Introduction

For May 1600 Lady Margaret Hoby of Hackness in Yorkshire recalled ‘talkinge with Mr Daunie, who invited me to be a witness at his childes baptisinge which I refused, in regard that my Conscience was not perswaded of the charge I was to undertake’, although she remained ‘loath to deny ... any friend such courtesy’.1 Margaret Hoby is not only the first known Englishwoman for whom a diary survives, but she is also among the first identifiable Puritans in this ‘dark corner’ of the Tudor kingdom. The dilemma she faced due to her relative religious isolation was an increasingly common one in the early modern period; a contest between religious conviction and social obligation.