shipwright, not fit to sell ale, having no child, and brews themselves.” A Barber Surgeon was disqualified, having no child, “and also for entertaining a strange maid which is sick.”[541] Footnote 536: _Hist. MSS. Com._, 14 Rep., app. viii., p. 99, 1629. Footnote 537: Phipps, (Thomas), _Proposal for raising £1,000,000 Sterling yearly_. Footnote 538: _Hertford County Records_, Vol. I., p. 289, 1678. Footnote 539: _Middlesex Sessions Book_, p. 23, 1690. Footnote 540: _Hertford County Records_, Vol. I., p. 174, 1665. Footnote 541: Latimer, _Bristol_, p. 359, 1670. _Court Leet for St. Stephen’s Parish._ Very rarely were doubts suggested as to the propriety of the trade for women, though a bye-law was passed at Chester ordaining that “no woman between the age of xiii & xl yeares shall kepe any taverne or ale-howse.”[542] At times complaints were made of the conduct of alewives, as in a request to the Justices of Nottingham “that your Worshipps wyll take some order wythe all the alewyfes in this towne, for we thinke that never an alewyfe dothe as hir husband is bownd to,”[543] but there is no evidence of any marked difference in the character of the alehouses kept by men and those kept by women. The trade included women of the most diverse characters. One, who received stolen goods at the sign of the “Leabord’s Head” in Ware, had there a “priviye place” for hiding stolen goods and suspicious persons “at the press for soldiers she hid five men from the constables, and can convey any man from chamber to chamber into the backside. There is not such a house for the purpose within a hundred miles.”[544] In contrast to her may be quoted the landlady of the Inn at Truro, of whom Celia Fiennes wrote, “My Greatest pleasure was the good Landlady I had, she was but an ordinary plaine woman but she was understanding in the best things as most—yᵉ Experience of reall religion and her quiet submission and self-Resignation to yᵉ will of God in all things, and especially in yᵉ placeing her in a remoteness to yᵉ best advantages of hearing, and being in such a publick Employment wᶜʰ she desired and aimed at yᵉ discharging so as to adorn yᵉ Gospel of her Lord and Saviour, and the Care of her children.”[545] Footnote 542: _Harl. MSS._, 2054 (4), fo., 6. Footnote 543: _Nottingham Records_, Vol. IV., p. 325, 1614. Footnote 544: _Hertford County Records_, Vol. I., p. 59, 1626. Footnote 545: Fiennes, (Celia), p. 226, _Through England on a Side-Saddle._