Her friends and her country shared with her own family the heart and the correspondence of Lady Russell. Her children she lived to see well provided for in honourable and influential positions. Her second daughter was married to the son of her husband's dearest friend, Lord Cavendish, and she became the Duchess of Devonshire. The eldest daughter was unmarried, but the third became the Duchess of Rutland. Her only son, afterwards Duke of Bedford, was in high favour in the reign of William and Mary, and acted as High Constable of England at the coronation of Queen Anne. His education and training was carefully directed by his mother. One of her letters is to his grandfather, then Earl of Bedford, interceding with him for one of the errors of her son's early life. He had been tempted, as many young Englishmen still are, to gamble when on his travels, but his debt taught him a lesson which saved him from ever after getting into trouble in this way. Lady Russell, while pleading for his forgiveness, undertook to be answerable for the whole loss which had been incurred. It is a sensible and motherly letter.
To give adequate idea of the whole correspondence would occupy much space, and we can only briefly refer to a few of the letters at different periods of her long life of widowhood. To Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, she writes, in 1690: "When anything below is the object of our love, at one time or other it will be a matter of our sorrow. But a little time will put me again into my settled state of mourning; for a mourner I must be all my days on earth, and there is no need I should be other. My glass runs low: the world does not want me nor do I want it: my business is at home and within a narrow compass. I must not deny, as there was something so glorious in the object of my biggest sorrow, I believe that in some measure kept me from being overwhelmed."
At one time Lady Russell was in danger of losing her sight, but being couched for cataract, she recovered sufficiently to continue her correspondence.
In the early years of her great loss, while at first overwhelmed in spirit, she yet resolves, in submission to the will of God, to bear her calamities with patience and courage. "My yet disordered thoughts," she writes to Dr. Fitzwilliam, "can offer me no other than such words as express the deepest sorrows, and confused as my yet amazed mind is. You, that knew us both, and how we lived, must allow I have just cause to bewail my loss. Who can but shrink at such a blow, till, by the mighty aid of His Holy Spirit, we will let the gift of God, which He hath put into our hearts, interpose. That reason which sets a measure to our souls in prosperity, will then suggest many things which we have seen and heard to moderate us in such sad circumstances as mine." "Can I regret his quitting a lesser good for a bigger? Oh! if I did steadfastly believe, I could not be dejected; for I will not injure myself to say I offer to my mind any infirm consolation to supply this loss. No, I most willingly forsake this world, this vexatious troublesome world, in which I have no other business but to rid my soul from sin; secure by faith and a good conscience my eternal interests with patience and courage bear my eminent misfortunes; and ever after be above the smiles and frowns of it. And when I have done the remnant of the work appointed me on earth, then joyfully wait for the heavenly perfection, in God's good time, when by His infinite mercy I may be accounted worthy to enter into the same place of rest and repose where he is gone, for whom only I grieve."