngham, a rich grocer of Bury St. Edmunds, bequeathed to one of his daughters a spinning-wheel and a pair of cards (cards or carpayanum, an implement which is stated in the _Promptorum Parvulorum_ to be especially a woman's instrument). In 1418 Agnes Stebbard in the same town bequeathed to two of her maids a pair of wool-combs each, one combing-stick, one wheel, and one pair of cards. An illuminated MS. of the well-known French _Boccace des Nobles Femmes_ has a most interesting illustration showing a queen and two maidens; one maiden is spinning with a distaff, another combing wool, the queen sits at the loom weaving. Women often appear in old records as combers, carders, and spinners. Chaucer says rather cynically: Deceit, weeping, spinning God hath given To women kindly, whiles that they may liven. And of the wife of Bath: Of clothmaking she had such an haunt She passed them of Ipres and of Gaunt. The distaff lingered on for spinning flax. As late as 1757 an English poet writes: And many yet adhere To the ancient distaff at the bosom fixed, Casting the whirling spindle as they walk; At home or in the sheep fold or the mart, Alike the work proceeds. Walter of Henley says: "In March is time to sow flax and hemp, for I have heard old housewives say that better is March hards than April flax, the reason appeareth, but how it should be sown, weeded, pulled, repealed, watered, washen, dried, beaten, braked, tawed, heckled, spun, wound, wrapped and woven, it needeth not for me to show, for they be wise enough, and thereof may they make sheets, bordclothes (_sic_), towels, shirts, smocks, and such other necessaries, and therefore let thy distaff be always ready for a pastime, that thou be not idle. And undoubted a woman cannot get her living honestly with spinning on the distaff, but it stoppeth a gap and must needs be had." Further on, in reference to wool (probably spun by wheel?), he draws the opposite conclusion: "It is convenient for a husband to have sheep of his own, for many causes, and then may his wife have part of the wool, to make her husband and herself some clothes.... And if she have no wool of her own she may take wool to spin of cloth-makers, and by that means she may have a convenient living, an many times to do other works." Irish women were noted for their skill in dressing hemp and flax and making linen and woollen cloth. Sir William Temple said, in 1681, that no women were apter to spin flax well than the Irish, who, "labouring little in any kind with their hands have their fingers more supple and soft than other women of poorer condition among us."