Cavendish and Hutchinson, secretaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay argues that we should understand Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson as secretaries in the practically activist humanist tradition. Both women served as keepers of (family and political) secrets, and as readers, writers, and record keepers of papers. Hutchinson calls herself ‘the faithful depository’ of her husband’s ‘secrets’, and alludes to her facility with his signature, or ‘character’, throughout the Memoirs. In many ways, the Memoirs themselves are a vindication of his belief in her capacities. Margaret Cavendish similarly presents herself as her husband’s secretary, including in her ‘Life of William Cavendish’ not only a robust and notably politic account of her husband’s expenditures on behalf of the monarchy – ‘a Computation of My Lord’s Losses’ – but also a record of ‘some Essayes and Discourses of My Lords, together with some Notes and Remarques of mine own’. In doing so, Cavendish remarshalls the consiliary wisdom of William Cavendish’s own advice to princes as ballast for his continued political relevance and for her own secretarial and advisory competency.