Martha and Mary Lloyd.

Martha Lloyd (1765 – 24 January 1843) was Jane Austen's dearest friend after Austen's sister Cassandra, and is now known also as a collector of recipes.

• The Lloyd family had much in common with the Austens and from an early time, visits between the two families were frequent. 
• Though no one knows quite how they met, the Austens and Lloyds shared many mutual friends and when the Reverend Lloyd died in 1789, his widow and her two oldest, single daughters were happy to move into the unused Deane parsonage, a mile and a half from Steventon, offered by Reverend Austen.
• Although Jane Austen was ten years younger than Martha, the oldest Lloyd daughter, they were, as Jane's cousin Eliza de Feuillide remarked, "very sensible and good-humored." Austen considered Martha to be a second sister, as her letter of 13 October 1808, written to Cassandra, shows: "With what true sympathy our feelings are shared by Martha, you need not be told;—she is the friend & Sister under every circumstance.
• After three years (1792), when Jane Austen's brother, James, married and assumed the parish of Deane, it was necessary for the Lloyds to move, this time to a home in Hurstbourne, called Ibthorpe. Though only 15 miles (24 km) from Steventon, this separation must have seemed cruel to Jane, who had few friends nearby and no mode of transportation. It is clear from Jane Austen's correspondence that her friend Martha was privy to her great secret—her writing.
• In 1805 changes abounded for the Austen and Lloyd families. Many years had now passed since James Austen's first wife had died and he had remarried again, choosing the younger Miss Mary Lloyd to be his second wife.
• It was while they were living in Bath, Somerset that Mr. Austen finally succumbed to his long illness and not too many months later that Mrs. Lloyd also died. The women, being in a delicate financial state, decided to combine housekeeping and all four (Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, Jane and Martha Lloyd) moved to Southampton to be with Jane's younger brother Frank and his wife, Mary. As an officer in the Navy, Frank was often away from home and this joining of households not only helped him look after his widowed mother, but provided constant companionship for his soon pregnant wife. It seems to have been, by all accounts, an excellent arrangement.
• On 7 July 1809, Jane Austen moved to a cottage in Chawton, together with her mother, her sister Cassandra, and their friend Martha Lloyd, at the invitation of her brother Edward Austen Knight, on whose estate it lay. 
• Martha Lloyd's contribution to what is now known of Austen's life is significant. Letters survive from Jane to Martha, as well as Martha's collection of recipes used at Chawton, which were later compiled into A Jane Austen Household Book by Peggy Hickman, David & Charles, Ltd. 1977, and in The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye, British Museum Press, 1995
• The Austen family remained at Chawton Cottage, even after Jane Austen's death in 1817. Martha Lloyd took on many duties as housekeeper for the family, though the work was divided among the three surviving women. Frank, by now Sir Francis Austen, had lost his wife in 1823 after the birth of their 11th child. In 1828 he and the 62-year-old Martha Lloyd were married, making her Lady Austen.