While choosing to live in America28, Cobbett still kept up his connections in England and promised his readership that he would, after a short interval, keep the Political Register going by sending his written pieces from America. Cobbett, who was always on the edge of financial disaster, with his move to America, was to lose most everything that he owned in England. The family he left behind found quarters in London, as they were put out of possession of their home at Botley; the farm, stock and equipment were seized together with the furniture and other effects including Cobbett's books: all of it to be sold to satisfy Cobbett's many creditors.29

Cobbett situated himself on Long Island there to live the simple life: "rising before the sun, eating mainly the vegetables he grew, drinking nothing but water and milk."30 Nancy and the five younger children followed Cobbett out, arriving around the end of the year. However, by the following summer, 1818, Mrs Cobbett and most of the children returned to England; Cobbett, himself, was to return a year after that, in 1819. On his return to England, Cobbett was to have as part of his luggage a bag of bones; he had disinterred Thomas Paine who had been laid in American ground ten years earlier.31

During his stay in America, Cobbett was to write two books: Journal of a Year's Residence in the United States of America and Cobbett's English Grammar. His Grammar was much more then a little book of grammar: "it contained some excellent advice on both substance and style, warning the reader against writing about any matter which he does not well understand and against the use of figures of speech, superlatives, and the type of affection which from the beginning of the written word has characterized official communications."