The names of women appear in lists of butchers in very similar proportions to the lists of bakers. Thus one for Chester gives the names of twenty men followed by three women,[485] and in a return of sixteen butchers licensed to sell meat in London during Lent, there is one woman, Mary Wright, and her partner, William Woodfield.[486] Bye-laws which control the sale of meat use the feminine as well as the masculine pronouns, showing that the trade was habitually used by both sexes. The “Act for the Settlement and well ordering of the several Public Markets within the City of London” provides that “all and every Country butcher ... Poulterer ... Country Farmers, Victuallers Laders or Kidders ... may there sell, utter and put to open shew or sale his, her or their Beef, Mutton, etc., etc.”[487] It may be supposed that these provisions relate only to the sale of meat, and that women would not often be associated with the businesses which included slaughtering the beasts, but this is not the case. Elizabeth Clarke is mentioned in the Dorchester Records as “apprenticed 7 years to her father a butcher,”[488] and other references occur to women who were clearly engaged in the genuine butcher’s trade. For example, a licence was granted “to Jane Fouches of the Parish of St. Clement Danes, Butcher to kill and sell flesh during Lent,”[489] and among eighteen persons who were presented at the Court Leet, Manchester, “for Cuttinge & gnashing of Rawhides for their seuerall Gnashinge of evry Hyde,” two were women, “Ellen Jaques of Ratchdale, one hyde, Widdow namely Stott of Ratchdale, two hydes.”[490] Footnote 485: _Harl. MSS._, 2105 fo., 300 b., 1565. Footnote 486: _S.P.D._ cxix. 107., February 24, 1621. Footnote 487: _Act for the Settlement and well Ordering of the Several Publick Markets within the City of London_, 1674. Footnote 488: Mayo, _Municipal Records of Dorchester_, p. 428, 1698. Footnote 489: _S.P.D._ 1. clxxxviii., James I., undated. Footnote 490: _Manchester Court Leet Records_, Vol. V., p. 236, 1674.