As a learned lady in the late seventeenth century, Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham imbued contemporary philosophical issues with personal significance and made them meaningful in the everyday life of a gentlewoman such as herself. Masham's two books, A Discourse Concerning the Love of God (1696) and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705), deal with different aspects of practical morality. Each asserts the need for a rational grounding of Christian belief and the need for every individual to understand the basis of the virtuous ideals to which he or she was supposed to aspire, rather than to accept them on authority. Free choice between alternative philosophical ideas, which were instantiated in her own conduct and in her recommendations to others, was paramount for Masham.

Born 18 January 1659, Damaris Cudworth was the daughter of the leading Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and his wife, Damaris. In 1685 she married Sir...