Gregory King’s father was a student of mathematics, “and practised surveying of land, and dyalling, as a profession; but with more attention to _good-fellowship_, than mathematical studies generally allow: and, the care of the family devolved of course on the mother, who, if she had been less obscure, had emulated the most eminent of the Roman matrons.”[91] Footnote 91: King (Gregory), _Natural and Political Observations, etc._ Adam Martindale’s wife was equally successful. He writes “about Michaelmas, 1662, removed my family from the Vicarage to a little house at Camp-greene, ... where we dwelt above three years and half.... I was three score pounds in debt, ... but (God be praised) while I staid there I paid off all that debt and bestowed £40 upon mareling part of my ground in Tatton.... If any aske how this could be without a Miracle, he may thus be satisfied. I had sent me ... £41 ... and the £10 my wife wrangled out of my successor, together with a table, formes and ceiling, sold him for about £4 more.”[92] Later on he adds “My family finding themselves straitened for roome, and my wife being willing to keep a little stock of kine, as she had done formerly, and some inconvenience falling out (as is usual) by two families under a roofe, removed to a new house not completely furnished.”[93] Footnote 92: _Martindale, (Adam),_ _Life_, p. 172. Footnote 93: _Ibid._, p. 190. That in the agricultural community women were generally supposed to be, from a business point of view, a help and not a hindrance to their husbands—that in fact the wife was not “kept” by him but helped him to support the family is shown by terms proposed for colonists in Virginia by the Merchant Taylors who offer “one hundred acres for every man’s person that hath a trade, or a body able to endure day labour as much for his wief, as much for his child, that are of yeres to doe service to the Colony.”[94] Footnote 94: Clode, (C.M.) _Merchant Taylors_, Vol. I., p. 323. B. _Husbandmen._ Husbandmen were probably the most numerous class in the village community. Possessed of a small holding at a fixed customary rent and with rights of grazing on the common, they could maintain a position of independence.