A similar picture is given in the “Mournfull Cryes of many thousand Poore tradesmen, who are ready to famish through decay of Trade.” “Oh that the cravings of our Stomacks could bee heard by the Parliament and City! Oh that the Teares of our poore famishing Babes were botled! Oh that their tender Mothers Cryes for bread to feed them were ingraven in brasse.... O you Members of Parliament and rich men in the City, that are at ease, and drink Wine in Bowles ... you that grind our faces and Flay off our skins ... is there none to Pity.... Its your Taxes Customes and Excize, that compels the Country to raise the price of Food and to buy nothing from us but meere absolute necessaries; and then you of the City that buy our Worke, must have your Tables furnished ... and therefore will give us little or nothing for our Worke, even what you please, because you know wee must sell for Monyes to set our Families on worke, or else wee famish ... and since the late Lord Mayor Adams, you have put into execution an illegall, wicked Decree of the Common Counsell; whereby you have taken our goods from us, if we have gone to the Innes to sell them to the Countrimen; and you have murdered some of our poor wives, that have gone to Innes to find countrimen to buie them.”[415] Footnote 415: _Mournfull Cryes of many Thousand Poore Tradesmen_, 1647. In each case it will be noticed that the wife’s activity is specially mentioned in connection with the sale of the goods. Women were so closely connected with industrial life in London that when the Queen proposed to leave London in 1641 it was the women who petitioned Parliament, declaring, “that your Petitioners, their Husbands, their Children and their Families, amounting to many thousand soules; have lived in plentifull and good fashion, by the exercise of severall Trades and venting of divers workes.... All depending wholly for the sale of their commodities, (which is the maintenance and very existence and beeing of themselves, their husbands, and families) upon the splendour and glory of the English Court, and principally upon that of the Queenes Majesty.”[416] Footnote 416: _Humble Petition of many thousands of Courtiers, Citizens, Gentlemens and Tradesmens Wives, &c._