Events, however, were taking place which would soon curtail the practice of women whose training was confined to personal experience, tradition and casual study. The established associations of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries, although of recent growth, demanded and obtained, like other companies, exclusive privileges. Their policy fell in with the Government’s desire to control the practice of medicine, in order to check witchcraft. Statute 3, Henry VIII., enacted that “none should exercise the Faculty of Physick or Surgery within the City of _London_ or within Seven Miles of the same, unless first he were examined, approved and admitted by the Bishop of _London_, or the Dean of _St. Paul’s_, calling to him or them Four Doctors of Physick, and for Surgery other expert Persons in that Faculty, upon pain of Forfeiture of £5 for every Month they should occupy Physick or Surgery, not thus admitted” because “that common Artificers, as Smiths, Weavers, and Women, boldly and accustomably took upon them great Cures, and Things of great Difficulty, in the which they partly used Sorceries and Witchcraft, and partly applied such Medicines unto the Diseased, as were very noyous, and nothing meet therefore.”[600] Footnote 600: Stow, _London_ I., p. 132. The restrictions were extended to the provinces. A Charter given to the Company of Barber-Surgeons at Salisbury in 1614 declared that “No surgeon or barber is to practise any surgery or barbery, unless first made a free citizen, and then a free brother of the company. Whereas, also, there are divers women and others within this city, altogether unskilled in the art of chirurgery, who do oftentimes take cures on them, to the great danger of the patient, it is therefore ordered, that no such woman, or any other, shall take or meddle with any cure of chirurgery, wherefore they, or any of them shall have or take any money, benefit or other reward for the same, upon pain that every delinquent shall for every cure to be taken in hand, or meddled with, contrary to this order, unless she or they shall be first allowed by this Company, forfeit and lose to the use of this Company the sum of ten shillings.”[601] Footnote 601: Hoare, Sir R. C., _History of Modern Wilts_, Vol. VI., p. 341.