CAVENDISH, MARGARET, Duchess of Newcastle (1624?–1674), writer, was born at St. John's, near Colchester in Essex. Her father, Sir Thomas Lucas, whom in the autobiographical sketch appended to the first edition of her ‘Nature's Pictures, drawn by Fancy's Pencil to the Life,’ she calls ‘Master Lucas,’ a gentleman of large estates and much consideration, died when she was an infant. The youngest of a family of eight, consisting of three sons and five daughters, she was, according to her own account, bred by her mother ‘in plenty, or rather with superfluity,’ and received a training the influences of which are apparent in her life. In the autobiographical sketch a curious picture is afforded of the manner in which she and her sisters were trained, ‘virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably, and on honest principles.’ Their dress was not only ‘neat and cleanly, fine and gay,’ but ‘rich and costly,’ their mother holding it more consonant with her husband's opinions to maintain her family ‘to the height of her estate, but not beyond it,’ and to bestow her substance on their ‘breeding, honest pleasures, and harmless delights,’ than to practise an economy which might chance to create ‘sharking qualities, mean thoughts, and base actions.’ At the hands of tutors the young ladies received all sorts of ‘vertues,’ as ‘singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working, and the like,’ together with some knowledge of foreign languages. From her mother, Elizabeth, daughter of John Leighton, whom she describes as a woman of singular beauty, she inherited her good looks. Of the personal appearance of her brothers and sisters she gives a naïve description. According to this they were ‘every ways proportionable, likewise well featured, clear complexions, brown haires, but some lighter than others, sound teeth, sweet breaths, plain speeches, tunable voices, I mean not so much to sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor wharling in the throat, or speaking through the nose, or hoarsly unless they had a cold, or squeakingly, which impediments many have.’
The happy life at St. John's was interrupted by the outbreak of civil war. The brothers, two of whom were married, resided mostly, when in the country, with their mother, as did the three sisters who married, and who exercised over their youngest sister a supervision which though kind was so close that she was always bashful when out of their sight. But the brothers now joined the standard of the king, and two of them shortly afterwards died. Their death was followed by that of her mother, and anticipated by that of her eldest sister. A strong desire on the part of Margaret Lucas to be maid of honour to the queen was, in spite of the opposition of her brothers and sisters, encouraged by her mother, and when the young girl, disappointed at the life of court, and discontented at being regarded, owing to her shyness and prudery, as a ‘natural fool,’ repented of her wish, her mother counselled her to stay. For two years accordingly, 1643–5, Margaret Lucas remained in attendance upon Henrietta-Maria, whom she accompanied to Paris. Here, in April 1645, she first met her future husband, William Cavendish, marquis and subsequently duke of Newcastle [q. v.] From her brother, Lord Lucas, an animated account of her beauty and gifts had been received. The conquest of the marquis was accordingly soon effected, and the pair were married in Paris in 1645. During their residence in Paris, in Rotterdam, and in Antwerp, they were in constant pecuniary straits. The efforts of the marchioness to obtain money for her husband to keep up the state which, even when their joint fortunes were at their lowest, he held due to himself, were incessant. On one occasion, in company with her brother-in-law, Sir Charles Cavendish, she visited London for the purpose of claiming some subsistence out of the estate of the marquis, or in any manner realising money for her husband's needs. Her success was slight. As the wife of ‘the greatest traitor of England’ parliament would grant her no allowance, and she would have starved but for assistance in the shape of loans obtained by Sir Charles. After an absence of a year and a half she returned to Antwerp.
Upon the Restoration she followed, after some delay, her husband to England. She seems to have exercised her influence to induce him to retire from a court in which her virtues no less than her peculiarities rendered her somewhat of a laughing-stock; she desired him to devote himself in the country to the task of gathering together and repairing what he calls ‘the chips’ of his former estates. She died in London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 7 Jan. 1673–4. In the north transept of that building is a monument erected by her husband, who survived her three years. The epitaph supplies a high tribute to her virtues and accomplishments, and adds, in words which Addison quotes with warm encomium: ‘Her name was Margaret Lucas youngest daughter of Lord
