Damaris Cudworth Masham

Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham (1659 to 1708) was an English philosopher and one of the most accomplished women thinkers of the late seventeenth century. She was the daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, and she kept up a long philosophical correspondence and friendship with John Locke, who spent his last years at her home at Oates in Essex. She published two treatises anonymously, A Discourse concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life, which defend a rational and educated piety and stress the importance of women's education for moral and religious life.