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“... In June 1646, Joyce Jeffreys lost her spectacles. When a servant found them, Jeffreys tipped her sixpence, and then the elderly gentlewoman, following her habit, entered the expense into her account book. Between 1638 and 1648, Jeffreys kept a record of all her receipts and expenditures, noting them in a neat, regular hand. While we know little of her early life – when she was born, for example, or why she never married – we know a great deal about her business dealings, friendships and pastimes during her later years ...”

“... have some credit where we dwell’ and ‘We are London Gentle-women borne.’ Both Eleanor Hubbard and Tim Reinke-Williams emphasise that ‘sexual behaviour was not the only activity which determined female identity and reputation.’ They use court records to examine the lives of 17th-century London women who married and raised children ...”

“... pushed further: in recent years, the close attention paid by the historians Alexandra Shepard, Eleanor Hubbard and Amy Erickson, among others, to the ways people described themselves to authority figures has revealed much about the proletarian understanding of manners. Civility was a different matter for women too. They learned to speak softly and how ...”