It is impossible from the scanty information available to arrive at a final conclusion concerning the position of women weavers. Clearly an attempt had been made to exclude them from the more highly skilled branches of the trade, but it is also evident that this had not been successful in depriving widows of their rights in this respect. Nor does the absence of information concerning women weavers prove that they were rarely employed in such work. The division of work between women and men was a question which aroused little interest at this time and therefore references to the part taken by women are accidental. They may have been extensively engaged in weaving for they are mentioned as still numerous among the handloom weavers of the nineteenth century.[203] Another process in the manufacture of cloth which gave employment to women was “Burling.” The minister and Mayor of Westbury presented a petition to the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions in 1657 on behalf of certain poor people who had obtained their living by the “Burling of broad medley clothes,” three of whose daughters had now been indicted by certain persons desirous to appropriate the said employment to themselves; they show “that the said employment of Burling hath not been known to be practised among us as any prentice trade, neither hath any been apprentice to it as to such, but clothiers have ever putt theyr clothes to Burling to any who would undertake the same, as they doe theyr woolles to spinning. Also that the said imployment of Burling is a common good to this poore town and parish, conducing to the reliefe of many poore families therein and the setting of many poore children on work. And if the said imployment of Burling should be appropriated by any particular persons to themselves it would redound much to the hurt of clothing, and to the undoing of many poore families there whoe have theyre cheife mainteynance therefrom.”[204] Footnote 203: _Report of the Commissioners on the condition of the Handloom Weavers_, 1841. x p. 323, _Mr. Chapman’s report_.