The attempted arbitration between the Duke of Newcastle and Fortune

The attempted arbitration between the Duke of Newcastle and Fortune turns a personal grievance into a staged legal and moral hearing. The Duchess of Newcastle asks the Empress of the Blazing-World to help reconcile her husband with Fortune, whom he has regarded as his enemy since the beginning of their married life. The proceeding gathers advocates and an intended judge, but its decisive failure exposes the limits of adjudication when the party with power to answer the charge can refuse the judgment.

Causes and Background

The arbitration begins as the Empress prepares to return to the Blazing-World with the Duchess’s soul. The Duchess asks her to make an agreement between the Duke of Newcastle and Fortune, explaining that the hostility has lasted throughout her marriage and that the Duke has often said Fortune crossed him in everything. The Empress regrets that she cannot simply summon Fortune: she needs the help of an immaterial spirit, and in the Duchess’s world she has neither Fly-men nor Bird-men to seek spirits in the air, where they usually dwell.

The Duchess proposes that the Duke send a lawyer to plead his case. The Empress rejects that route as vulnerable to Fortune’s influence: she fears Fortune would bribe the lawyers and the Duke might consequently lose. Instead, she suggests that each side choose a friend and that they try to settle the dispute through those representatives. The Duchess objects that agreement will require a judge or umpire. The Empress agrees that a judge can be found but doubts that an impartial one can be secured: she believes no such judge is available in nature or hell and that only heaven could supply one. Despite that difficulty, she invites the Duchess to accompany her to the Blazing-World and promises to try.

The Duke says that he has sought Fortune’s friendship diligently but has never obtained it. He nonetheless agrees to send Prudence and Honesty as his advocates. The choice presents his case as a conflict between worldly favor and the moral qualities he has chosen to keep: Fortune will later argue that he slighted her, while his representatives maintain that he treated her respectfully without abandoning conscience.

The Hearing Is Arranged

Back in the Blazing-World, the Empress reunites with the Emperor, then sends her Fly-men to obtain the spirits’ help. The spirits warn that Fortune is so inconstant that she may agree to hear the case and then fail to endure the proceedings. At the Empress’s request, they nevertheless make the attempt. Fortune eventually selects Folly and Rashness as her friends; after difficulty, the parties settle on Truth to hear and decide the cause.

The Empress and the Duchess’s soul attend the assembly, but the Duke’s soul is absent. Fortune begins from a golden globe and points out that the Duke cannot speak for himself. She says he has always been her enemy because he preferred Honesty and Prudence, scorned her favors, and fought against her rather than submit his innocence to her power. In her account, his refusal to value Fortune’s gifts is the cause of her hostility.

The Duchess rises to answer on her husband’s behalf. She disputes the implication that he acted from rudeness or contempt, describing him instead as a gentleman and a champion of women who risked his life and estate in their service. The Duke, she argues, could not entrust his reputation to Fortune because she did not favor people who were honest and honorable. He chose the side consistent with his conscience, nature, and education; Fortune then became his open enemy and fought him in several battles, including hand to hand. The Duchess recounts the consequences: Fortune overcame him, sent him into banishment, ruined his estate, and took many of his friends. Even so, he did not mistreat her favorites, and remained willing to serve her honestly and prudently. His request, she says, is simply that she become his friend in the future after having been his enemy in the past.

Advocates and Competing Arguments

The advocates for Fortune undermine their own side’s presentation. Folly and Rashness begin speaking at the same time so rapidly that neither the assembly nor the two speakers can understand them. Fortune orders them either to speak one at a time or remain silent. Prudence adds that they should speak wisely as well as singly; otherwise, she says, they should not speak at all. Fortune takes offense at Prudence’s rebuke, calls her too bold, and gives Folly the floor. Folly’s speech is so nonsensical and tedious that Fortune stops it and turns to Rashness.

Rashness treats the Duchess’s intervention itself as an offense. She calls the Duchess proud and ambitious for answering Fortune without permission, and claims that placing Honesty and Prudence above Fortune would cause Fortune to be despised and abandoned. Her proposed remedy is retaliation: Fortune should heap misfortunes on the Duke and Duchess and their two friends. The argument shifts attention away from whether Fortune wronged the Duke and toward the danger to Fortune’s standing if virtue is allowed to outrank her.

Prudence offers a contrary account of what advocacy should accomplish. She says she has made a long journey not to create further wounds but, if possible, to heal those already made. Rather than claim divine status, she presents herself as a supplicant and asks Fortune to accept peace as an offering. Her intervention frames settlement, not victory, as the aim of the hearing.

Honesty interrupts Prudence, insisting that the assembly should decide the case plainly rather than hear Fortune flattered. She describes the Duke’s moral education as a sequence of relationships and lessons: Honesty raised him from childhood and joined him in friendship with Gratitude, Charity, and Generosity; Prudence taught him wisdom and the rules of Temperance, Patience, and Justice; Honour taught him honorable qualities, arts, and sciences; and Observation governed him as he travelled through the world of actions, where he befriended Experience. Honesty argues that these qualities made the Duke deserving of heaven’s blessings and Fortune’s favor, but that Fortune became his enemy because she hated merit.

Honesty further explains that the Duke would not flatter Fortune. She had taught him not to flatter her, since doing so would require him to follow her inconstant ways and obey unjust commands. Prudence, meanwhile, had advised him not to despise Fortune’s favors, lest he obstruct his own worth and merit. The Duke tried to follow both counsels: he neither flattered nor despised Fortune, but remained humble and respectful as far as honour, honesty, and conscience allowed. Honesty submits the case to Truth’s judgment, making the hearing’s central question whether this careful middle course warrants Fortune’s resentment.

Breakdown and Aftermath

Fortune considers Honesty’s speech rude and refuses to wait for Truth’s decision. She leaves in anger, so the hearing ends without a judgment and the attempted reconciliation fails. The failure is not a finding for either side: the selected umpire never delivers a sentence, because Fortune, whose conduct is under examination, withdraws before the decision can be made.

The Duchess is distressed that the effort has come to nothing. Honesty scolds her for wanting Fortune’s favor, interpreting the wish as distrust in divine blessings. The Duchess weeps and denies both that she distrusts those blessings and that she relies on Fortune; she says she only wants her husband to have no powerful enemies. The Empress rebukes Honesty for lacking Prudence’s discretion, arguing that Honesty can act indiscreetly when not guided by Prudence. Prudence smiles at the correction, and Honesty is embarrassed, but the two soon become friends again.

After staying with the Empress for a time, the Duchess’s soul asks leave to return to her husband. The Empress grants it on the condition that the Duchess visit when convenient and promises to visit her in return. The Duchess departs with Prudence and Honesty. The spirits courteously promise to keep trying to make peace between Fortune and the Duke, but the text records no settlement at the hearing itself.

Significance of the Proceeding

The scene makes the arbitration’s failure part of its argument. Its formal structure promises a hearing: the sides appoint representatives, an assembly convenes, and Truth is chosen as judge. Yet Fortune’s refusal to remain prevents the proceeding from reaching judgment. The person whose conduct is challenged can therefore defeat the process simply by leaving, while the advocates’ claims remain unresolved.

The speeches also distinguish Fortune’s power from moral worth. Fortune presents the Duke’s preference for Honesty and Prudence as an insult; the Duchess and the Duke’s friends recast it as an ethical choice made under pressure. Honesty’s account preserves an important qualification: the Duke neither courted Fortune by flattery nor rejected her favors outright. The dispute thus concerns not only whether Fortune has harmed him, but whether a person can acknowledge her power without surrendering moral independence.

The ending offers reconciliation among the advocates, not between the principal opponents. The Empress corrects Honesty, Prudence and Honesty make peace, and the Duchess returns to her husband with a promise of continued friendship from the Empress. Fortune and the Duke, however, remain unreconciled; the spirits’ promise to try again leaves the larger dispute open.