[1] During the Popish Plot, she was required in her husband's absence to call out the militia, to deal with a false alarm of a French invasion at the Isle of Purbeck, and did so "in a state of deadly fear".

[4] Despite this moment of panic, in general, she maintained a detached and rational attitude to the Plot, expressing her amazement that the informer William Bedloe, whom she knew to be "a villain whose word would not have been taken at sixpence", should now have "power to ruin any man".

[5] She attended the trial of the Catholic barrister Richard Langhorne, presumably in case Bedloe, a bitter enemy of her husband, made any charges against him, and took notes of the evidence.

When Bedloe protested at her presence, the Lord Chief Justice, William Scroggs, pointed out that the trial was open to the public, and asked irritably what a woman's notes amounted to anyway: "no more than her tongue, truly".

[12] She had the assistance of such well-known gardeners and botanists as George London and Leonard Plukenet; seeds came to her from the West Indies, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China and Japan.

[15] Her herbarium, in twelve volumes, 'gathered and dried by order of Mary Duchess of Beaufort',[16] she bequeathed to Sir Hans Sloane, by whose bequest it came to the Natural History Museum.