Confessional Disputes in The Republic of Letters: Susan Du Verger and Margaret Cavendish

The Seventeenth Century
ISSN: 0268-117X (Print) 2050-4616 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsev20
Confessional disputes in the republic of letters:

Susan Du Verger and Margaret Cavendish
Justin Begley
To cite this article: Justin Begley (2017): Confessional disputes in the republic of letters: Susan Du
Verger and Margaret Cavendish, The Seventeenth Century
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2017.1406819
Published online: 11 Dec 2017.
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Download by: [Dr Justin Begley] Date: 11 December 2017, At: 01:34
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2017.1406819
ARTICLE
Confessional disputes in the republic of letters: Susan Du

Verger and Margaret Cavendish
Justin Begley
Humanities Division, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The starting point of this article is an understudied piece of critical Margaret Cavendish; Susan
exegesis from 1657 titled Humble Reflections Upon Some Passages Du Verger; Monasticism;
of the Right Honorable the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio. An Church Fathers; Ecclesiastical
Downloaded by [Dr Justin Begley] at 01:34 11 December 2017
History; Natural Philosophy

obscure Englishwoman named Susan Du Verger composed this
164-page tract to refute a three-page essay on “A Monastical life”
by the prolific poet, playwright, and philosopher, Margaret
Cavendish. While there is now a substantial body of work on
nuns and convents, this research largely overlooks how early
modern women engaged with these topics in a scholarly manner.
Along with elucidating the gamut of relevant patristic and eccle-
siastical histories that were available in the English and French
vernaculars, Humble Reflections provides a prompt for investigating
Cavendish’s ideas on ecclesiastical order, ceremonies, and tolera-
tion. I propose that Cavendish refused to grace Du Verger with a
direct response because her polemic disregarded the unofficial
codes of conduct — friendship, transnational community, and
inter-confessional co-existence — that were supposed to maintain
peace within the Republic of Letters. In conclusion, this essay
displays that Cavendish was actually a great admirer of monasti-
cism, though not so much for its role in the spread of Christianity
as for its place in the development of natural philosophy.
1. Introduction
The starting point of this article is a peculiar and understudied piece of critical exegesis
from 1657 titled Humble Reflections Upon Some Passages of the Right Honorable the
Lady Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio.1 An Englishwoman named Susan Du Verger
(1610–1659?) composed this 164-page tract to refute a three-page essay on “A
Monastical life” by the prolific poet, playwright, and philosopher, Margaret Cavendish
(1623?-1673).2 While Du Verger’s biography is fragmentary, we know that she was
baptised at the French Huguenot Church on Threadneedle Street in April 1610, but that
she eventually converted to Catholicism and migrated to Paris.3 Slightly before making
this move, she published two volumes that contained English translations from the
prominent French Bishop, Jean-Pierre Camus de Pontcarré (1584–1652): a collection of
moralistic tales titled Admirable Events in 1639, and a work of prose fiction about a sex
lottery called Diotrephe, or, An Historie of Valentines that was probably printed in
CONTACT Justin Begley justin.begley@helsinki.fi Humanities Division, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
© 2017 The Seventeenth Century
2 J. BEGLEY
1641.4 In stark contrast to this romantic writing, Humble Reflections incorporates a

dizzying array of citations from scripture, ecclesiastical histories, patristic literature, and
the occasional Renaissance commentator. Both in form and content, it is part of the
early modern commentary tradition. Yet Humble Reflections was produced by a woman
who probably possessed little formal education, and who applied her skills not to the
usual suspects – Aristotle’s De anima, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, or Ovid’s
Metamorphoses – but to a short essay by a fellow female writer. To my knowledge, this
is the only instance of one seventeenth-century Englishwoman printing a sustained
response to another on a topic of theological import.5 Building on a now substantial
body of work that grapples with the social, cultural, and political implications of early
modern nuns and convents, this article gives due attention to the scholarly manner in
which two laywomen of the period tackled the topic of monasticism.6
At the same time, Humble Reflections supplies a singular insight into how confes-
sional divides were broached in the Republic of Letters. The manner of Cavendish’s
address to Du Verger is telling in its own right. Upon perusing Humble Reflections, she
wrote in her 1664 Philosophical Letters that
there has one Chapter of my Book called The Worlds Olio, treating of a Monastical Life,
been answer’d already in a little Pamphlet, under the name of a woman, although she did
little towards it; wherefore it being a Hermaphroditical Book, I judged it not worthy taking
notice of. The like shall I do to any other that will answer this present work of mine, or
contradict my opinions indirectly with fraud and deceit.7
Based on this passage, Lisa Sarasohn has supposed that “a man had already written
against some sections of The World’s Olio, but under a female pseudonym”, proceeding
to lament that “this work has not survived”.8 While the target of Cavendish’s dismissal
is certainly Humble Reflections, Sarasohn’s reading of this passage is longstanding: it
dates back to a letter from March 1664 that the Cambridge divine and natural
philosopher, Henry More (1614–1687), sent to his fellow philosopher and pupil,
Anne Conway (1631–1679). Since Cavendish called Du Verger’s work “a
Hermaphroditical Book” that used “the name of a woman”, More understandably
supposed that Cavendish was “affrayd some man should quitt his breeches and putt
on a petticoat to answer her in that disguize”.9 This article, however, contends that
Cavendish’s refusal to grace Humble Reflections with a direct response was not so much
based on the author’s sex as the ungainly polemical style of the piece.10 By focusing on a
confessional particularity and exaggerating an ideological divide, Du Verger disre-
garded the unofficial codes of conduct – friendship, shared learning, transnational
community, and inter-confessional co-existence – that were supposed to maintain
peace within the Republic of Letters.
This article begins by exploring the gamut of English and French patristic literature
and ecclesiastical histories that Du Verger harnessed for her apology. From there, it
displays how Humble Reflections and The World’s Olio can be understood as different
kinds of commonplace books. Whereas Du Verger collected evidence from an extensive
range of authorities on a specific topic and for a stated purpose, Cavendish gathered,
integrated, and juxtaposed diverse outlooks on various themes. Far from being polem-
ical, Cavendish’s essay on monasticism is not even a simple expression of her own
opinions. As I argue, Cavendish later designed her Philosophical Letters (with Du
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 3
Verger in mind) as a model of civil correspondence and balanced criticism that

simultaneously served to clarify her theological and ecclesiastical ideas. In conclusion,
I demonstrate that Cavendish in fact revered monasticism. But where Du Verger
emphasised the significance of monastic communities to the growth of the Catholic
Church, Cavendish was chiefly concerned with their role in the development of natural
philosophy.
2. Du Verger’s scholarly sources

Humble Reflections commences with an “Epistle to the Right Honorable the
Marchionesse of Newcastle”. In a sociable tone, this printed letter extends
Cavendish’s “olio” metaphor to praise her work as “delicious and exquisite”.11 For all
its polite pretences, however, there is reason to suppose that the epistle would have
immediately jarred Cavendish. Rather than making Du Verger’s acquaintance through a
private note of introduction – according to convention in the Republic of Letters –

Cavendish first encountered her in a printed epistle that circulated publicly. Du
Verger’s prose soon turns explicitly uncouth as she recounts her reading of the essay
on “A Monastical Life”, which made her stomach “ryse, and loathe, what formerly it so
much liked”. She regrets that Cavendish met with “fraudulent Caterers, (in whom you
were but too confident) who abused your credulitie and goodness, and spoyled your
feaste”.12 After these expressions of distaste, Du Verger quotes Cavendish’s essay in its
totality, numbering what she saw as each distinct challenge to monasticism. The rest of
the essay is dedicated to refuting the numbered points that she has extracted.
Recognising “what rates, such noble soules” as Cavendish’s put “upon antiquitie of
bloud”, Du Verger grounded her response in historical precedent.13 She first appeals to
“S. Hierosme [Jerome]; S. Basile, S. John Chrystome, and Sainte Augustine”.14 Then she
takes recourse in the Old Testament prophets – “Elias, Eliseus, the Nazareans, and
others” – before summoning the incontrovertible authority of Paul and Jesus himself.15
The desire to reinstate the principles and practices of the early Church in all of their
purity was of course a driving force behind the teachings of Martin Luther, Huldrych
Zwingli, John Calvin, and their Reformed offspring.16 Conversely, as a staunch
Catholic, Du Verger strove to exhibit an unbroken chain from the ancient prophets,
to Christ, through the apostles, the Church Fathers, and down to the Catholic Church
of her day. She thus held that Jesus not only condoned the “heavenly profession” of
monasticism but that his life embodied its values. To ratify this point, Du Verger
references Peter’s statement (in Matthew 19:27) that the disciples abandoned their
earthly goods and followed Christ, holding their possessions in common.17 She avers
that only because of the modest, simple, and peripatetic nature of an apostolic life had
the tenets of the Church “fruitfully branched and spredd themselves out all the world
over”.18 It becomes clear over the course of Humble Reflections that Du Verger
considered this spirit to have especially animated English monks from around
600 AD, who delivered their message to “a great part of Germanie, Holland, Zeland,
Saxonie, friseland and others”.19 She no doubt derived this narrative from the Historia
ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by the Venerable Bede (672/3–735). While Bede’s history
was first published around 731 AD, Thomas Stapleton’s 1565 English translation (or
one of its subsequent editions) would have been most readily available to Du Verger. In
4 J. BEGLEY
many senses, Bede is the first properly English historian; paving the way for Du Verger,
he shaped England as a new promised land, and charted the seminal role of the English
people in establishing the universal Church.20
Taken as a whole, the scope of Du Verger’s sources is not only impressive for a
woman but for any layperson, and the extent of her knowledge is all the more
remarkable since her Latin was limited. The Latin phrases that are scattered throughout
Humble Reflections are almost exclusively Vulgate maxims, such as “ex fructibus eorum
cognoscetis eos” from Matthew 7:20 or “mors est in olla” from 2 Kings 4:4.21 Indeed, Du
Verger admitted that an ambit of relevant literature was “shutt up in Latine, wherein
my knowledge is but slender”.22 She overcame this in part by co-opting two unnamed
male colleagues to support her case. Running to fifteen and nine pages respectively,
their interpolated letters occupy a considerable proportion of Du Verger’s polemic.23
The insertion of epistles from anonymous men would have undoubtedly struck
Cavendish as an affront to the principle of transparency that was idealised in the
Republic of Letters, contributing to her decision to label Humble Reflections a “her-

maphroditical” effort: both male and female. But the letters themselves interestingly
elucidate the state of mid-seventeenth-century vernacular scholarship. Despite her lack
of Latin, Du Verger’s friend deemed her “a verie vertuoso in antiquities, beyond the rate
of a woman”.24 Supporting her defence of monasticism, he claims to provide “what is
not offered to one in that kind by our English historians”. In practice, however, the vast
range of medieval and classical Christian literature that had been translated by 1657
meant that he only needed to channel the authority of Latin Renaissance writers. For
instance, he cites an Italian Jew who converted to Christianity, Sixtus of Siena (1590-
1569), and a Jesuit polemicist of the counter-Reformation, Antonio Possevino (1533-
1611), in praise of Bede.
While there are now some impressive studies on early modern English translations
of the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical historians, it is often assumed that the women
to whom these works were sometimes dedicated did not engage with them
thoroughly.25 In discussing the fact that the English clergyman Meredith Hanmer
(1543–1604) dedicated his translation of Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica to Elizabeth
Clinton (1528?-1589), for instance, William Haugaard writes that “we must wonder
how she responded to his optimistic assessment of the appeal of such ponderous
tomes”.26 Such an appraisal Such an appraisal is generally unfair” is generally unfair
to female scholars of the period, especially since Thomas More’s granddaughter, Mary
Basset (d. 1572), produced a parallel Latin/English translation of Eusebius from the
Greek years before Hanmer’s publication (c. 1547–1553).27 For her part, Du Verger
cites “The 4. Age. In Constaintins life”, which was added to the 1636 edition of
Hanmer’s Eusebius, indicating that at least one woman had trawled through his
considerable work of scholarship during this later period.28 Due to a dearth of evidence,
Du Verger’s personal or family library cannot be reconstructed. Yet the letters in
Humble Reflections prove that she was in touch with learned men whose books may
have been at her disposal. Both the lack of an entry for her work in the Stationers’
Register and a seventeenth-century manuscript note in the British Library copy marking
it as printed in Douai (despite the London imprint) suggest that Du Verger composed
and published her work in France; she also refers in Humble Reflections to how “We
have [a] store of Sermons at Paris” on indulgences.29 If Du Verger produced her book
in Paris, she would have had access not only to private collections, but also to an
assortment of public libraries.30
Alongside Hanmer’s The Auncient Ecclesiasticall Histories, Du Verger derived many of
her quotations from the Annales ecclesiastici by Caesar Baronius (1538–1607), the first
volume of which (published in 1588) confronts monasticism at length. Whereas some of
the other sources that she consulted can only be inferred, she explicitly refers in this
instance to Henri de Sponde’s “French abridgement of Baronius”, or the 1636 L’Abrégé
des annales ecclésiastiques.31 Baronius was of course a leading counter-Reformation writer,
and, largely for this reason, most of his major scholarly enterprise had not been Englished
by the mid-seventeenth century.32 Du Verger was thus compelled to translate passages
from de Sponde’s Baronius – which would have been in any decent French library – into
English. Most often, however, she quotes from the Church Fathers. Near the beginning of
Humble Reflections, Du Verger cites Saint Jerome for two pages, before providing sizeable
quotations from Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, and Augustine of Hippo.33
Assuming that their defences of the cloister would speak for themselves, she offers little
by way of exegesis. Out of her citations from the Fathers, Augustine’s De Civitate Dei
appears most frequently. At one moment, she directly appeals to “the Citie of God englished
by Crashaw”, in reference to William Crashaw’s 1620 translation.34 Her use of this source
should not come as a shock, since it was the most popular patristic text of the day.35 In fact,
Du Verger principally appeals to the Fathers whose works were most published in English
translation between 1536 and 1640, such as Augustine (twenty times), Jerome (eight times),
and Chrysostom (four times).36 Many of these references are to “bookes of virgins” by the
likes of Ambrose, Jerome, Cyprian, Chrysostome, Athanasius, and Augustine. Although all
of these authorities were at least reputed to have written on virginity, none of their works on
this topic appear to have existed in the vernacular. Because of this, Du Verger probably
excerpted from secondary sources despite citing the primary works. In doing so, there can
be little doubt that she relied on Richard Broughton’s 1655 Monastichon Britanicum,
though the work itself goes unnamed. As Jean-Louis Quantin has decisively established,
the Church Fathers were of the utmost significance to English Reformed writers, making
Du Verger’s emphasis on the Fathers a strategic one.37 Yet precisely because monasticism
garnered such widespread patristic warrant, English Protestants of the period rarely
denigrated it unreservedly.38 We will see that this is true of Cavendish, notwithstanding
Du Verger’s critique.
Far from being a disinterested undertaking, Humble Reflections is in many ways an
apology for Du Verger’s conversion to Catholicism. With the upheaval of the British
Civil Wars, writers were increasingly compelled to justify their religious convictions.
Declaring throughout that she wrote in defence of her “Catholike Mother”, Du Verger
hoped to establish without a shadow of a doubt that her conversion from a Huguenot to
a Catholic was well informed.39 In terms of her decision to tackle the topic of
monasticism for this purpose, it is noteworthy that Du Verger’s only other publications
are translations of Camus. Despite his professional role as a Catholic Bishop, Camus
was a known critic of monastic communities.40 This comes through even in Du
Verger’s translations, such as when she writes “that it is both against nature and reason,
thus to presse some Children to cast themselves into monasteries, thereby to enrich the
rest”.41 In his sermons, Camus more forcefully declared that those who meditate on the
passion of Christ gain far more than if they were to fast for a year, regularly self-
6 J. BEGLEY
flagellate, or recite the Psalter daily.42 Such claims echo the sceptical voice in
Cavendish’s essay, which argues that “one would think that God should not take delight
in shaven heads; or bare and dirty feet, or cold backs, or hungry stomacks, in any
outward habit, but in an humble heart and low desires”.43 By criticising Cavendish, Du
Verger endeavoured to distance herself from the anti-monasticism of Camus with
which she was at risk of being associated.
Yet, as the case of Camus suggests, there was no definitive Protestant (or Catholic)
line on the value of monastic communities.44 Du Verger herself points out that Luther
is “knowen to the world by his sacrilegious love to Monasticall livers”.45 By contrast, the
less wholesale reformer, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), opposed the monastic orders
that were in place during his lifetime. While subsequent sections will look at some more
local sources for the criticism of monasticism presented in The World’s Olio, it can be
noted here that they resound with the satirical jabs in Erasmus’s 1511 Moriae
Encomium. In this work – which Cavendish could have accessed in various editions,
starting with Thomas Chaloner’s 1549 translation – monks are defamed as the “most
miserable and abject” creatures who “take a pride in theyr beggerie” but “medle so little
with bookes, and learnyng, as scarce they know how to read theyr owne names”.46 As
these cross-confessional appraisals indicate, tackling the much-contested topic of mon-
asticism was not necessarily the most expedient means for Du Verger to defend her
religious convictions.
3. Criticism and commonplaces

Whether Cavendish was herself an appropriate target for Du Verger chiefly depends on
how the genre of The World’s Olio is understood.47 While it is an understudied work,
The World’s Olio has been read as an “anti-commonplace book”, in which Cavendish
articulated her singular notions in pieces that range from one-sentence aphorisms to
four-page reflections.48 If Cavendish’s essay on monasticism had simply been an
exposition of her own views, then Du Verger’s rebuttal would have been warranted.
But there is good reason to believe that The World’s Olio actually began as a common-
place book that Cavendish used to organise material that she distilled from her diverse
conversations and readings under memorable headings.49 In the preface, she declares
that “most of it was written five years since, and was lockt up in a Trunk as if it had
been buried in a Grave, but, when I came out of England, I gave it a Resurruction”.50
Cavendish accordingly composed the lion’s share of this work around 1650 in the
intellectual milieus of Paris and Antwerp.51 Not initially designing The World’s Olio for
print, she first published Poems, and Fancies and Philosophicall Fancies in 1653 while in
England petitioning for the right to reclaim the estate of her husband, William
Cavendish (1592–1676). Only subsequently did she revise and print her commonplace
book as a volume of essays.
Although Du Verger often cites texts with which Cavendish would have had little
acquaintance, she twice appeals to “the great Bacon, in his Essaies”, which was almost
certainly a significant source of inspiration for the genre of The World’s Olio.52 As previous
scholars have noted, Cavendish later followed Francis Bacon (1561–1626) by coupling the
natural philosophical reflections of her 1666 Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy
with her fictional account of philosophical societies in The Blazing World, just as he paired
Sylva Sylvarum with The New Atlantis.53 It is unsurprising that Cavendish adopted
Baconian genres, since she bestowed on “Lord Bs. Works” more praise than she was apt
to grant other publications of her day, lauding them in Sociable Letters as “Learned,
Eloquent, Witty, and Wise, fit for State-Counsel and Advice, to Plead Causes, Decide
Controversies, and the like”. 54 Along with alluding to Bacon’s professional roles as Lord
Chancellor and Attorney General, her description resounds with the full title of the 1625
edition of his essays: Counsels, Civill and Morall. Taking Bacon as one of her authorities,
some of Cavendish’s essays also refract his particular sentiments. To supply a well-known
passage that touches on a religious topic, Cavendish writes in “Of Atheisme, and
Superstition” that it “is better, to be an Atheist, then a superstitious man, for in
Atheisme there is humanitie, and civility, towards man to man; but superstition regards
no humanity, but begets cruelty to all things”.55 Here she appears to modify the claim from
Bacon’s essay “Of Superstition” – which Bacon himself had adapted from Plutarch – that
“Atheisme leaves a Man to Sense; to Philosophy; to Naturall Piety; to Lawes; to Reputation;
All which may be Guides to an outward Morall vertue, though Religion were not; But
Superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute Monarchy, in the Minde of
Men”.56 Due to a scholarly emphasis on Poems, and Fancies, Cavendish is usually thought
to have endorsed a Lucretian materialism that inclined her towards atheism.57 Yet, in the
above passage, she deviates from Lucretius, whose failure to clearly distinguish between
religio and superstitio resulted in conflicting late seventeenth-century translations of Book
1, lines 26–79 of De rerum natura.58 At the same time, even if Cavendish and Bacon were
more damning of superstition than atheism, they both outspokenly defended the
“Christian Religion, in which all good men ought to follow”.59 Subsequent sections will
show that – in contradistinction to many of her English contemporaries – Cavendish
connects the “extreams in devotion [that] run to superstition and idolatry” with the
enthusiasm of Protestant nonconformists, but not with Catholics.60
Despite the parallels between specific passages in Bacon’s Essayes and The World’s
Olio, it seems that Cavendish was more concerned with his manner of counterbalancing
competing positions to “Decide Controversies” than with deriving particular points
from his publications. In comparison to the meandering, anecdotal, and inconclusive
style of his French precursor in the essay form – Michel de Montaigne (1532–1593) –
Bacon was far more dispassionate and systematic.61 Mihoko Suzuki has previously
argued that though Cavendish’s essays are “apparently closer to Bacon’s detached and
impersonal form than to Montaigne’s explicitly self-revelatory form, [they] constitute in
fact a hybrid form between Bacon’s and Montaigne’s”.62 But Suzuki chiefly bases this
claim on the notion that while Cavendish’s essays do not emphasise the authorial
persona, her prefatory material is written in the first person. It is not inconceivable
that Cavendish read John Florio’s 1603 edition of Montaigne’s Essais before publishing
The World’s Olio; however, the paratextual use of the first person was typical in the
seventeenth century, and is consistent throughout Cavendish’s oeuvre, hardly suggest-
ing a reliance on Montaigne’s essay form. More significantly, where Montaigne’s
frequent citations of ancient authorities steer him onto the tangents that give his
work its idiosyncratic nature, Cavendish regularly abstracted from individual views to
generate commonplace claims that she then structured according to a pro/contra style
(in keeping with the method of Bacon’s “Antitheta Rerum”).63 Cavendish’s manner of
8 J. BEGLEY
deploying this method is evident, for example, in an essay titled “Of Men and Women”,
in which she makes a witty contribution to the querelle des femme:
Some say a Man is a Nobler Creature than a Woman, because our Saviour took upon him
the Body of Man; and another, that Man was made first: But these two Reasons are weak;
for the Holy Spirit took upon him the shape of a Dove, which Creature is of less esteem
than Mankind; and for the Preheminency in Creation, the Devil was made before Man.64
Here Cavendish generates commonplaces that she pits against one another in order to
see which argument comes out on top. In this sense, many of her essays resemble the
systematic arrangement of incompatible perspectives on a wide variety of topics in her
1662 Orations. Yet, whereas Orations presents each side of an argument in a balanced
manner, Cavendish is more willing to offer hints of her preferred angle in The World’s
Olio. She does this by prefacing her original loci communes with “some say” or “they
say” before providing an alternative set of commonplaces with which she is more
sympathetic.
While scholars have conventionally praised Cavendish’s “singularity” or “original-
ity” – in a modern sense – the above already suggests that she (like Bacon) retained a
largely classical understanding of invention (or inventio) as the rearrangement of pre-
formed arguments.65 Since invention was the first of the five stages of rhetorical
composition, it is apt that The World’s Olio – Cavendish’s earliest literary undertaking –
both enacted and discussed this process in some detail.66 In an essay titled “Of
Invention”, she writes that he “is more praise-worthy that invents something new, be
it but rude and unpolished, then he that is learned, although he should do it more
curious”.67 Here “new” should by no means be taken as irreducible originality, for
Cavendish proceeds to state that usually “the first invention is imperfect; so that time,
and experience add to the growth, and perfection, and many times there are many
creatours to one invention”. Invention is thus described as the act of generating a
position by assimilating and contrasting previously posited arguments. In this sense,
both Cavendish and Bacon further adhere to the classical notion that rhetoric and
dialectical logic meet in invention.68 Cavendish even deploys dialectics to discuss logic
in The World’s Olio, writing that “some say Logick is to make truth appear, others that
it is to make falshood appear like truth, and some say again, that it is to dispute on both
sides”.69 But because she relied on commonplacing for her invention of arguments,
Cavendish followed Bacon and diverged from both Montaigne and Du Verger in rarely
revealing her sources. It is in this regard that Cavendish and Du Verger can be
understood as producing different versions of the commonplace book. Whereas
Humble Reflections gathers quotations from a nexus of authorities on a specific topic,
The World’s Olio juxtaposes views that have been detached from particular authors.
Insofar as Cavendish elevated invention over simple accumulation, she would have no
doubt conceived of Du Verger as a learned individual who lacked wit. In addition to
interpolating letters from male acquaintances, her text is “hermaphroditical” in that it
serves as a storehouse for quotations from scholarly men. Reading Cavendish through
the lens of her own methodology, Du Verger treated The World’s Olio as a collection of
outlooks that (each in their turn) could be imputed to Cavendish, rather than as a
glorified notebook that she used to shape her opinions. That said, a careful reading of
Cavendish’s essay on monasticism does reveal the stance that she found most
persuasive. As is the case with her essay “Of Men and Women”, every critical indict-
ment of the cloister is preceded by what “some say”, while the positive impressions lack
such deference.
Not so much concerned with untangling Cavendish’s perspective, it seems that Du
Verger took issue with her recourse to commonplaces when discussing so serious an
issue as monasticism. She accordingly deconstructed Cavendish’s generalisations and
even examined her use of personal pronouns. For instance, after quoting Cavendish as
saying that “They are not only the covetous”, Du Verger writes: “They. Which they, I
pray? it is a word of so large an extent that I beleeve you never meant to make it
good”.70 She goes on to explore the scope of “they” for two sections (or seven pages) of
Humble Reflections. The purpose of this close reading was presumably to demonstrate
the universality of the Catholic Church, while showing that its very breadth made it
impervious to such oversimplifications. Du Verger’s lengthy explication of the differ-
ences between “Augustiniā Benedictian, Carmelite, Cistercian, Dominicane and
Franciscan” orders certainly underscores the reductive nature of Cavendish’s

discussion.71 But the reader is left wondering whether any principles or practices
actually united all of the orders under the universal Church.
Both Du Verger’s broad historical reconstruction and her localised treatment of
pronouns are in methodological tension with Cavendish’s invention of arguments
through commonplacing. Yet it is worth noting that Cavendish used pronouns more
carefully in her 1671 republication of The World’s Olio. Whereas she writes in 1655, for
example, that “Some dispraise a Monastical life, and say they are the drones in a
Common-wealth”, by 1671 she replaces “they” with “Fryers”.72 Even if she did not
directly respond to Humble Reflections, Cavendish appears to have taken Du Verger’s
charges of imprecision to heart. In republishing The World's Olio, she thus endeavoured
to skirt her critique by making it clear that she was discussing hierarchies within
monastic communities rather than comparing different orders. Although this concern
is evident in Cavendish’s original, Du Verger’s disregard for her syntax and the genre in
which she was working meant that she did not fully appreciate Cavendish’s intention:
namely, to encapsulate the competing stances towards monasticism (as an ecclesiastical,
social, and political structure) that were disputed among her social circles as she worked
out her own standpoint.
4. One essay; multiple voices

At some moments in Cavendish’s essay, the negative views on monasticism echo those
of her husband, William Cavendish, as expressed in the advice manual that he pre-
sented to Charles Stuart before his ascension to the throne in 1660. Here William states
that clergy and monks contribute “no Honey to ye Hive of The Comonwealth; Like
Hornnitts, or waspes, bring nothing In time of Peace to ye Comonwealth, & will not
Defend itt In time of warr”.73 Margaret’s essay opens with the very same hornet
metaphor:
Some dispraise a Monastical life, and say they are the drones in a Common-wealth, to suck
out that honey they never took pains to gather, and that they are an idle, lazie and
10 J. BEGLEY
unprofitable people, for say they, they go not to wars to adventure their lives, or hazard
their lives, but live free, and secure.74
She thus indicates that monks, being subject to the Church rather than the state, are
never called upon to defend the latter, as is the average citizen. Her essay is on the
whole concerned with the social and political costs of cloisters, instead of specific
theological quandaries. In this sense, it resonates with the sustained assault on the
clergy – at least ostensibly of the Catholic Church – levied by Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679) in the third and fourth parts of his 1651 Leviathan. Here Hobbes was
especially vexed that the laws governing the citizenry at large did not bind monks and
friars.75 William and Margaret were in close contact with Hobbes in Paris during the
1640s – when Cavendish composed much of The World’s Olio – and one of Hobbes’s
incentives for writing Leviathan in English may even have been to please William, his
friend and patron.76 Insofar as William’s own critique of the cloister was indebted to
Hobbes’s discussion, Cavendish probably had both of them in mind when forming her
commonplace arguments contra monasticism.
More generally, William’s treatise to Charles II attacks Catholics and Presbyterians
alike, shaping the Church of England as a via media. In opposition to the
Presbyterians – and Hobbes, for that matter – William deemed it proper for the King
to support educated and orthodox Bishops. On the other hand, he thought that the
Catholic Church’s decision to maintain a horde of monks was economically foolish and
legally dangerous. As Margaret’s essay on monasticism draws to a close, she gradually
conveys her own idea of a religious middle way, concluding that “all mankinde is apt to
run into extreames which beasts are not, either to bar themselves quite of the lawful use
of the world, or to run riot, which of the two, the last is to be shunned, and avoided”.77
This notion that humans – in contrast to other species – tend to outstrip their nature is
ubiquitous in Cavendish’s oeuvre. It is notable here, however, that she does not censure
monks for refusing to make “lawful use of the world” because they veer towards
peaceful contemplation rather than revelry. Cavendish’s framing of the via media
thus made more allowances for monasticism than either Hobbes or her husband.
A similar discursive distance between Cavendish’s views and the critical perspective
in her essay on monasticism is apparent in its indictment of ceremonies. The negative
voice states that monks “bring in ceremony for gaines, in that they set al the mercies of
God to sale”.78 Based on this passage, it does not seem that William held all of the
disapproving opinions in Margaret’s essay, since he argued that ceremonies are “as
nesesary as any thing, for Though Seremoney, is nothing in itt selfe, itt Doth Every
thing, Itt keeps upp Gods house, ye kinges, & ye Comon wealth”.79 In a similar manner,
Margaret writes that ceremonies are “beneficial to the State, for it Amuses the Common
people and busies their mindes”; she expresses this again in a later essay in The World’s
Olio titled “Of Ceremony”.80 Du Verger responded to the negative side of her argument
at length, but, for all her historical sensitivity, she disregarded the reflections on this
topic within the wider context of Cavendish’s work. These two proclivities reach a
critical impasse when Du Verger quotes Augustine as saying that the ceremonies of his
time were “a certaine mute eloquence, delivering wholsome doctrine, suted to move the
affections of the unlearned”.81 Cavendish’s views on this matter accordingly coincided
with those of the very Church Father against whom Du Verger insistently pitted her.
While Cavendish was a staunch supporter of the Church of England, it should now
be clear that she did not deem this to demand an enmity towards either Catholicism or
monasticism. In this regard, it is pertinent that she was a maid of honour to the
Catholic Queen of England, Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), for over two years, first in
Oxford and then in Paris. Although this by no means establishes that Cavendish was
favourably disposed to Catholicism, she would have found it difficult to assume a role
that included joining the Queen in morning prayer if she was as adamant an anti-
Catholic as Du Verger alleged.82 More telling for her attitude towards the cloister,
Cavendish is referenced in a chronicle history of a Carmel convent – titled a “Short
Colection of the Beginings of Our English Monastery of Teresians in Antwerp” – that
J.P. Vander Motten and Katrien Daemen-de Gelder of Ghent University have uncov-
ered in the Antwerp City Archives.83 In the conclusion to the entry on the “Life of Mary
Cotton” (1629-1694), it is written that “when she came to be Religious the Dutchess of
New Castle being then here was much taken with her as being extream pretty,
entertaind her at her own house dressed her with her own hands for her Entery like
a Nimph and lead her in her self”.84 This event occurred in July 1656 – the year before
Du Verger published her work – when Cavendish was staying at Peter Paul Rubens's
house in Antwerp. In conjunction with a fuller understanding of how Cavendish crafted
The World’s Olio, the pleasure that she took in dressing a young woman and conducting
her to a convent suggests that her attitude towards monasticism was more complicated
(and sympathetic) than Humble Reflections allows.
5. Philosophical letters, an indirect response

Even though Cavendish did not compose a direct rejoinder to Humble Reflections, her
Philosophical Letters can in many ways be read as an indirect response to Du Verger,
despite being published seven years later. While addressing a number of Cavendish’s
male contemporaries – including Hobbes, More, René Descartes, and Jan Baptiste van
Helmont – Philosophical Letters is framed as a series of epistles to a fictitious female
correspondent. Because scholars once supposed that the letters of courtship between
William and Margaret were “the only actual and sustained correspondence of
Margaret’s career”, Cavendish was assumed to have written fictional letters since she
lacked a real interlocutor.85 But it is now well-established that she engaged in sustained
exchanges with numerous pre-eminent intellectuals of her day, including Constantijn
Huygens and Joseph Glanvill.86 An alternative explanation is, therefore, necessary to
account for her generic choice.
One aim in shaping Philosophical Letters (and its companion piece, Sociable
Letters) as a book of epistles might have been to exhibit for Du Verger the manner
in which virtuous women should pen letters that range from friendly greetings to
sustained discourses on philosophical themes. Even the full title of Philosophical
Letters: or Modest Reflections Upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy mirrors Du
Verger’s Humble Reflections Upon Some Passages of the Right Honorable the Lady
Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio. The seventeenth century saw a profusion of both
published letter collections (à la Cicero) and instruction manuals on how women
should compose epistles for a range of potential situations.87 In many ways,
Cavendish’s letter books fuse these genres. Throughout her oeuvre, she singles out
12 J. BEGLEY
women as readers, lamenting that the vain and fickle nature that was common
amongst her sex meant that men had all but given up on their education.88 She
speculates in The World’s Olio, however, that “if we were bred in Schools to mature
our Brains, and to manure our Understandings, that we might bring forth the Fruits
of Knowledge”.89 Given that women were excluded from the universities, Cavendish
seems to have taken it upon herself in Philosophical Letters to teach Du Verger the
correct way to engage in the Republic of Letters. At the same time, she hoped to
subtly display to her male contemporaries that she understood and respected the
norms of their scholarly network. To have the maximum impact both within the
institutions and on individual scholars, Cavendish gifted Philosophical Letters and
Sociable Letters to almost every college in Oxford and Cambridge and to many
renowned thinkers of her day.90 We know that at least one of the learned men who
received Philosophical Letters appreciated its polite tone, since More notes in a letter
to Conway that Cavendish “is by farr a more civill Antagonist then Dr Beaumont”.91
He thus contrasts Cavendish’s sociability with the polemical attacks of his fellow
clergyman, poet, and Professor of Divinity, Joseph Beaumont (1616–1699).
In part because it confronts the likes of More and the spiritually inclined
physician, van Helmont, Philosophical Letters broaches theological subjects more
than Cavendish’s other publications. Yet, in doing so, she repeatedly expresses
amazement that “every body is so forward to encroach upon the holy Profession of
Divines”.92 For this reason, Cavendish continually reaffirms her identity as a
“natural philosopher” in Philosophical Letters, especially after she touches on a
theological vein. Upon seceding from a discussion of the natural to the super-
natural soul, for instance, she states that “I shall desire you to excuse me, for that
belongs to Divines, and not to Natural Philosophers; neither am I so presump-
tuous as to intrench upon their sacred order”.93 Opposing individual scriptural
interpretations, Cavendish held that only an educated community of readers –
within the exegetical confines of historically established Church creeds – could
generate an accurate understanding of the Bible.94
Contributing to an understanding of Cavendish as a heterodox material monist of
a Lucretian or Hobbesian variety, some scholars have supposed that her circumspec-
tion surrounding religious discussion was calculated to mask a libertarian under-
current to her thought.95 As is well known, Hobbes defined metaphysics as a first
philosophy that grapples with material – rather than immaterial – causes because he
wanted to supplant theology as a genuine object of study.96 His conviction that
theologians did not truly have a subject to call their own fuelled his infamous attack
on the clerical “Kingdome of Darkness” in Leviathan, which has already been
mentioned.97 But Cavendish did not follow Hobbes in this regard: she instead
maintained that ecclesiastical treatises, publications on Church history, and even
abstract theological speculations were profitable pursuits as long as they were the
fruits of orthodox and educated divines. In reaction to the emergent figure of the
natural theologian (embodied by the likes of More, Glanvill, and Robert Boyle),
Cavendish simply opposed the claims to theological authority that were becoming
increasingly prevalent among the laity.98 She hoped that her measured treatment of
theological issues would send a message not only to Du Verger – who unbeknown to
her was almost certainly dead by 1664 – but to anyone who might publicly challenge
her on a religious topic. While Cavendish’s status freed her to write and even print
poetry or natural philosophy, Du Verger’s published defence of the Catholic Church
was a far more unusual and potentially dangerous undertaking. It was probably an
awareness that she was at risk of over-stepping her place as a laywoman that led Du
Verger to present authoritative quotations in lieu of her own voice.
Following from her defence of the clergy and her objection to public religious
disputation, Cavendish opposed the dissemination of both vernacular Bibles and the
theological treatises upon which Du Verger so heavily relied. In Sociable Letters, for
example, she writes that the “Church of England is the Purest”, yet it “hath suffer’d the
Scripture to be Read too Commonly, which hath caused much Disturbance, not only to
Particular Persons, but in the Church it self”.99 William later recapitulates the sentiment
that there should be “no Disputations but in Scooles, nor no books of controversey, writ
but in Latin, for Else ye Church will fall to nothing, as itt hath latly Dune”.100 Because
Du Verger, Margaret, and even William were not the most competent of Latinists, they
would have found it more difficult to engage with the theological debates of their day if
William’s recommendations had actually been implemented. Yet, for the Cavendishes,
this was a small price to pay. In both William’s and Margaret’s evaluations of historical
events, the licence granted to the laity to read and inevitably interpret scripture had
contributed to the social and political upheaval that spawned the temporary collapse of
the monarchy and the established Church.101
6. Restoration and the limits of tolerance

Cavendish’s relationship with the Catholic priest and poet, Richard Flecknoe (1600–1678),
helpfully elucidates her attitude towards theological controversy after the Restoration.102
Flecknoe dedicated his 1666 A Farrago of Several Pieces to Margaret, and his 1667 play, The
Damoiselles à la mode, to the Cavendishes; most of the former was composed “under your
Graces Roof at Welbeck”. In this collection, Flecknoe includes a “Pourtrait of Margaret
Dutches of Newcastle” in which he notes that “though in point of Faith and Manners of
good Reason it [Cavendish’s writing] be restraind, to avoid error and confusion in Church
and Comonwealth, yet in Philosophy it has been alwaies free”.103 It was this very ability to
disregard religious differences among social and intellectual equals that allowed Cavendish
and Flecknoe to remain close friends. In a Latin letter of thanks for the volumes that
Cavendish sent to Trinity College, Cambridge – probably including her books of letters –
the fellows similarly recognised that she sought to uncover errors, reduce disagreements,
and restore peace to the Republic of Letters, in part by avoiding religious disputation.104
For Cavendish, the Republic of Letters provided the proper social foundation for a
multiplicity of intellectual endeavours precisely because it was firmly rooted in courtly
networks and familial bonds. As Herbert Jaumann has proposed, it could more accu-
rately be called the nobilitas litteraria.105 Owing to its ultimately social basis, there was
no contradiction in William advising Charles II to avoid conceding too much to English
Catholics while concurrently welcoming intellectuals such as Kenelm Digby, Pierre
Gassendi, and Thomas White to his home. As the above names suggest, however,
Margaret and even William were more disposed to be lenient with Catholics than
Protestant non-conformists. Presenting indecorous modes of interaction for pedagogi-
cal purposes in Sociable Letters, Cavendish repeatedly directs her digs at enthusiastic
14 J. BEGLEY
“puritans”. She writes, for instance, that “the Lady Puritan who hath been to visit me
this afternoon, hath so tired me with her preaching Discourse, as I think I shall not
recover my weary Spirits and deafned Ears”. Cavendish proceeds to juxtapose radical
Protestants against Catholics, writing that “Mary Magdalen could not Weep faster for
the time, or fetch deeper Sighs, or stronger Groans for her Sins, than they [puritans] do,
which shews that they have been grievous Sinners; but whether their Sins were of the
same kind as hers were, I cannot tell, and I think they would not confess, for Confession
they account Popish”.106 Due to the order and ceremonies of the Catholic Church –
with its long history as outlined by Du Verger – Cavendish considered it to be more
venerable and less threatening than the religious factions that had emerged during her
own lifetime.
Yet, from Du Verger’s perspective, Cavendish was herself part of a new and danger-
ous schism. As she writes in Humble Reflections, all Protestants “run promiscuously to
the same Church, and the same service (unlesse their zeale leade them rather; into some
tubb, or chimney corner to bable) as well the Calvinist, as the Lutheran; as well the
Quaker, the seeker, and the expecter, as the Brownist, the adamite, and the familist of
love, with all the rest of the confused tribes”.107 Rather than seeing a continuum of
religious orientations, Du Verger formed a strict dichotomy between Catholics and
Protestants. Although she was undoubtedly aware that a Church of England Bishop
usually had more in common with a Catholic Bishop than a Quaker minister, she hoped
to show that even the most traditional High Churchmen had broken with a long-
established institution. In light of Cavendish’s own formation of commonplaces about
monasticism, Du Verger felt justified in erasing distinctions between Protestant sects to
such an extreme degree, while simultaneously prising apart the differences between
monastic communities. For Cavendish in her turn, Du Verger’s public attack would
have made her little better than the crass “Lady Puritan”; she even refers to Du Verger’s
lengthy and well-researched piece as a “little Pamphlet”. Notwithstanding her decision
to outspokenly attack Cavendish, Du Verger endeavoured to forge bonds with the
Catholic wing of the Royalists with which the Cavendishes were intimately associated.
She even dedicated her two earlier publications to figures no less noble than Queen
Henrietta Maria and Margaret Herbert (d. 1681), the wife of Edward Somerset, second
Marquess of Worcester.108 But Cavendish would have considered the very tone of Du
Verger’s polemic to betoken her marginal place in such networks; she might even have
passed this combative humour off as a product of her Huguenot upbringing. Based on
these considerations, another reason why Cavendish did not directly respond to Du
Verger’s polemic could well have been that it was an embarrassment to her own
sympathy with Catholics in England and beyond.
Because of her aversion to religious controversy and her friendship with figures of
varied theological leanings, some scholars have described Cavendish as a “latitudinar-
ian”, by which they mean an advocate of religious tolerance.109 Yet Cavendish’s
resistance to religious disputation (especially among the laity) does not seem to have
followed from a desire for religious comprehension or even toleration beyond her social
circles, but rather from a conviction that only compliance with the established order
could safeguard the status quo. The fact that the 1662 Act of Uniformity was stricter
than the articles of other European Reformed churches suggests that Cavendish was not
alone in holding that ecclesiastical discipline was necessary to avoid religious discord
and to promote peace.110 For Cavendish, the resultant social and political stability
would safeguard the free philosophical speculation that was her chief concern.
7. Conclusion: monastic natural philosophy

Cavendish’s association of the monasteries with natural philosophy throughout her
œuvre provides both a conclusion and a coda to her exchange with Du Verger. Readers
of Humble Reflections might well be surprised to discover Cavendish’s statement in
Philosophical and Physical Opinions – published in the same year as The World’s Olio
(1655) – that “few or none but Monastical men, which live contemplary lives, despising
the vanities of the world, next to the service of God, seek to be acquainted with nature”.
She proceeds to reiterate that “many that read this book, will hardly understand it”
since contemplative persons “are not many in our nation, especially in the Protestant
opinion, which live not Monastical lives”.111 These claims would have been unaccoun-
table to a previous generation of historians of science or philosophy who supposed that

secular humanists or even Protestant reformers revived natural philosophy from its
long medieval slumber.112 Such a narrative persisted partly because novatores such as
Hobbes and Descartes – with whom Cavendish is most frequently aligned – were taken
at their word when they decried the Aristotelian-Scholastic theology and philosophy
that burgeoned in the monasteries. Yet it is now widely agreed that medieval natural
philosophy underwent significant developments with widespread reverberations. As
Roger French, Andrew Cunningham, and Mordechai Feingold have illustrated,
Dominicans, Franciscans, and later Jesuits were indispensable to the growth of natural
philosophy as a discipline.113 Unlike Hobbes or Descartes, Cavendish was keen to draw
attention to the fact that monks not only contributed to the spread of Christianity – as
Du Verger pointed out – but that monasteries were also the central organs for natural
philosophical speculation prior to and later alongside the universities (which themselves
began as organs of the Church).
In contrast to the emergent experimentalism of her day, Cavendish considered the
natural philosophy that developed from the thirteenth century within the inclusive yet
often hierarchical settings of monasteries to have fostered a more discursive and
hermeneutic mode of inquiry. She thus writes that it was not only the “glorious
study” of “Theologie”, but also enquiry into the natural world that carried the thoughts
of monks “above vulgar and common Objects”, elevated “their spirits to an aspiring
pitch”, and proved that “temperance is the greatest pleasure in nature”.114 As opposed
to the negative voice in The World’s Olio, Cavendish maintained that monastic natural
philosophers did not bar themselves from the world; instead, they experienced the
highest forms of delight. As a woman who was excluded from Oxford and Cambridge –
but could have been folded into monastic orders – Cavendish was attracted to this
diffuse and inclusive tradition. As counterintuitive as this may seem, she conceived of
monasteries as a Christian advancement upon the ancient, Epicurean pleasure garden.
Cavendish’s understanding of monasteries as spheres of natural investigation pro-
vides a new context for interpreting what is perhaps her most famous play, The Convent
of Pleasure, published in her 1668 Playes, Never Before Printed. This play has usually
been interpreted as promoting the pleasure of female community against the triviality
of heteronormativity.115 In this regard, it is ironic that the most sustained response to
16 J. BEGLEY
Cavendish’s works by another erudite woman attacks her writing on monastic lives.
Read in relation to Cavendish’s reflections on monasticism, however, The Convent of
Pleasure appears to be most concerned with exploring cloisters as spheres where women
as well as men could pursue natural philosophical study. When discussing the play’s
monastic community, Madam Mediator states that Lady Happy – who established a
convent – is not so much “a Votress to the gods but to Nature”. Within The Convent,
then, there are “Women-Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries” who possess the best
gardens and kitchens imaginable to practice their trades.116 Even when the women put
on performances or recite pastoral poetry, these natural philosophical issues take centre
stage. Harking back to Cavendish’s Poems, and Fancies, for instance, the character of
the Princess asks Lady Happy to view the gates of heaven,
Which are the Planets Seven;

Sees how fixt Stars are plac’d,
And how the Meteors wast;

What makes the Snow so white,
And how the Sun makes light;
What makes the biting Cold
On every thing take hold.117
In the play itself, this literary and philosophical inquisitiveness is contrasted with the
gambling, lasciviousness, and drunken behaviour that occurs outside of the cloister. As
opposed to the opinions of Hobbes and William, Margaret’s play implies that mon-
asteries fostered an unrestrained study of the natural world – in which book learning
and observation were harmonised – precisely because they were carefully ordered
spheres that were not hindered by political duties. According to Philosophical and
Physical Opinions, the need to practically apply philosophical principles in the micro-
cosm of the monastery meant that monks both produced powerful pieces of speculative
natural philosophy that advanced “the knowledge of all Vegetables, Minerals, and
Animals, their constitutions, their sympathies, and antipathies”, and geared their
learning towards “health, and prolonging of life”.118 Indicating the continuity between
these concerns and her own, Cavendish’s medically-informed work proceeds to dis-
course at length (and in best Scholastic fashion) on how “All things in the world have
an Operative power; which Operation is made by Sympathetical motions &
Antipathetical motions, in several Figures”.119 With these considerations in mind, it
might be said that Cavendish’s speculative natural philosophy was not only deeply
indebted to Scholastic but also monastic thought.
Flecknoe’s epitaph to Cavendish offers an illuminating conclusion to the under-
standing of her philosophy as a quasi-monastic pursuit. Reflecting upon Cavendish’s
study in Welbeck – which was notably an abbey before the dissolution of the mon-
asteries – Flecknoe rhetorically asks: “What place is this? looks like some Sacred Cell/
Where holy Hermits anciently did dwell,/And never ceas’d Importunating Heav’n/Till
some great Blessing unto Earth was giv’n”.120 Upon her permanent return to England in
1660 – following many years as an émigré – Cavendish withdrew to a well-stocked
library.121 In the wake of the Civil Wars, Welbeck Abbey provided a refuge, and writing
was Cavendish’s medicina mentis. In other words, while scholars have tended to regard
Cavendish’s exile as a metaphor for her intellectual isolation, it was in fact during this
period that she was most fully and actively in touch with other scholars; only subse-
quently did she reside among her books, communicating with scholarly acquaintances
from a distance.122 This period of retreat provided her with the leisure required to
produce both her books of epistles reflecting on the norms of the Republic of Letters
and her Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. Rather than taking recourse in the
commonplaces that she had generated from her piecemeal readings and salon discus-
sions, her extensive use of direct quotations from both ancient and modern writers in
these works reflects her wide reading during this later period. In close proximity to
Cavendish, Flecknoe had a unique insight into her daily reading and writing habits and,
according to him, the most productive period of Cavendish’s life was a particularly
monastic one.
Returning to the topic with which this article began, the fact that Du Verger did not
alight on the relationship between monasticism and natural philosophy signals a lack of
acquaintance with the wider interests of Cavendish’s œuvre. As a result of this unfa-
miliarity, Du Verger probably saw The World’s Olio as offering a platform for her to
tackle the theological issue with which she was most conversant without impolitely
outstripping her place as a woman by challenging a man. While Cavendish may have
appreciated this gesture, she ultimately considered social status to complicate any
straightforward understanding of the characteristics that should be attributed to either
sex. As she put it in the preface to The World’s Olio: “though it seem[s] to be natural,
that generally all Women are weaker than Men, both in Body and Under standing, and
that the wisest Woman is not so wise as the wisest of Men, wherefore not so fit to Rule;
yet some are far wiser than some men”. She then contrasts civil and educated women
with “Rustick and Rudebredmen”.123 Here Cavendish deploys the Aristotelian-Galenic
focus on the biological basis of virtues and vices in individual tempers to discuss
women with manly virtues, which was an especially relevant topos for the generations
that followed Queen Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne in 1558.124 Neither a paradox
nor a monstrous oddity, this was a way to stress the psychological qualities of a
particular woman while suggesting that “manliness/maleness” and “effeminacy/female-
ness” were not entirely equivalent.125 Insofar as the Republic of Letters revolved around
courtly connections, Cavendish saw no barrier to her inclusion within it, and her
posthumously published Collection of Letters and Poems was even calculated to display
her central role in fostering the links upon which it relied. Du Verger’s decision to
respond to an essay in The World’s Olio – rather than to the more pointed and
sustained attacks on monasticism that any number of men composed – threatened to
dismantle Cavendish’s notion that status was intellectually more significant than sex.
Prompted by Humble Reflections to shape Philosophical Letters as a book of civil
epistles, Cavendish was determined to demonstrate that there was a non-
hermaphroditical way to engage in a man’s world.
Notes
1. The only extant discussion of Humble Reflections is Narramore, “Du Vergers Humble
Reflections”, but this article is exclusively concerned with the paratext rather than the
theological material.
2. “A Monastical life” is in Cavendish, The World’s Olio, 28-31.
18 J. BEGLEY
3. See Collins, “Susan DuVerger”, ODNB. Collins, however, does not acknowledge that Du
Verger converted to Catholicism, despite her assertion in Humble Reflections that “I my
selfe have bene a Catholike these many yeares” (104).
4. A manuscript note in a contemporary hand on the title page of the Bodleian copy of
Diotrephe, or, An Historie of Valentines, Wood 275, suggests that it was actually published
in 1643. On these translations and their religious import along with some additional
bibliographical information, see Hosington, “Fact and Fiction in Susan Du Verger’s
Translations”.
5. On women in the Republic of Letters, see Norbrook, “Women, the Republic of Letters, and
the Public Sphere” and Pal, Republic of Women.
6. On the social, cultural, and political significance of monastic women, see Harline, The
Burdens of Sister Margaret; Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture; McNamara,
Sisters in Arms; and van Wyhe, Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe.
7. Cavendish, Philosophical Letters, C1r.
8. Sarasohn, The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish, 127, n.4.
9. Conway and More, The Conway Letters, 234. On Cavendish and Conway, see Clucas, “The
Duchess and the Viscountess” and Hutton, “Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and
Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought”.
10. The body of scholarship on rules and transgressions in the Republic of Letters is now vast.
For an overview, see Haugen, “Controversy, Competition, and Insult in the Republic of
Letters”. Of particular note are Goldgar, Impolite Learning; Malcolm, “Kircher,
Esotericism, and the Republic of Letters”; Grafton, Worlds Made by Words; and the
introduction to and essays in Die Europäische Gelehrtenrepublik.
11. Humble Reflections, A1v.
12. Humble Reflections, A2r.
13. Humble Reflections, 9. On the centrality of the Fathers to theological debates in early
modern England, see Spurr, “‘A special kindness for dead bishops’” and especially
Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity.
14. Humble Reflections, 7.
15. Humble Reflections, 9-10.
16. On debates over the “true church” and the perpetuity of Catholic doctrine, the key work is
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, especially 128-72.
17. Humble Reflections, 14-5 and 66.
20. See Thacker, “Bede and History” and DeGregorio, “Monasticism and Reform in Book IV
of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History”.
21. Humble Reflections, 40 and 85.
23. Humble Reflections, 46-61 and 114-23.
25. The most significant studies to date are Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship” and
Vessey, “English Translations of the Latin Fathers”.
26. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship”, 45.
27. See Goodrich, Faithful Translators, especially 29-66.
29. See British Library, Humble Reflections, 699.b.35 and Humble Reflections, 105.
30. For an overview of the libraries in mid-seventeenth-century Paris, see Lister, An Account of
Paris, 93-110.
32. For the significance of Baronius to Catholics, see Pullapily, Caesar Baronius, Counter-
Reformation Historian, and, as an authority on monasticism, see Machielsen,
“Sacrificing Josephus to Save Philo”. On the part of Baronius’s history that was
translated into English—volume XII by Richard Lassels—see Hosington, “‘If the past is
a foreign country’”.
35. Vessey, “English Translations”, 826. On Augustine’s reception in early modern England,
see Ettenhuber, Donne’s Augustine and Quantin and Mandelbrote, “Augustine in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”.
36. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship”, 43.
37. Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity.
38. See Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 317-8.
40. On Jean-Pierre Camus, see Worcester, France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus and
Descrains, Jean-Pierre Camus.
41. Du Verger, Admirable Events, 90.
42. Worcester, France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus, 129-30.
43. Cavendish, The World’s Olio, 30.
44. See Biot, The Rise of Protestant Monasticism and especially Jürgensmeier and
Schwerdtfeger, Orden und Klöster.
46. Erasmus, The praise of folie (unpaginated).
47. On the writers that followed Bacon in composing essays, see Kiernan, “Introduction”,
Essayes, xlix-lii.
48. See Scott-Baumann, Forms of Engagement, especially 38-42.
49. On the commonplace book, see Blair, “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy”; Beal,
“Notions in Garrison”; Grafton, “Les Lieux Communs Chez les Humanistes”; and Moss,
Printed Commonplace-Books.
50. The World’s Olio, A4r.
51. On these settings, see Whitaker, Mad Madge, 107-36.
53. On Bacon’s coupling of these works, see Colclough, “‘The Materialls for the Building’”
(2010). Most of the scholarship on Cavendish and Bacon has emphasised the relationship
between The Blazing World and The New Atlantis: see O’Neil “Introduction”,
Observations, xiii-xiv; Cottegnies, “Utopia, Millenarianism, and the Baconian
Programme”; and Aït-Touati, “Making Worlds: Invention and Fiction in Bacon and
Cavendish”. A fuller discussion of how Cavendish read Bacon can now be found in
Begley, “Margaret Cavendish, The Last Natural Philosopher”, 38-60 and 214-41.
54. Cavendish, Sociable Letters, 146.
55. The World’s Olio, 46.
56. Bacon, The Essayes, 54.
57. For discussions of the above passage in terms of Lucretius and Cavendish’s supposed
atheism, see Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, 27-30; Walters, Margaret
Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics, 133-4; and Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the
Exiles of the Mind, 55-6.
58. For the lack of a clear distinction between religion and superstition in Lucretius, see
Cottegnies, “Michel de Marolles’s 1650 Translation”, 182-3.
59. The World’s Olio, 30. For a fuller discussion of the above passage in Bacon, see Lancaster,
“Natural Histories of Religion”, 258-61.
60. The World’s Olio, 34. On Catholicism and superstition, see Shawcross, “‘Connivers and the
Worst of Superstitions’”. For a more High Church perspective, see Seth Ward’s poem in
the British Library: “Whilst to the superstitious we tell / The monstrous piety of a monkish
cell / How true religion fought once at Rome / What throngs of martires there received
this doom” (Add. MS 4457, ff. 231).
61. On the manner in which Bacon's and Montaigne’s essays differ, see Kiernan,
“Introduction”, Essayes, especially xiviii; Villey, Montaigne et François Bacon; Lee, “The
20 J. BEGLEY
English Renaissance Essay”; Hovey, “‘Mountaigny Saith Prettily’”; and Murphy, “Of Sticks
and Stones”. On Florio’s borrowing from Bacon, see Hamlin, “Florio’s Montaigne and the
Tyranny of ‘Custome’”, 516-17.
62. Suzuki, “The Essay Form as Critique”, 3-4.
63. Bacon’s “Of Delayes” and “Of Innovations” are particularly notable for proceeding
through pros and cons (see Bacon, Essayes, 68-9 and 75-6). For “Antitheta Rerum”, see
Bacon, Works, I, 688-706. On Cavendish’s corresponding manner of abstracting from
particular natural philosophical insights to reach general principles, see Begley, “Margaret
Cavendish, The Last Natural Philosopher”, 214-41.
64. The World’s Olio, 83-4.
65. On classical inventio and Bacon as an early modern proponent, see Wallace, Francis Bacon
on Communication and Rhetoric, especially 51-85 and Vickers, “Bacon and Rhetoric”.
66. On the five stages of composition, see Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 62-7.
68. In this regard, see Jardine, Discovery and the Art of Discourse, 32-42 and Lewis, “Francis
Bacon and Ingenuity”, especially 120-3. For the Aristotelian background, see Spranzi, The
Art of Dialectic Between Dialogue and Rhetoric.

72. Cavendish, The World’s Olio (1671), 58.
73. See the fair copy in the Bodleian Library: Clarendon MS 109, fol. 13.
75. The clearest statement of this sentiment is Hobbes, Leviathan, 1108.
76. See Malcolm, “Introduction”, Leviathan, especially 3-4, 52, 145.
78. The World’s Olio, 29. For a relevant discussion of debates surrounding ceremonies, see
Sprinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies and the Stuart Divines, especially 56-62.
79. Clarendon MS 109, ff. 20. Also see Cavendish, The Life of William Cavendish, 168.
80. The World’s Olio, 30 and 51.
82. See Whitaker, Mad Madge, 47-83.
83. See Vander Motten and Daemen-de Gelder, “Margaret Cavendish, the Antwerp Carmel
and The Convent of Pleasure”.
84. English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800, Vol. 4, 515.
85. Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, 12.
86. See Akkerman and Cornoraal, “Mad Science Beyond Flattery” and Broad, “Margaret
Cavendish and Joseph Glanvill”.
87. See Haugen, “Imaginary Correspondence”.
88. The most comprehensive discussion of Cavendish’s ideas on gender is Boyle, “Margaret
Cavendish’s Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy”.
89. The World’s Olio, A4r.
90. On Cavendish’s books in Oxford, see Poole “Margaret Cavendish’s Books”. For how one
early modern reader used her work to orientate his understanding of institutionally
established contemporaries, see Begley, “‘The Minde is Matter Moved’”.
91. Conway and More, The Conway Letters, 234.
92. Philosophical Letters, 316
93. Philosophical Letters, 492.
94. See Philosophical Letters, 210.
95. On Cavendish’s supposed heterodoxy, see Smith, “Claims to Orthodoxy” and Cottegnies,
“Brilliant Heterodoxy”.
96. On debates surrounding Hobbes and heterodoxy, see Rose, “Hobbes Among the
Heretics?”.
97. See Hobbes, Leviathan, especially 956-1010.
98. On the rise of natural theology, see Fischer, “The Scientist as Priest”; Ben-Chaim,
“Empowering Lay Belief”; and Mandelbrote, “The Uses of Natural Theology in
Seventeenth-Century England”.
99. Sociable Letters, 173.
100. Clarendon MS 109, fol. 20.
101. On the printing of vernacular Bibles and the changing religious landscape of seventeenth-
century England, see Mandelbrote, “The Authority of the Word”; Reedy, The Bible and
Reason; and Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England.
102. On Flecknoe’s connection to Cavendish in a different setting, see Fitzmaurice, “Margaret
Cavendish, Richard Flecknoe, and Raillery”. More generally, see Vander Motten and
Daemen-De Gelder, “‘Whom Should I Rely Upon but the Best Able to Support Me?’”.
103. Flecknoe, A Farrago of Several Pieces, 29-30.
104. “Ob profligatos errores, sublata dogmatum dissidia & pacem reipublicae literariae restitu-
tum” (W. Cavendish and M. Cavendish, A Collection of Letters and Poems (London, 1678)),
85.
105. See Jaumann, “Introduction”, Die Europäische Gelehrtenrepublik, 11-19.
106. Sociable Letters, 29-30.

108. See Du Verger, Admirable Events, A3r-A5r and Diotrephe, A2r-A3v.
109. See Fitzmaurice, “Paganism, Christianity, and the Faculty of Fancy” and Rogers, The
Matter of Revolution, 177-211. For a more historically nuanced discussion of latitudinar-
ianism, see Spurr, “‘Latitudinarianism’ and the Restoration Church”.
110. On the Act of Uniformity and its relationship to religious tolerance, see Goldie, “The Theory
of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England”; Walsham, Charitable Hatred; and especially
Spurr, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689”.
111. Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v.
112. The most significant source on Protestant reformers and natural philosophy is of course
Webster, The Great Instauration.
113. On monastic orders and natural philosophy, see French and Cunningham, Before Science
and the introduction to and essays in Feingold, Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters.
114. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v.
115. See, for example, Kellett, “Performance, Performativity, and Identity”; Dash, “Single-Sex
Retreats in Two Early Modern Dramas”; Sierra, “Convents as Feminist Utopias”; and
Chalmers, “The Politics of Feminine Retreat”.
116. Cavendish, The Convent of Pleasure, 11.
117. Convent of Pleasure, 34-5.
118. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v. On sympathy more generally, see Moyer,
“Sympathy in the Renaissance”.
119. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 6. On the medical nature of Philosophical and Physical
Opinions, see Begley, “‘The Minde is Matter Moved’”.
120. Letters and Poems, 158-9. While the poem is unattributed in Letters and Poems, Flecknoe’s
authorship is clear from his Collection of the Choicest Epigrams, 137-8 and A Farrago of
Several Pieces, 13-14.
121. For the expansiveness of the Cavendish library, see Noel, Bibliotheca nobilissimi principis.
122. For the claim that Cavendish’s exile is a metaphor for her isolation, the most notable
sources are Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind and Rees, Margaret
Cavendish: Gender, Genre, Exile.
123. The World’s Olio, A6v.
124. On debates surrounding Elizabeth I not only as a leader but also as a learned woman, see
Benkert, “Translation as Image-Making” and Shenk, Learned Queen.
125. See Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, especially 60-2.
22 J. BEGLEY
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to J.P. Vander Motten, Emily Mayne, Brenda Hosington, and the anonymous
referee for their helpful comments on this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by the Clarendon Fund and Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
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The Seventeenth Century

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Confessional disputes in the republic of letters:

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Confessional disputes in the republic of letters: Susan Du

History; Natural Philosophy

1641.4 In stark contrast to this romantic writing, Humble Reﬂections incorporates a

Verger in mind) as a model of civil correspondence and balanced criticism that

2. Du Verger’s scholarly sources

private note of introduction – according to convention in the Republic of Letters –

Republic of Letters, contributing to her decision to label Humble Reﬂections a “her-

3. Criticism and commonplaces

Franciscan” orders certainly underscores the reductive nature of Cavendish’s

4. One essay; multiple voices

5. Philosophical letters, an indirect response

6. Restoration and the limits of tolerance

7. Conclusion: monastic natural philosophy

table to a previous generation of historians of science or philosophy who supposed that

Which are the Planets Seven;

And how the Meteors wast;

Art of Dialectic Between Dialogue and Rhetoric.

106. Sociable Letters, 29-30.

Jaumann, H., ed. Die Europäische Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter des Konfessionalismus.

Villey, P. Montaigne et François Bacon. Paris: Revue da la Renaissance, 1913.

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