She is living (1616) principally at Knole, sometimes in London, sometimes making an expedition into the North to join her mother, who in all her difficulties was her counsellor and ally. The perpetual topic of the diary is the dispute with her husband:
“My Coz: Russell came to me the same day, and chid me, and told me of all my faults and errors, he made me weep bitterly, then I spoke a prayer of Owens, and came home by water where I took an extreme Cold.”
The Archbishop [of Canterbury] my Lord William Howard, my Lord Rous, my Coz: Russell, my brother Sackville, and a great company of men were all in the gallery at Dorset House, where the Archbishop took me aside and talked with me privately one hour and half, and persuaded me both by Divine and human means to set my hand to their arguments. But my answer to his Lordship was that I would do nothing until my Lady [her mother] and I had conferred together. Much persuasion was used by him and all the company, sometimes terrifying me and sometimes flattering me.
Next day was a marvellous day to me, for it was generally thought that I must either have sealed the argument or else have parted from my Lord.
She then starts for the North—a hazardous journey—to confer with her mother.
We had two coaches in our company with four horses apiece and about twenty-six horsemen. I came to my lodgings [at Derby] with a heavy heart considering how many things stood between my Lord and I.
We went from the Parsons’ House near the Dangerous Moors, being eight miles and afterwards the ways so dangerous the horses were fain to be taken out of the coach to be lifted down the hills. This day Rivers’ horse fell from a bridge into the river. We came to Manchester about ten at night.
Dorset was not above subjecting her to petty annoyances and humiliations, for he sends messengers after her with “letters to show it was my Lord’s pleasure that the men and horses should come away without me, so after much falling out betwixt my Lady [her mother] and them, all the folks went away, there being a paper drawn to show that they went away by my Lord’s direction and contrary to my will.[[3]] At night I sent two messengers to my folks to entreat them to stay. For some two nights my mother and I lay together, and had much talk about this business.”
In order to get back to London she has to borrow a coach from her mother, from whom she takes a “grievous and heavy parting.” Arrived at Knole, “I had a cold welcome from my Lord,” and a day or two later he takes his departure for London, sending constant messengers and letters, to know whether she will give way to his demands. “About this time,” she sadly writes—it is April, spring at Knole, and she then aged twenty-six—“about this time I used to rise early in the morning and go to the Standing in the garden, and taking my prayer book with me beseech God to be merciful to me and to help me as He always hath done.”
Meanwhile Dorset’s threats increase in virulence: on the first of May he sends Mr. Rivers to tell her she shall live neither at Knole nor at Bolbrook; on the second he sends Mr. Legg to tell the servants he will come down once more to see her, which shall be the last time; and on the third he sends Peter Basket, his gentleman of the horse, with a letter to say “it was his pleasure that the Child should go the next day to London ... when I considered that it would both make my Lord more angry with me and be worse for the Child I resolved to let her go; after I had sent for Mr. Legg and talked with him about that and other matters I wept bitterly.”