I’m only just too late to topically note, from my daily Dictionary of National Biography email, that there is a woman, and she’s a merchant who must have been of some standing, in the Guy Fawkes story:
“They sent Fawkes-the unknown face-out to reconnoitre, but he came back with encouraging news that the tenant of a ground-floor vault below the Lords’ chamber, a coal merchant appropriately named Ellen Bright, was vacating her premises. Percy at once set about securing the lease.” (That’s where they put the gunpowder, after finding the foundations too tough to tunnel through).
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