medieval stories such as Tristan and Iseult. Ruth Mazo Karras—who in the 1990s rediscovered the Rykener case in the City of London archives—sees it as illustrating the difficulties the law has in addressing things it cannot describe. Modern interest in John/Eleanor Rykener has not been confined to academia. Rykener has appeared as a character in at least one work of popular historical fiction, and the story has been adapted for the stage. Rykener's persistent use of women's clothing and presentation as an embroideress, prostitute, or barmaid has prompted some contemporary scholars to suggest that Rykener was a trans woman. Background Prostitution was tightly regulated in fourteenth-century England, and brothels—although not prostitution itself—were illegal in the City of London. City authorities tended not to prosecute individual sex workers, but focused on arresting the pimps and procuresses who lived off them. Prostitution was perceived as most dangerous to the moral fabric of society. Another sexual offence for which people could be prosecuted was sodomy, but this would generally be by the church in its own courts. Of these two sexual offences, sodomy was deemed the worse. The thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas compared prostitution to a sewer controlling the flow of waste, saying that if one were to remove it, one would "fill the palace with foulness". Aquinas then expanded on the point, saying "take away prostitutes from the world and you will fill it with sodomy". Prostitution was thus seen as a necessary evil, that if not eliminated could be controlled. The Lord Mayor of London's secular court would not have been seen as competent to hear cases involving either offence. In late-fourteenth-century London, it was considered socially unacceptable for a man to habitually wear women's clothes. There were exceptions if it was deliberately obvious or necessary—for example, in theatre, or mystery plays. Corpus Christi mystery plays, as the historian Katie Normington notes, provided an occasion "where gender identity could be tested or disrupted". Conversely, the limited number of such opportunities, says Vern Bullough, meant that male-to-female transvestism was effectively non-existent in public society. But beneath the surface, suggests Ruth Evans, London was "a place of unrivalled sexual and economic opportunities". Hermaphroditism too had a legally recognised status; the thirteenth-century jurist Henry de Bracton, for example, had discussed it in his Laws and Customs of England, and there was a strong tradition of fictionalising it. The best-known, a story told