Along with three brothers and four sisters, she was raised by her widowed mother in the protected affluence of a close-knit, staunchly Royalist family. This early security was shattered by the civil wars of the 1640s, when the Lucas family was profoundly affected by the outbreak of hostilities. In 1642 Saint John's Abbey, the Lucases' principal residence, was plundered by an anti-Royalist mob. Margaret was to lose two brothers in the wars that followed. When Queen Henrietta Maria took up residence at Oxford in 1643, Margaret Lucas was permitted to join the court as a maid of honor to the queen, her married sisters having withdrawn to Oxford after the battle of Edgehill. Margaret accompanied Henrietta Maria into exile in 1644, and in Paris met William Cavendish, then Marquis of Newcastle, whom she married in December 1645. Newcastle was thirty years older than Margaret and a widower, an impressive horseman, and something of a military hero, although there were critics of his hasty flight to the Continent.
For the next fifteen years the Newcastles lived in exile, finally settling in Antwerp where they lived in Peter Paul Rubens's house, leased from Rubens's widow. Surviving almost entirely on credit, they maintained the trappings of nobility while the marquis maintained horses for manège and Margaret spent a good deal of time alone in reverie and writing.
This is a free page. This page contains 193 words. This
biography contains 5,727 words (approx. 19 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Margaret Lucas Cavendish Access Pass.
