The 28th was the first time the Child put on a pair of whalebone bodice.... The Child put on her red bays coat.... I cut the Child’s strings from off her coats and made her use togs alone, so as she had two or three falls at first but had no hurt with them.... The Child put on her first coats that were laced, with lace being of red bays.... I began to dress my head with a roll without a wire. I wrote not to my Lord because he wrote not to me since he went away. After supper I went out with the child who rode a pie-bald nag. The 14th, the Child came to lie with me which was the first time that ever she lay all night in a bed with me since she was born;
and another time she speaks of “the time being very tedious with me, as having neither comfort nor company, only the Child.”
For the rest, she was thrown back upon her own resources. Dorset came and went, and in between whiles there are small, vivid pictures of existence at Knole:
LADY MARGARET SACKVILLE
Daughter of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, and Lady Anne Clifford
“THE CHILD”
From the portrait at Knole by Mytens
After supper I walked in the garden and gathered cherries, and talked with Josiah [the French page] who told me he thought all the men in the house loved me.
And again:
About this time [April 1617] my Lord made the steward alter most of the rooms in the house and dress them up as fine as he could and determined to make all his old clothes in purple stuff for the Gallery and Drawing Chamber.
March 1617. 5th. Couch puppied in the morning.
8th. I made an end of reading Exodus. After supper I played at Glecko with the steward as I often do after dinner and supper.