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390 is the custom. Although the husbands often recommend to them the pains, industry, and care of the German or Dutch women, who do what the men ought to do both in the house and in the shops, for which services in England men are employed, nevertheless the women usually persist in retaining their customs. This is why England is called the paradise of married women. The girls who are not yet married are kept much more rigorously and strictly than in the Low Countries.

"The women are beautiful, fair, well-dressed, and modest, which is seen there more than elsewhere, as they go about the streets without any covering either of huke or mantle (huycke) hood, veil, or the like. Married women only wear a hat both in the street and in the house; those unmarried go without a hat, although ladies of distinction have lately learnt to cover their faces with silken masks or vizards, and feathers—for indeed they change very easily, and that every year to the astonishment of many." (The translation is due to Rye.)

An anonymous black-letter pamphlet printed at London in 1598 contains the following interesting details relative to the customs pertaining to women;

"But yet there remains one service wherein they [gentlemen] must employ more men than the