Damaris Cudworth Masham 1659 – 1708

Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, was an English philosopher and one of the most accomplished women thinkers of the late seventeenth century. The daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, she carried on a long philosophical correspondence and friendship with John Locke, who spent his last years at her home at Oates in Essex. Her two anonymously published treatises, A Discourse concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life, defend a rational and educated piety and the importance of women's education for moral and religious life.