The petition received due attention, Statute 33, Henry VI enacting that “Whereas it is shewed to our Sovereign Lord the King in his said parliament, by the grevous complaint of the silk women and spinners of the mystery and occupation of silk-working, within the city of London, how that divers Lombards and other strangers, imagining to destroy the said mystery, and all such virtuous occupations of women in the said Realm, to enrich themselves ... have brought ... such silk so made, wrought, twined, ribbands, and chains falsely and deceitfully wrought, all manner girdels and other things concerning the said mystery and occupation, in no manner wise bringing any good silk unwrought, as they were wont.” Therefore the importation of “any merchandise ... touching or concerning the mystery of silk women, (girdels which come from Genoa only excepted,)” is forbidden.[280] Footnote 280: _Statutes_, II., p. 374, 33 Henry VI., c. 5. This statute was re-enacted in succeeding reigns with the further explanation that “as well men as women” gained their living by this trade. Few incidents reveal more clearly than do these petitions the gulf separating the conception of women’s sphere in life which prevailed in mediæval London, from that which governed society in the first decade of the twentieth century. The contrast is so great that it becomes difficult to adjust one’s vision to the implications which the former contains. Other incidents can be quoted of the independence, enterprise, and capacity manifested by the prosperous women of the merchant class in London during the Middle Ages. Thus Rose de Burford, the wife of a wealthy London merchant, engaged in trading transactions on a large scale both before and after her husband’s death. She lent money to the Bishop in 1318, and received 100 Marks for a cope embroidered with coral. She petitioned for the repayment of a loan made by her husband for the Scottish wars, finally proposing that this should be allowed her off the customs which she would be liable to pay on account of wool about to be shipped from the Port of London.[281] Footnote 281: By kind permission of Miss Eileen Power. It is, however, a long cry from the days of Rose de Burford to the seventeenth century, when “gentilwymmen and other wymmen of worship” no longer made an honourable living by the silk trade; which trade, in spite of protecting statutes, had become the refuge of paupers. To obviate the difficulties of an exclusive reliance on foreign supplies for the raw material of the silk trade, James I. ordered the planting of 10,000 mulberry trees so that “multitudes of persons of both sexes and all ages, such as in regard of impotence are unfitted for other labour, may bee set on worke, comforted and releved.”[282] Footnote 282: _S.P.D._, xxvi., 6. Jan. 1607.