Lady Margaret was the only daughter and heiress of a wealthy landowner. She was married first to Walter Devereus, brother of Robert, Earl of Essex (favourite of Elizabeth I) then to Thomas Sidney, brother of the great Renaissance poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney, and finally to the Puritan Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby. This diary covers the period 1599-1605, when she lived on her estate in North Yorkshire, and records Lady Margaret's spiritual endeavours, the life of her househould and such great events as the legal case in Star Chamber which took the Hobys to London.