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© April 2004
revised 1 March 2009
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on a first-name basis:
“Margaret,” and other naming conventions
In her excellent study of Renaissance women’s love lyric in Europe, 1540–1620, Ann Rosalind Jones explains about the difficulties that past naming practices pose for modern literary critics and historians:
Social and literary-critical convention has it that women whose last names end in “de” plus a place name or noble family name are called by their first names, on the model of the medieval aristocracy: Christine de Pisan is “Christine,” Anne de Beaujeu is “Anne.” In the Renaissance, the status of such names was not as clear; women had considerable choice about calling themselves after their fathers, their husbands, their mothers, or their possessions. The Dames des Roches, as they are formally called on their title pages, actually had the last name Fradonnet, from Madeleine’s first husband and Catherine’s father. But they adopted “des Roches” from the name of a piece of country property they owned, perhaps because it suggested the status of landed nobility. I have followed the convention of using first names for Tullia d’Aragona, Pernette du Guillet, and Catherine des Roches; I hope my readers will not take this usage as patronizing. (I do not, at least, call Gaspara Stampa, the possessor of a forthright bourgeois surname, “Gasparina” — little Gaspara — as her early twentieth-century editor did.) It is cheering, to my mind, as well as convenient that the less problematic last names of the bourgeoisie are in the majority in this study.
(Jones 1990, p. 10)
In the case of Margaret Cavendish, to whom social rank and dignities were matters of the utmost importance, there are no such convenient solutions at hand. I have by now run through the gamut of available names — everything from “Margaret” to just plain “Cavendish” — trying to resolve contradictions between what are, in the end, irreconcilable ontologies.
My own preference — for the unadorned surname, “Cavendish” (as distinguished from her husband William, to whom I often refer as “Newcastle”) — would most certainly not have met with Margaret’s approval, who ostentatiously paraded her authorial dignities, in triplicate, on the majority of her title pages, and always signed her epistles to the reader, “M. N.” or “Margaret Newcastle.”
The following is a summary of the appellations which Margaret (the name used on the title page of her 1667 publication) chose to publish under, over the course of a full literary career, spanning from 1653 to 1671:
in 1653:
- Written By the Right Honourable, the Lady Margaret, Countesse of Newcastle
—Poems and Fancies
- Written By the Right Honourable, the Lady Newcastle
—Poems, and Fancies (another impression)
- Written by Rt. Hon. the Lady Newcastle
—Philosophicall Fancies
in 1655:
- Written by the Most Excellent Lady the Lady M. of Newcastle
—Worlds Olio
- Written by her Excellency, the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastle
—Philosophical and Physical Opinions
in 1656:
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Natures Pictures
in 1662:
- written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Playes
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Orations
in 1663:
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Orations (another impression)
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Philosophical and Physical Opinions (2nd ed.)
in 1664:
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—CCXI Sociable Letters
- By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Philosophical Letters
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess The Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
—Poems, and Phancies (2nd ed.)
in 1666:
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Observations upon Experimental Philosophy
in 1667:
- Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, his wife
—The Life of ... William Cavendishe
in 1668:
- Ab Excellentissima Principe, Margareta ipsius uxore sanctissima conscripti
—De Vita ... Guilielmi Ducis Novo-castrensis
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Grounds of Natural Philosophy
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (2nd ed.)
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Blazing-World
- Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Plays, Never before Printed
- Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, The Duchess of Newcastle
—Poems, or Several Fancies (3rd ed.)
- Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, The Duchess of Newcastle
—Orations (2nd ed.)
in 1671:
- Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and most Excellent Princess, the Duchess of Newcastle
—Natures Picture (2nd ed.)
- Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and most Excellent Princess, the Duchess of Newcastle
—World’s Olio (2nd ed.)
The most extensive blazoning of both Cavendishes occurs on the title page of the English-language biography of her husband, first published in 1667:
The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle, Earl of Ogle; Viscount Mansfield; and Baron of Bolsover, of Ogle, Bothal and Hepple: Gentleman of His Majesties Bed-chamber; one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy-Councel; Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter; His Majesties Lieutenant of the County and Town of Nottingham; and Justice in Ayre Trent-North: who had the honour to be Governour to our most Glorious King, and Gracious Sovereign, in his Youth, when He was Prince of Wales; and soon after was made Captain General of all the Provinces beyond the River of Trent, and other Parts of the Kingdom of England, with Power, by a special Commission, to make Knights. Written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, His Wife. London, Printed by A. Maxwell, in the Year 1667.
Cavendish’s developing authorial identities — from countess, to marchioness, to duchess — closely tracked her husband’s changes in rank. William was first knighted, while still a teenager, in 1610; in 1620, he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Mansfield, by James I; in 1628, he was created Earl of Newcastle, along with Baron Cavendish of Bolsover, Bothal and Heple, by Charles I; in 1629, he inherited the Barony of Ogle; in 1638, he was appointed governor to the Prince of Wales, and made a member of Charles I’s Privy Council; in 1643, he was created Marquis/Marquess of Newcastle by Charles I (making Margaret a marchioness, although this new ranking was not recognized by the Interregnum government); and in 1665, he was finally created Duke of Newcastle by Charles II.
The long sought-after advancements in Margaret’s social rank may have even been an impetus for some of the second and third editions she brought out in the late 1660s, especially of the Poems and Fancies, which had unfortunately impressed the lowlier title of countess on public memory. Indeed, Margaret would not have been happy to know that when Sarah Jinner placed her on a short list of “rare” women poets in 1658, she referred to her as “the Countess of Newcastle.” William London was only slightly better with his reference to “Poems and fancies by the Lady Marg. Newcastle. folio.” in his bookseller’s Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, published the year before in 1657. Once taken hold, the earlier countess identity stuck, as in the Athenian Mercury’s reference in 1691 to a “late Famous Countess” “gone mad with Learning.”
More congenial by far would have been the creative naming practices of the 19th-century Romantic essayist, Charles Lamb, who referred affectionately to Margaret by her own chosen identity: “a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice noble, chaste and virtuous — but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.” Lamb would name Cavendish twice more in print, in similar vein: once as “that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle”; and once as “dear Margaret Newcastle.” Lamb was intimately familiar with Margaret’s biography of her husband, which he described as a “jewel,” and with her Sociable Letters — his personal copy of which was borrowed by “Spiteful K” (identified by Jerry Morris, who is cataloging the library of Charles Lamb on LibraryThing.com, as the actor, James Kenney [1780–1849]) and to Lamb’s great chagrin, taken to France with him when Kenney travelled abroad — which Lamb described as full of “Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts.” Both books proclaimed Margaret’s “thrice noble” status on their title pages.
To modern readers, Margaret’s repeated self-blazoning as “thrice noble” is even more of an attention-grabber. But in the 17th century, such exaggerated phrasing was not uncommon. For example, W. J. dedicated his 1653 compilation of Elizabeth Grey’s enormously popular (21 editions by 1707, and still selling well in 1710 and 1711; even Robert Boyle owned a copy) A Choice Manual of Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chyrurgery to
... the Vertuous and most Noble Lady, Letitia Popham, Wife of the Honorable and truely Valiant Colonell, Alexander Popham ...
elsewhere addressing Popham as “Thrice Noble and truely Vertuous Lady.”
And W. J. bound Grey’s book with another book of chemical recipes, A True Gentlewomans Delight, dedicated to
... the Vertuous and Most Hopefull Gentlewomen, Mis. Anne Pile, Eldest Daughter of the Honorable Sr. Francis Pile Baronet, deceased ...
as payback for “singular favours ... received, not onely from your worthy self, but also from your thrice noble progenitors.”
QUICK LINKS
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TITLE PAGE page for Cavendish’s last original work to be published, Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668), printed by Anne Maxwell
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^ Title page for 1st edition of Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies in 1653, with hand correction of “Countesse” ranking (someone has changed it to read “Marchiones”)
^ Title page for Cavendish’s 2nd edition of Poems and Fancies in 1664, with printed correction of Cavendish’s rank (now reads “Marchioness”)