Shaftesbury, ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF, was born on 22d July 1621, at Wimborne St Giles in Dorsetshire, the seat of his mother's father, Sir Anthony Ashley (1551–1628), a clerk of the Privy-council. He was the elder son of John Cooper of Rockborne in Hampshire, who next year was created a baronet. His mother died in 1628, his father in 1631; and though he ultimately came into over £6000 a year, his estate was then torn and rent from him by unjust kinsmen to the tune, he tells us, of £20,000. His boyhood was mostly spent at Cashiobury in Herts, Southwick in Hampshire, and Maddington in Wilts, till at sixteen, having had three tutors, he went up as a gentleman commoner to Exeter College, Oxford, where he 'not only obtained the good-will of the wiser and elder sort, but became the leader even of all the rough young men.' He left without a degree, and in February 1639 married Margaret, daughter of the Lord Keeper Coventry. She died, sore lamented by him, in 1649; and nine months later he married Lady Frances Cecil, the Earl of Exeter's sister, who also dying in 1654, in 1655 he married pious Margaret Spencer, the Earl of Sunderland's sister, who survived him till 1693. Only two sons were born to him, both by his second wife, and one of them died in childhood; but by all three marriages he largely strengthened his family connections.
Meanwhile in 1640 he had entered the Short Parliament for Tewkesbury, but he had not a seat in the Long. A royalist colonel (1643), after ten months' service he went over to the parliament, either from pique or from 'the dictates of a good conscience,' and for nine months more commanded their forces in Dorsetshire, then from 1645 to 1652 lived as a great country gentleman. In 1653 he entered Barebone's parliament, and was appointed one of Cromwell's council of state, but from 1655 he was in opposition, and in 1677 we find him claiming to have 'had the honour to have a principal hand in the Restoration.' He was one of the twelve commissioners sent to Breda to invite Charles II. home, and on the way thither met with the carriage accident which caused him a lifelong internal abscess, but which also in 1666 secured him a lifelong friend in an Oxford student of medicine, John Locke.
For his services he was made a privy-councillor (1660), and next year Baron Ashley and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He served on the trial of the Regicides; proved a diligent minister; supported the war with Holland; and after Clarendon's fall (1667), in which he had no direct share, sided with Buckingham, with whom he formed one of the infamous Cabal, and like whom he was fooled as to the Catholic clauses in the secret treaty of Dover (1669–70). He seems to have opposed the 'stop of the exchequer' (1672), which yet he justified; that same year was made Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor (he proved a most upright judge); but in 1673, suddenly espousing the popular Protestantism, supported the Test Bill, which broke up the Cabal.
On 9th October, the Great Seal being demanded of him, he uttered one of his memorable sayings, 'It is only laying down my gown, and putting on my sword; and, the bribe and the dukedom rejected that were designed to purchase his submission, he ranged himself against Danby as a champion of toleration, but for Dissenters only, and figured thenceforth as a defender of national liberties, or rather, it may be, as an unscrupulous demagogue. He opposed Danby's non-resistance Test Bill (1675), and in February 1677, for his daring protest against a fifteen months' prorogation, was sent to the Tower, whence he was only released a year later on making a full submission. As early as 1674 he had feigned apprehensions of a popish massacre; and though the 'Popish Plot' was not of his forging, but Oates's, he it was that passed the base coin, using that two years' terror (1678-80) against his opponents with a ruthless dexterity that must stamp him for ever with infamy. Not even the Habeas Corpus Act (q.v.), long known as Shaftesbury's Act, is a set off against the judicial murder of Lord Stafford, his personal enemy. Still, for a while he seemed to have completely triumphed. The fall of his rival Danby was followed by his own appointment as president of Temple's new Privy-council of thirty members (April 1679), and James's dismissal to Holland by an attempt to exclude him from the succession, in favour, not of William and Mary, but of Shaftesbury's puppet, the bastard Monmouth. That monstrous proposal gave Charles II. his chance, and in October 'Little Sincerity' (as he had nicknamed Shaftesbury) received his congé; and Shaftesbury from that time onward was driven into extremer opposition, indicting James as a recusant (1680), and bringing armed followers to the Oxford parliament (1681). In the July of that year he was again sent to the Tower, on a charge this time of high-treason, and though the Middlesex Whig grand jury threw out the bill in November, and he was consequently released, arrest was again impending, with no such chance of escape. Monmouth and Russell hung back from the open rebellion to which he promised to furnish 'ten thousand brisk City boys,' and, after some weeks' hiding, he fled to Holland early in December 1682. 'Delenda est Carthago' he had quoted against the republic ten years before; 'Carthago nondum deleta' greeted him now when he landed. On 22d January 1683 the 'fiery spirit' passed away at Amsterdam, whence the 'pigmy body' was borne home for burial in the place that had given him birth.
Transcendently clever, eloquent, and winning, fairly void too of lust and venality when most men were lustful and venal, Shaftesbury yet stands condemned by the many talents committed to him. He, who might have done so much good, did so little but what was evil. Whether for or against monarchy, for or against republicanism, for or against France, for or against Holland, he was always for himself—self the dominant principle to which alone he was true. At least, if that count for praise, he was the author of party government, ever ready to make capital out of religious animosities, 'atrocities,' perjuries, forgeries, anything. After all that has been written, men seem in doubt still whether Shaftesbury was the 'pure,' 'high-minded,' and 'great statesman' that Mr Christie would make him, or, what Charles pronounced him, 'the wickedest dog in England.' ('I believe, Sir, I am, of a subject—one remembers his witty rejoinder.) Whether, again, was he a deist; and here again we have the well-known story, how one day he said to a friend, 'Men of sense are all of one religion.' 'And what religion is that?' a lady broke in; to whom, turning and bowing, he answered, 'That, madam, men of sense never tell.'
See Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and Medal (1681); part iii. of Butler's Hudibras (1678); the hostile History of Burnet, who is the chief authority for Shaftesbury's 'dotage of astrology'; the able apologetic Life by W. D. Christie (2 vols. 1871); the shorter, less partial study by Mr H. D. Traill in the 'English Worthies' series (1886); the article by Mr Osmond Airy in vol. xii. of the Dictionary of National Biography (1887); and other works cited at LOCKE and CHARLES II.
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, third Earl of Shaftesbury, philosopher, was born at Exeter House, London, February 26, 1671, the grandson of the above, and son of that 'shapeless lump,' the second earl (1652-99), by Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of the Earl of Rutland. Locke superintended his education at Clapham under a learned governess, Mistress Elizabeth Birch, who taught him to speak Greek and Latin fluently; three years at Winchester (1683-86) were not happy ones, for his schoolfellows visited on him the sins of his grandfather. With a tutor and two other lads he then travelled for three years more in Italy, Germany, and France, and on his return applied himself to study. A zealous Whig, he sat for Poole (1695-98), but ill-health compelled him to turn from politics to literature; and there is little to record in his life beyond two visits of a twelvemonth each to Holland (1698-99, 1703-4), where he lived with the Quaker, Benjamin Furry, and formed friendships with Bayle and Le Clerc; his accession to the earldom (1699); his marriage (1709) to Miss Jane Ewer of Lee, for 'the satisfaction of his friends,' but to his own subsequent contentment; his removal to Naples (1711); and his death there on February 15 (4 o.s.), 1713.
His somewhat superfine writings (Lamb hits off their style as 'genteel') were all, with a single exception, published after 1708, and were mostly collected as Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (3 vols. 1711; 2d enlarged ed. 1714). Here the 'moral realist' expounds his system, which Pope has immortalised in the Essay on Man, and which Mr Hunt reduces to the three main contentions, that ridicule is the test of truth, that man possesses a moral sense, and that everything in the world is for the best. An opponent of Locke, and a disciple of the 'Cambridge Platonists,' Shaftesbury found a follower in Hutcheson (q.v.), the founder of the Scottish school of philosophy. Still, like most prophets, he has had least honour in his own country, for, while there he was more attacked as a deist than praised as a philosopher, on the Continent he has attracted the attention, and generally the admiring attention, of thinkers like Leibnitz, Voltaire (who, however, ridicules his optimism in Candide), Lessing, Diderot, Mendelssohn, and Herder.
See Fowler's Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (1882), the Life by Rand (1900), J. M. Robertson's edition of the Characteristics (1900), Hunt's Religious Thought in England (new ed. 1884), Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876), and monographs by Spicker (Freiburg, 1872) and Gizecki (Leip. 1875).
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was born in London, 28th April 1801. From the early training of a faithful old servant, Maria Millis, the future philanthropist received his earliest and deepest religious impressions. He went to Harrow in his twelfth year, and to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1819, and took a first-class in classics in 1822, his M.A. degree in 1832; and he was made D.C.L. in 1841. As Lord Ashley he represented Woodstock in parliament from 1826 to 1830; and joining the Conservatives, then led by Lord Liverpool and Canning, he formed a close friendship with the Duke of Wellington, under whom he obtained the post of Commissioner of the India Board of Control (1828). Under Peel he was made a Lord of the Admiralty in 1834. In 1830 he married Emily, daughter of the fifth Earl Cowper (so that he was thus a connection by marriage of Lord Palmerston); by her he had six sons and four daughters. He represented Dorchester (1830-31), Dorset (1833-46), and Bath from 1847 to 1851, when he succeeded his father as earl. Among his earliest efforts at philanthropic reform was the promotion of two bills for the Regulation of Lunatic Asylums and for the better Treatment of Lunatics (1845), which have been called the Magna Charta of the liberties of the insane. He acted as chairman of the Lunacy Commission from 1828 till his death, a period of fifty-seven years. He took much interest in the passing of an act (1840) to prevent the employment of boy chimney-sweeps. He worked unweariedly for fourteen years on behalf of a bill limiting the hours of labour of women and young persons to ten hours a day, but it was 1847 ere a Ten Hours' Bill was passed, when it so happened he was out of parliament. He would not join Sir R. Peel's administration in 1841, because that statesman refused to countenance the Ten Hours' Bill; but in 1846 he supported Peel in his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, an action which cost him his seat for Dorsetshire. A speech in connection with his Mines and Collieries Bill (1842) was considered his greatest effort. In 1842 was passed an act for abolishing the apprenticeship in mines, and excluding women and boys under thirteen from working underground; a Print-works Act was passed in 1845; and he was chairman of the Commission of Inquiry which resulted in the passing of the Factory Acts Extension Act (1867) and the Workshop Regulation Act (1867; consolidated 1878). In 1843 he joined the Ragged School movement. Relinquishing society and all amusements, he gave the remainder of his life to other beneficent schemes, and his time and strength were exhausted by letters, interviews, chairmanships, and speeches. To mention all the religious and benevolent societies in which he was interested would be to name the most prominent and useful agencies for good of the present day. Peabody's scheme for bettering the house accommodation of industrial London sprang from Shaftesbury's efforts in the same direction. He was the adviser of Lord Palmerston in many important church appointments, and was consulted by the Queen and Prince Consort. The freedom of Edinburgh was conferred upon him in 1878, and of London in 1884. Active and vigorous to the last, he died at Folkestone, October 1, 1885. Although not a great orator, he spoke with neatness, force, and precision. In religious matters he was an out-and-out evangelical, and strenuously opposed ritualism, rationalism, and socialism when divorced from Christianity.
See his Speeches, with introduction by himself (1868), and Hodder's Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury (3 vols. 1886).