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On Easter Sunday 1834 Anne Lister and the heiress Ann Walker took communion together at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, in York. Lister's diary treats the shared sacrament as their marriage vow. She took an institution that excluded her and quietly adapted its ritual. The union also had legal and financial substance, since the two women rewrote their wills in each other's favour.
Lister kept much of her journal, including reading, travel, finances and social life, in plain text, and used a cipher of Greek letters and mathematical symbols for intimate matters such as her relationships with women. The code let her write frankly about those subjects within the same private document, and what she chose to encrypt suggests which topics she judged most dangerous to have read.
Lister's management of Shibden's rents, timber and coal pits, including negotiating leases and contesting rival colliers, gave material support to her unconventional life. Her independence was still partial: before 1836 family arrangements limited her income, and she later drew on Ann Walker's wealth. Her close tracking of money in the diaries reflects how much her autonomy depended on it.