After Wentworth was recalled to England in 1640, Alice's father succeeded him as Lord Deputy; however, after a brief illness believed to be severe fever, Wandesford died on 3 December 1640, less than one year after assuming the position.

In the ensuing chaos, Wandesford's will and testament were lost and, while ultimately found once more in 1653, disputes over his estate caused bitter strife within the family and years of litigation between them.

[2] In 1651, Alice wed William Thornton (1624-1668), a member of the lesser gentry in Ryedale chosen by her family, whose parliamentarian connections helped to recover their lands confiscated during the English Civil War.

They also describe her feelings on a number of more emotional topics including her strong religious faith, royalist views, and the difficulties she experienced following the deaths of her husband as well as six of their nine children (due in part to the high infant mortality rate at the time).

[8] Between 2018 and 2019, Cordelia Beattie, a professor of Women's and Gender History at the University of Edinburgh, located the third manuscript at the Durham Cathedral Library, where it had been misidentified in their catalogue since its arrival in 1969.

In 2021, Beattie was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant in support of her project to make Alice's complete works in her words accessible in a digital edition.

Completed reproductions are available for viewing on the project's website, and readers are able to "trace people, places and events across all four Books" thanks to the site's use of Text Encoding Initiative guidelines.