[1] Ellen was "already a successful businesswoman when she married her first husband," the London cutler (sword-making blacksmith) Philip Waltham.
[2] When Waltham died in 1426, Ellen continued his business and kept his workshop, and she also trained three female apprentices.
She became quite successful in the textile trade and joined the Fraternity of St John the Baptist of Tailors and Linen-Armourers in the mid-1400s.
She operated very successfully in the silk trade under her own name, building a business where she sold to the royal household and trained her own apprentices.
In her will, drawn up in 1480, she left the bulk of her estate to John Brown, who was one of her previous apprentices and a brother of her own serving maid.