page_title: Ralph Cudworth
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Ralph Cudworth / Career / Later life
caption_attribution_description: This is a photo of listed building number 1123935.English: Marble wall memorial tablet plaque to Damaris Cudworth (née Andrews through first marriage, 1623-1695), daughter to Matthew Cradock, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and late wife to the Cambridge Platonist Rev Ralph Cudworth, in All Saints Church at High Laver, Essex, England.Damaris was mother to Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham who had married Sir Francis Masham MP (1646-1723) as his second wife.The Mashams, a family originally from Yorkshire, acquired 'Oates' (to the north-west of the church and demolished 1830), in 1615. Sir Francis Masham was father to Samuel (1678/9–1758), first Baron Masham who had married Abigail Hill (c.1670–1734), cousin to Sarah Churchill. Abigail became favourite companion and Keeper of the Privy Purse to Queen Anne. Samuel (1712–1776), second Baron Masham, son to Abigail and the first Baron, through profligacy squandered the family wealth, some of which was that of John Locke (buried in the churchyard), who lived in the Masham household for the last years of his life and had bequeathed his wealth to Lady Damaris, and Sir Francis Masham and Lady Damaris' only child, Francis Cudworth Masham (1686–1731). Lady Damaris was interred at Bath Abbey, her son Francis Cudworth Masham at the nearby parish church at Matching, his vault discovered in 1990.Camera: Canon EOS 6D with Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS USM lens.Software: RAW file lens-corrected, optimized and downsized with DxO OpticsPro 11 Elite, Viewpoint 2, and Adobe Photoshop CS2.
context_page_description: Ralph Cudworth FRS was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists. From a family background embedded in the early nonconformist environment of Emmanuel College where he studied, he became 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew, 26th Master of Clare Hall, and 14th Master of Christ's College. He was a leading opponent of Thomas Hobbes's political and philosophical views, and his magnum opus was his The True Intellectual System of the Universe.
context_section_description: In 1665, Cudworth almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry More, because of the latter's composition of an ethical work which Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated treatise on the same subject. To avoid any difficulties, More published his Enchiridion ethicum (1666–69), in Latin; However, Cudworth's planned treatise was never published. His own majestic work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), was conceived in three parts of which only the first was completed; he wrote: "there is no reason why this volume should therefore be thought imperfect and incomplete, because it hath not all the Three Things at first Designed by us: it containing all that belongeth to its own particular Title and Subject, and being in that respect no Piece, but a Whole."
  Cudworth was installed as Prebendary of Gloucester (1678). His colleague, Benjamin Whichcote, died at Cudworth's house in Cambridge (1683), and Cudworth himself died (26 June 1688), and was buried in the Chapel of Christ's College. An oil portrait of Cudworth (from life) hangs in the Hall of Christ's College. During Cudworth's time an outdoor Swimming Pool was created at Christ's College (which still exists), and a carved bust of Cudworth there accompanies those of John Milton and Nicholas Saunderson.
  Cudworth's widow, Damaris (née Cradock) Andrewes Cudworth (d.1695), maintained close connections with her daughter, Damaris Cudworth Masham, at High Laver, Essex, which was where she died, and was commemorated in the church with a carved epitaph reputedly composed by the philosopher John Locke.
caption: Memorial to Damaris Cudworth
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