A REMONSTRANCE OF THE Shee-Citizens of London. AND Of many thousands of other the freeborn Women of England.  
Humbly showing their desires for the attaining of a free trade, for the Kings speedy coming to LONDON, for the maning of their works, and for the redress of their many other grievances, and burdens they now lye under.  
Printed in the year 1647.   

A REMONSTRANCE OF THE SHE-CITIZENS of LONDON, And of many thousands of other freeborn women of England.  
WE the assistants and co-equalls of the famous Citizens of London, the better parts of the Trained Bands, and Common council men, having of a long time beholded the many infranchisements, Donatines and immunities attained by our fellow-feelers, the City of London and the parts adjacent, and for ourselves in particular, have purchased nor achieved any thing worthy to be recorded and talked of by posterity as an act of special grace and concernment, though we confess that under our husbands wee have been often comforted as with those sweet watery distillations which hath as from a limberk issued from them, yet we must give notice that your blandum mysterium acted by one man alone, cannot content each of us, being inspired with heroik thoughts, such as famous Messalina and Cleopatra owned, we mean that we should bee tied by the leg with the feeble cords of one only mans hamstrings, who through continual exercise are become most faultringly feeble, for through the hardness of these times denying them their former height of nourishment, they grow worse and worse daily in their occupation, and even by nature are debarred to spend so freely on us as in times past, for the removal of which several inconveniencies, we shall humbly remonstrate.  
That whereas this sterrill malady is occasioned by a strict subjugation of us the freeborn women of England, by a law strictly forbidding any of us to scan the tremeter of any but to each of them to whom we are bound and obliged, we conceive that this prohibition tendeth to the detriment not onely of us but of the whole Kingdom, & that wanting that free commerce which nature licenseth, the kingdom cannot choose but be disappointed of many generous souls, which if otherwise it is likely to be enriched with, in case of a free propagation, and which doth pierce us through with an earnest and longing contrition; this iceland is now thinly inhabited, by reason of the late warres, wherein so many well-tried and able proficients have been untimely massacred, so that not onely themselves are perished for the present, but wee are also utterly deprived of the hopes wee were in of their afterable performances for the good of the kingdom, which consisteth in nothing more then in being fully replenished with people; we therefore with joint consent, having taken into our consideration, the great decay of Males, that is likely inevitably to happen, iftimely prevention, be not thought on, have thought fit to remonstrate that for the future, we shall not bear such seared souls about us, as one woman, to live by the daily and nightly sweat of onely one mans brows when he perhaps though doing his utmost, is not able to satisfy nature, but shall for our own contentments, the ease of men and for the speedy peopling of the kingdom, shall every one of us desire the assistance of so many( of whose ability we are sufficiently assured) as may produce numerosa proles, a vast Generation, not only to defend us at home, but also to prevent invasions from afar, and we desire also( since to us by consequence) according as that stiff slander for the subjects Liberties Col. Lilburn hath noted, belongeth every immunity of Magna Charta, that in case of our husbands defaults, or debillities, we may ourselves trade a broad in the Country, and utter our warres to our best advantage for it is not, as in the youth of the world when Lot was so free of his flesh, that he begot Moab, and Ammon, in his sleep nature, is now grown old, and stoopeth under the weight of time, we must have Eringoes, and Lobsters, to beget that, which in the worlds infancy, a carrot or a crab-fish equalled every thing decay, and there is a general declining in all things, there is an alteration, and defect in the condition( of bodies) over the whole frame, and sisteme of nature, the clouds do forbore to rain down their geniall showers, neither do the flowers blushy, with such perfumed fires as in the first morning of the world, the fire, which heretofore, was the mother of May creatures, as the Salamander the Pirausta and others, is now grown quiter fruitless and bar●en, the air, doth not bestow such a vital, and broodall incubation upon the earth, and if this decay be in the greater microcosm of nature, it must needs be in the less microcosm of man, and therefore we who are of a substance hot and dry, and every whit as vigorous, as in the first nonage of the world ought not to be debarred of that right, to which we were created, but that the disabillities of one man should be supplied, with the abilities of another, which cannot be attained unless we shift our condition, and be licenced a free trade.  
Which that we may the sooner attain, we conceive no way conducing more to our desire, then that his majesty speedily come to London, there to reside with honuor and safety; for let the world know, to our unspeakable grief, we have these many yeares missed the society of his retainers, those embroidered Courtiers, who heighten their longings at more charge, then if each of them constantly kept at rack and manger four Flanders mares, and the heavenly due that they were wont daily to water us with, and to our infinite joy, jog us, when we were coacht jogging to mile-end, to Islington, and Braineford, stuffing our bellies with cakes, and cream; and while our husbands good men, were either handselling their wears, or canselling their bonds, not dreaming that we also, were bartering their commodities for our best advantage: we therefore desire, that his majesty may with all speed repair to London, as the primary way for us to attain our wishes, and till then, like the thirsty earth chapped for lack of rain, wee wait for—  
But least preturbances should arise & we sleep too supinely and though the royal party be subjugated, we be any way damnified, by a wounded foe, we shall not carelessly level and let our works be entred by those, of whose trust and fidelity we have not ample experience, for some may give us an alarum, and yet want ammunition to maintain the fight; may charge us once, and yet afterward prove so lumpish, that afterward they must be forced, and dandled to the encounter; and whom we may be constrained to provoke to the skirmish, defying them with hot trenchers and warm napkins, applied to our bodies; we therefore do desire that such should man our works, and sleep in our quarters, who shall bee sufficient, not only to please, but defend us from the incursions, of any crafty and disabled enemy; and should it so happen,( as who knows the issue of things) that we should be surprised, our hopes and assurance is this, that though their onset be never so hot and fiery, yet we shall occasion their retreat, to be cool and tame: yea were they as strong as samson or Milo, we shall soon quail their Courage, if not at the first, ye the second encounter; but this, if they should gain our works; but we assure our enemies, which may serve as a terror to dissuade them from daring, to give an assault; that if we shall not find them well weaponed,( for we hate Souldiers that are not for the punctillo) but either dulled with often service, or their weapons broken near the handles, through their former fool-hardinesse and desperate valour, in daring to scale, though encountered with S. Anthonies Fire, that we shall give to such no quarter, but shall reserve them as Pageants for mirth, at our pleasures to transluce.   

Postscript.  
NOw if to these our desires our husbands prove refractory and opposite, we entreat them to consider that wee neither for prayers or threats will any longer be debarred of our just rights, and that they would neither remember that Lucullus Caesar, Pompey, Anthony, Cato, and divers other gallant men, were 〈◇〉 and knew it, though they would not make a stir about it, and that there was in all that time but one gullish coxcomb Lepidus that died with anguish.   
FINIS.