Dorothy was the daughter of Ambrose Smith of Withcote, Leicestershire, and of Cheapside, by his wife Jane Cooe. She married Benedict Barnham at St Clement Eastcheap on 28 April 1583. They had eight children. Three girls and a boy died in infancy. The remaining four girls lived to marry. Elizabeth, the eldest married Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, Alice married Sir Francis Bacon in 1606, Dorothy married Sir John Constable of Gray's Inn and of Dromby, Yorkshire, and Bridget married Sir William Soame of Thurlow, Suffolk. When Barnham died in 1598 he left an estate of £20,000 of whom the chief beneficiaries were Dorothy and her daughters. Within two years Dorothy had remarried. Her second husband was Sir John Pakington whom she married in November 1598. They had two daughters and a son. Anne, Dorothy's elder daughter by her second husband, married at Kensington, on 9 February 1619, Sir Humphrey Ferrers, son of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, Warwickshire; and, after his decease, Philip Stanhope, 1st Earl of Chesterfield. Her second daughter by her second marriage, Mary, married Sir Richard Brooke of Nacton in Suffolk. The only son of the second marriage, John, was created a baronet in June 1620, and sat in Parliament for Aylesburyin 1623–1624. He married Frances, daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth, with whom he had two children, including his heir Sir John Pakington, 2nd Baronet The union between Dorothy and Sir John was not a happy one and early in 1607 Pakington "and his little violent lady … parted upon foul terms". In 1617 she appealed to the law, and Pakington was forced to appear before the court of high commission, and was committed to gaol. It was the unpleasant duty of the Attorney General, Francis Bacon, to give an opinion against his mother-in-law. In 1628 Dorothy quarrelled with her sons-in-law respecting the administration of her husband's estate, which was transferred to the sons-in-law in February 1629. In or about 1629 Dorothy took a third husband, who had already married three times, and who died in November 1631. Subsequently she became the third wife of Thomas Erskine, 1st Earl of Kellie He died on 12 June 1639, and she probably died about the same date.
