Howell, _Familiar Letters_, p. 290, 1644. Many gentlewomen were proficient in dairy management. Richard Braithwaite writes of his wife: “Oft have I seen her from her Dayrey come Attended by her maids, and hasting home To entertain some Guests of Quality Shee would assume a state so modestly Sance affectation, as she struck the eye With admiration of the stander-by.” The whole management of the milch cows belonged to the wife, not only among farming people but also among the gentry. The proceeds were regarded as her pin-money, and her husband generally handed over to her all receipts on this account, Sir John Foulis for example entering in his account book: “June 30 1693. To my wife yᵉ pryce of yᵉ gaird kowes Hyde, £4 0 0.”[88] Footnote 88: Foulis (Sir John, of Ravelston), _Acct. Bk._, p. 158. Sometimes when the husband devoted himself to good fellowship, the farm depended almost entirely on his wife; this was the case with Adam Eyre, a retired Captain, who enters in his Dyurnall, _Feb. 10, 1647_, “This morning Godfrey Bright bought my horse of my wife, and gave her £5, and promised to give her 20s. more, which I had all but 20s. and shee is to take in the corne sale £4.” _May 18, 1647_, “I came home with Raph Wordsworth of the Water hall who came to buy a bull on my wife, who was gone into Holmefrith.”[89] Footnote 89: Eyre, (Capt. Adam), _A Dyurnall_, p. 16, p. 36. The business capacity of married women was even more valuable in families where the father wished to devote his talents to science, politics, or religion, unencumbered by anxiety for his children’s maintenance. It is said in Peter Heylin’s Life that “Being deprived of Ecclesiastical preferments, he must think of some honest way for a livelihood. Yet notwithstanding he followed his studies, in which was his chief delight.... In which pleasing study while he spent his time, his good wife, a discreet and active lady, looked both after her Housewifery within doors, and the Husbandry without; thereby freeing him from that care and trouble, which otherwise would have hindered his laborious Pen from going through so great a work in that short time. And yet he had several divertisements by company, which continually resorted to his house; for having (God be thanked) his temporal Estate cleared from Sequestration, by his Composition with the Commissioners at _Goldsmith’s Hall_, and this Estate which he Farmed besides, he was able to keep a good House, and relieve his poor brethren.”[90] Footnote 90: _Heylin, (Peter)_, pp. 18-19.