The nurses were instructed that they must “carefully and diligently oversee, kepe, and governe all those tender Babes & yonglings that shal be committed to your Charge, and the same holesomely, cleanely and swetely nourishe and bring up ... kepe your Wardes and every Part thereof swete and cleane ... avoid all Idleness when your Charge and Care of keping the Children is past, occupie yourselves in Spinning, Sewing, mending of Sheets and Shirts, or some other vertuous Exercise, such as you shal be appointed unto. Ye shal not resort or suffer any Man to resort to you, before ye have declared the same to the almoners or Matron of this Howse and obtained their Lycense and Favour, so to do ... see that all your children, before they be brought to Bed, be washed and cleane, and immediately after, every one of yow quietly shal go to your Bed, and not to sit up any longer; and once every night arise, and see that the Children be covered, for taking of Colde.”[556] Footnote 556: Stow, _London_, app., p. 43. Some idea of the class of women who actually undertook the important duties of Matron for the London Hospitals may be gathered from a petition presented by Joane Darvole, Matron of St. Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark, to Laud. She alleged “that she was dragged out of the Chapel of the Hospital at service and dragged along the streets to prison for debt, to the hazard of her life,” she being a “very weak sickly and aged woman,” clothes torn from her back and cast into a swoon. She petitions against the profanation of God’s house and the scandal to the congregation.[557] Footnote 557: _S.P.D._, cccclv., 87., May 30th, 1640.