The Civil War years condemned the Cavendish sisters, Lady Jane Cavendish (1621–1669) and her sister, Lady Elizabeth Brackley (1626–1663), to a kind of protracted girlhood.1 Daughters of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1592–1676), and Elizabeth Bassett (d. 1643), they wrote their play, The Concealed Fancies, in captivity. Their home, Welbeck Abbey, had been surrendered to Parliamentary
... [Show full abstract] troops on 2 August 1644, and their father and brother, who had fought with the Royalist forces, were living in exile in Paris after facing defeat at the battle of Marston Moor in July, 1644. A dramatic roman à clef, with the courtship and marriage of Luceny and Tattiney representing Jane and Elizabeth, The Concealed Fancies explores the experiences of political change and personal challenge that the sisters faced.2 Through the characters of Lord Calsindow and Lady Tranquillity, they address their anxieties about their father’s courtship of Margaret Lucas, soon to be Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) (Figure 8.1), who was thirty years his junior. And they cast their brothers, Charles and Henry, as the two Stellows, heroes who liberate the three female cousins of Luceny and Tattiney from the castle of Bellamo.
