Today I almost did not take up my pen. The ink seems turned to ashes, and my words burnt bitter on the page. For today I saw my daughter and my son-in-law (this pen can scarce write that word ‘son’) excommunicated from our church, for marrying in Lent with no true dispensation.
Could that wretch not even marry my daughter right?
My wife is crying in the second-best bedroom. Susanna is with her; but not even Susanna’s good sense can comfort her mother now.
To be cast from the church! To live in open sin and call it matrimony, and in a house that I had given her. I should have placed my boot upon his rump ere he first came to my door. Being guilty of that sin myself, I did not do a father’s duty.
Rage, and rage again. No anger now can quench my fury’s thirst. That our house should come to this. Could aught be worse?
Dinner: still Lenten fare. An eel pie, that reminded me of the sins of the man I must still call son, even if in law and in God’s sight he not be, for my daughter refuses to return to this house until it can be made right; herring, baked, with bitter sorrel sauce, and bitter it must be; red cabbage, pickled, for a pickle we are in; a dish of onions, to make us cry.
Bowels: unsteady, and of watery tears our house has borne too much.