"The Famous Flower of Serving-men" (ZN2994) is by Laurence Price, the ballad having been entered in the Stationers' Register in July of 1656. A year earlier he had written "The Famous Woman Drummer" (ZN2076) giving very little real information about his subject. She was a Mrs. John Clarke, and gave birth to a child in an inn in London on July 16, 1655. A better broadside ballad about her is "The Gallant She-Souldier" (ZN3084). There was also a contempory news account about her, which is where her name and the precise date come from.

Earlier, apparently in 1584, we had Mary Ambree donning mail and fighting. (Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, I, p. 516. The tune for the ballad, incidently, is "The blind Beggar's Daughter" according to a broadside copy in the Manchester collection, ZN468. Traditional tune for it in DT.)