Thomas Earle was 47 years old when he and Mary returned from their sojourn in Italy. At this age, many merchants began to think about winding down, transferring funds into rentier investments and beginning to anticipate the joys of retirement. But this was not to be Tom Earle's way. He relaxed a bit, took pleasure in riding and gardening, for instance, but overall he was pretty active in business right up to his death, 25 years later, in April 1781. The family stayed with relations on their return to Liverpool, but soon set up on their own in a large house in Hanover Street, the street favoured by the mercantile élite.

The correspondence between Joseph Denham and Mary Earle became much more irregular after her return to Liverpool, but Denham's surviving letters do allow us some inkling of Mary's life in England. In July 1768, for instance, Denham wrote that he believed her life was now preferable to what she had enjoyed in Italy, ‘on account of your numerous friends and relations’, suggesting that she had a lively social life in England. Lack of English friends in Italy had been a major contribution to her homesickness. It is also clear that Mary had successfully encouraged her two girls to keep up their Italian and to take advantage of the best education available, although sadly no details are available. ‘I am glad to find your two daughters are well situated at school’, Denham wrote in 1774, when the girls were 13 and 10. ‘Your plan of education enraptures me. How different from this country!’

Meanwhile, Thomas was busy as a shipowner and merchant. The shipping database shows him to be sole or part-owner of 11 ships which made 43 trading voyages between them from 1762 to 1780, two or three voyages a year, and he also had shares in seven slaving voyages in partnership with his younger brother William.