Lady Damaris Masham

Born Damaris Cudworth and later known as Lady Masham, she was an English writer, philosopher, and theologian, the daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. Reliable sources describe her as an advocate for women’s education, and several note that she worked around weak eyesight and the lack of formal higher education to earn the respect of major thinkers of her time.

She published two books anonymously: A Discourse Concerning the Love of God (1696) and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705). Scholars connect her work both to the Cambridge Platonist tradition she grew up with and to the ideas of John Locke, with whom she maintained a long and intellectually important friendship.

Later in life she lived at Oates in Essex with Sir Francis Masham, whom she married in 1685. That household became closely associated with Locke, who spent his final years there, and her letters and published writings show that her role in early modern philosophy was far more substantial than older histories sometimes suggested.