Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury PC FRS (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683; known as Anthony Ashley Cooper from 1621 to 1630, as Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Baronet from 1630 to 1661, and as The Lord Ashley from 1661 to 1672) was a prominent English politician during the Interregnum and the reign of King Charles II. A founder of the Whig party, he was also the patron of John Locke.

Cooper was born in 1621. Having lost his parents by the age of eight, he was raised by Edward Tooker and other guardians named in his father's will. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn. He married the daughter of Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry in 1639; that patronage secured his first seat in the Short Parliament. He soon lost a disputed election to the Long Parliament. During the English Civil Wars he fought as a Royalist; then as a Parliamentarian from 1644. During the English Interregnum, he served on the English Council of State under Oliver Cromwell, although he opposed Cromwell's attempt to rule without Parliament during the Rule of the Major-Generals. He also opposed the religious extremism of the Fifth Monarchists during Barebone's Parliament.

Later as a member and patron he opposed the New Model Army's attempts to rule after Richard Cromwell's ousting; encouraged Sir George Monck's march on London, a pivotal march in restoring the monarchy; sat in the Convention Parliament of 1660 which agreed to restore the English monarchy; and travelled as a member of its twelve-strong delegation to the Dutch Republic to invite King Charles II to return. Charles, shortly before his coronation, created Cooper Lord Ashley; thus, when the Cavalier Parliament assembled in 1661 the new peer moved from the House of Commons to the House of Lords. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1661–1672. During the ministry of the Earl of Clarendon, he opposed the Clarendon Code, preferring Charles II's Declaration of Indulgence (1662), which the King was forced to relinquish. After the fall of Clarendon, he was one of the five among the later-criticised, acronym-based, Cabal Ministry or 'the cabal', serving as Lord Chancellor in 1672–1673; he was created Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672. During this period, John Locke entered his household. Ashley took an interest in colonial ventures and was one of the Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina. In 1669, Ashley and Locke collaborated in writing the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. By 1673, Ashley was worried that the heir to the throne, James, Duke of York, was secretly a Roman Catholic.

Shaftesbury became a leading opponent of the policies of Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby who favoured strict interpretation of penal laws and compulsory Anglican adherence. Shaftesbury, who sympathized with Protestant Nonconformists, briefly agreed to work with the possible heir to the throne, the Duke of York (James), who opposed enforcing the penal laws against Roman Catholic recusants. By 1675, however, Shaftesbury was convinced that Danby, assisted by high church bishops, was determined to revert England to an absolute monarchy. He soon came to see the Duke of York's religion as linked to this aspiration. Opposed to the growth of "popery and arbitrary government" throughout the period 1675–1680, Shaftesbury argued in favour of frequent parliaments (spending time in the Tower of London in 1677–1678 for espousing this view) and argued that the nation needed protection from a potential Roman Catholic successor; thus during the Exclusion Crisis he was an outspoken supporter of the Exclusion Bill. He combined this with supporting Charles II's remarrying a Protestant princess to produce a legitimate Protestant heir, or legitimizing his illegitimate Protestant son the Duke of Monmouth. The Whig party was born during this crisis, and Shaftesbury was one of the party's most prominent leaders.

In 1681, during the Tory reaction following the failure of the Exclusion Bill, Shaftesbury was arrested for high treason, a prosecution dropped several months later. In 1682, after the Tories had gained the power to pack London juries with their supporters, Shaftesbury, fearing re-arrest and trial, fled abroad, arrived in Amsterdam, fell ill and soon died, in January 1683.

Biography

Early life and first marriage, 1621–1640

Cooper was the eldest son and successor of Sir John Cooper, 1st Baronet, of Rockbourne in Hampshire, and his mother was the former Anne Ashley, daughter and sole heiress of Sir Anthony Ashley, 1st Baronet. He was born on 22 July 1621, at the home of his maternal grandfather Sir Anthony Ashley in Wimborne St Giles, Dorset.Tim Harris. "Cooper, Anthony Ashley", in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press, 2004–2007. He was named Anthony Ashley Cooper because of a promise the couple had made to Sir Anthony. Although Sir Anthony Ashley was of minor gentry stock, he had served as Secretary at War in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and in 1622, two years after the death of his first wife, Sir Anthony Ashley married the 19-year-old Philippa Sheldon (51 years his junior), a relative of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, thus cementing relations with the most powerful man at court. Cooper's father was created a baronet in 1622, and he represented Poole in the parliaments of 1625 and 1628, supporting the attack on Richard Neile, Bishop of Winchester for his Arminian tendencies. Sir Anthony Ashley insisted that a man with Puritan leanings, Aaron Guerdon, be chosen as Cooper's first tutor.

Cooper's mother died in 1628. In the following year his father remarried, this time to the widowed Mary Moryson, one of the daughters of wealthy London textile merchant Baptist Hicks and co-heir of his fortune. Through his stepmother, Cooper thus gained an important political connection in the form of her grandson, the future 1st Earl of Essex. Cooper's father died in 1630, leaving him a wealthy orphan. Upon his father's death, he inherited his father's baronetcy and was now Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper.

Cooper's father had held his lands in knight-service, so Cooper's inheritance now came under the authority of the Court of Wards. The trustees whom his father had appointed to administer his estate, his brother-in-law (Anthony Ashley Cooper's uncle by marriage) Edward Tooker and his colleague from the House of Commons, Sir Daniel Norton, purchased Cooper's wardship from the king, but they remained unable to sell Cooper's land without permission of the Court of Wards because, on his death, Sir John Cooper had left some £35,000 in gambling debts. The Court of Wards ordered the sale of the best of Sir John's lands to pay his debts, with several sales commissioners picking up choice properties at £20,000 less than their market value, a circumstance which led Cooper to hate the Court of Wards as a corrupt institution.

Cooper was sent to live with his father's trustee Sir Daniel Norton in Southwick, Hampshire (near Portsmouth). Norton had joined in Sir John Cooper's denunciation of Arminianism in the 1628–29 parliament, and Norton chose a man with Puritan leanings named Fletcher as Cooper's tutor.

Sir Daniel died in 1636, and Cooper was sent to live with his father's other trustee, Edward Tooker, at Maddington, near Salisbury. Here his tutor was a man with an MA from Oriel College, Oxford.

Cooper matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 24 March 1637, aged 15, where he studied under its master, the Regius Professor of Divinity, John Prideaux, a Calvinist with vehemently anti-Arminian tendencies. While there he fomented a minor riot and left without taking a degree. In February 1638, Cooper was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, where he was exposed to the Puritan preaching of chaplains Edward Reynolds and Joseph Caryl.

On 25 February 1639, aged 19, Cooper married Margaret Coventry, daughter of Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, who was then serving as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal for Charles I. As Cooper was still a minor, the young couple moved into Lord Coventry's residences of Durham House in the Strand, and at Canonbury in Islington.

Early political career, 1640–1660

Parliament, 1640–1642

In March 1640, while still a minor, Cooper was elected Member of Parliament for the borough of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, in the Short ParliamentHistory of Parliament Online – Cooper, Sir Anthony Ashley
/ref> through the influence of Lord Coventry.

In October 1640, with opinion in the country swinging against the king's supporters (including Coventry), Cooper was not asked to stand for election for Tewkesbury in the Long Parliament. He contested, and by some accounts, won a by-election to the seat of Downton in Wiltshire, but Denzil Holles, soon to rise to prominence as a leader of the opposition to the King and a personal rival of Sir Anthony, blocked Cooper's admission to the Parliament. It was probably feared that Sir Anthony, as a result of his recent marriage to the daughter of Charles I's Lord Keeper, Coventry, would be too sympathetic to the king.

Royalist, 1642–1644

When the Civil War began in 1642, Cooper initially supported the King (somewhat echoing Holles' concerns). After a period of vacillating, in summer 1643, at his own expense, he raised a regiment of foot and a troop of horse for the King, serving as their colonel and captain respectively. Following the Royalist victory at the Battle of Roundway Down on 13 July 1643, Cooper was one of three commissioners appointed to negotiate the surrender of Dorchester, at which he negotiated a deal whereby the town agreed to surrender in exchange for being spared plunder and punishment. However, troops under Prince Maurice soon arrived and plundered Dorchester and Weymouth anyway, leading to heated words between Cooper and Prince Maurice.

William Seymour, Marquess of Hertford, the commander of the Royalist forces in the west, had recommended Cooper be appointed governor of Weymouth and Portland, but Prince Maurice intervened to block the appointment, on grounds of Cooper's youth and alleged inexperience. Cooper appealed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Edward Hyde; Hyde arranged a compromise whereby Cooper would be appointed as governor but resign as soon as it was possible to do so without losing face. Cooper was promised that upon resigning as governor, he would be made High Sheriff of Dorset and president of the council of war for Dorset, both of which were offices more prestigious than the governorship. Cooper spent the remainder of 1643 as governor of Weymouth and Portland.

Parliamentarian and second marriage, 1644–1652

In early 1644, Cooper resigned all of his posts under the king, and travelled to Hurst Castle, the headquarters of the Parliamentarians. Called before the Committee of Both Kingdoms, on 6 March 1644, he explained that he believed that Charles I was now being influenced by Roman Catholic influences (Catholics were increasingly prominent at Charles' court, and he had recently signed a truce with Irish Catholic rebels) and that he believed Charles had no intention of "promoting or preserving ... the Protestant religion and the liberties of the kingdom" and that he, therefore, believed the parliamentary cause was just, and he offered to take the Solemn League and Covenant.

In July 1644, the House of Commons gave Cooper permission to leave London, and he soon joined parliamentary forces in Dorset. After he participated in a campaign in August, parliament appointed him to the committee governing the army in Dorset. Cooper participated in fighting throughout 1644. However, in 1645, with the passing of the Self-denying Ordinance, Cooper chose to resign his commissions in the parliamentary army (which was, at any rate, being supplanted by the creation of the New Model Army) to preserve his claim to be the rightful member for Downton. He nevertheless continued to be active in the Dorset committee as a civil member.

It was during this period that Cooper first expressed an interest in overseas plantations, investing in a plantation in the English colony of Barbados in 1646.

Little is known of Cooper's activities in the late 1640s. It is often assumed that he supported the Presbyterians against the Independents, and, as such, opposed the regicide of Charles I. Nevertheless, he was willing to work with the new regime, accepting a commission as justice of the peace for Wiltshire and Dorset in February 1649 and acting as High Sheriff of Wiltshire for 1647. Furthermore, in February 1650, he not only took the oath of loyalty to the new regime but was a member of a commission that tendered the oath.

Cooper's first wife, Margaret, died on 10 July 1649; the couple had had no children. Less than a year later, on 15 April 1650, Cooper remarried, to seventeen-year-old Lady Frances Cecil (1633–1652), daughter of David Cecil, 3rd Earl of Exeter. The couple had two children, one of whom, Anthony, lived to adulthood. Frances died on 31 December 1652, aged only 19.

Statesman under the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate, 1652–1660

On 17 January 1652, the Rump Parliament appointed Cooper to the committee on law reform chaired by Sir Matthew Hale (the so-called Hale Commission, none of whose moderate proposals were ever enacted).

In March 1653, the Rump issued a full pardon for his time as a Royalist, opening the way for his return to public office. Following the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653, Oliver Cromwell and the Army Council nominated Cooper to serve in Barebone's Parliament as member for Wiltshire. On 14 July, Cromwell appointed Cooper to the English Council of State, where he was a member of the Committee for the Business of the Law, which was intended to continue the reform work of the Hale Commission. Cooper aligned himself with the moderates in Barebone's Parliament, voting against the abolition of tithes. He was one of the members who voted to dissolve Barebone's Parliament on 12 December 1653 rather than acquiesce to the abolition of tithes.

When the Instrument of Government gave England a new constitution 4 days later, Cooper was again named to the Council of State. During the elections for the First Protectorate Parliament in summer 1654, Cooper headed a slate of ten candidates who stood in Wiltshire against 10 republican MPs headed by Edmund Ludlow. On the day of the election, so many voters turned up that the poll had to be switched from Wilton to Stonehenge. Cooper's slate of candidates prevailed, although Ludlow alleged his party was in the majority. At the same election, Cooper was also elected MP for Tewkesbury and Poole but chose to sit for Wiltshire. Although Cooper was generally supportive of Cromwell during the First Protectorate Parliament (he voted in favour of making Cromwell king in December 1654), he grew worried that Cromwell was growing inclined to rule through the Army rather than through Parliament. This led Cooper to break with Cromwell: in early January 1655, he stopped attending Council and introduced a resolution in parliament making it illegal to collect or pay revenue not authorised by parliament. Cromwell dissolved this parliament on 22 January 1655.

The exiled Charles II, hearing of Cooper's break with Cromwell, wrote to Cooper saying that he would pardon Cooper for fighting against the Crown if he would now help to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. Cooper did not respond, nor did he participate in the Penruddock uprising in March 1655.

On 30 August 1655, Cooper married his third wife, Margaret Spencer (1627–1693), daughter of William Spencer, 2nd Baron Spencer of Wormleighton, and sister of Henry Spencer, 1st Earl of Sunderland.

Cooper was again elected as a member for Wiltshire in the Second Protectorate Parliament, although when the parliament met on 17 September 1656, Cooper was one of 100 members whom the Council of State excluded from the parliament. Cooper was one of 65 excluded members to sign a petition protesting their exclusion that was delivered by Sir George Booth. Cooper eventually took his seat in the parliament on 20 January 1658, after Cromwell accepted an amended version of the Humble Petition and Advice that stipulated that the excluded members could return to parliament. Upon his return to the house, Cooper spoke out against Cromwell's Other House.

Cooper was elected to the Third Protectorate Parliament in early 1659 as member for Wiltshire. During the debates in this parliament, Cooper sided with the republicans who opposed the Humble Petition and Advice and insisted that the bill recognising Richard Cromwell as Protector should limit his control over the militia and eliminate the protector's ability to veto legislation. Cooper again spoke out against the Other House (consisting of new lords), and in favour of restoring the old House of Lords.

When Richard Cromwell dissolved parliament on 22 April 1659 and recalled the Rump Parliament (dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in 1653), Cooper attempted to revive his claim to sit as member for Downton. He was also re-appointed to the Council of State at this time. Throughout this period, many accused Cooper of harbouring royalist sympathies, but Cooper denied this. In August 1659, Cooper was arrested for complicity in Sir George Booth's Presbyterian royalist uprising in Cheshire, but in September the Council found him not guilty of any involvement.

In October 1659, the New Model Army dissolved the Rump Parliament and replaced the Council of State with its own Committee of Safety. Cooper, republicans Sir Arthur Haselrig and Henry Neville and six other members of the Council of State continued to meet in secret, referring to themselves as the rightful Council of State. This secret Council of State came to see Sir George Monck, commander of the forces in Scotland, as the best hope to restore the Rump, and Cooper and Haselrig met with Monck's commissioners, urging them to restore the Rump. Cooper was involved in several plots to launch pro-Rump uprisings. This proved unnecessary as, on 23 December 1659, troops resolved to stand by the Rump and the Council of State and disobey the Committee of Safety. The Rump Parliament reassembled on 26 December 1659, and on 2 January 1660, Cooper was elected to the Council of State. On 7 January 1659, a special committee reported back on the disputed 1640 Downton election and Cooper was finally allowed to take his seat as member for Downton.

Upon General Monck's march into London, Monck was displeased that the Rump Parliament was not prepared to confirm him as commander-in-chief of the army. At Cooper's urging, Monck's troops marched into London and Monck sent parliament a letter insisting that the vacant seats in the Rump Parliament be filled by by-elections. When the Rump insisted on placing restrictions on who could stand in these by-elections, Cooper urged Monck to insist instead on the return of the members of the Long Parliamen] excluded by Pride's Purge, and Monck obliged on 21 February 1660. Two days later, the restored Long Parliament again elected Cooper to the Council of State. On 16 March 1660, the Long Parliament finally voted for its own dissolution.

Beginning in spring 1660, Cooper drew closer to the royalist cause. As late as mid-April, he appears to have favoured only a conditional restoration. In April 1660 he was re-elected MP for Wiltshire in the Convention Parliament. On 25 April he voted in favour of an unconditional restoration. On 8 May, the Convention Parliament appointed Cooper as one of twelve members to travel to The Hague to invite Charles II to return to England.

Restoration politician, 1660–1683

Cooper returned to England with Charles in late May. On the recommendation of General Monck and Cooper's wife's uncle, Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, Charles appointed Cooper to his privy council on 27 May 1660. Cooper took advantage of the Declaration of Breda and was formally pardoned for his support of the English Commonwealth on 27 June 1660. During this period, he helped reorganise the privy council's committee on trade and plantations.

Cooper thus became a spokesman for the government in the Convention Parliament. However, during the debates on the Indemnity and Oblivion Bill, Cooper urged leniency for those who had sided with Parliament during the English Civil Wars or collaborated with the Cromwellian regime. He argued that only those individuals who had personal involvement in the decision to execute Charles I by participating in his trial and execution should be exempt from the general pardon. This view prevailed. After the Indemnity and Oblivion Act became law on 29 August 1660, Cooper sat on the special commission that tried the regicides, and in this capacity took part in sentencing to death several colleagues with whom he had collaborated during the years of the English Interregnum, including Hugh Peters, Thomas Harrison, and Thomas Scot. As a long-time foe of the Court of Wards, during the debate on the Tenures Abolition Bill, Cooper supported continuing the excise imposed by the Long Parliament to compensate the crown for the loss of revenues associated with the abolition of the court.

On 20 April 1661, three days before his coronation at Westminster Abbey, Charles II announced his coronation honours, and in those honours, he created Cooper Baron Ashley, of Wimborne St Giles.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1661–1672

Following the coronation, the Cavalier Parliament met beginning on 8 May 1661. Lord Ashley took his seat in the House of Lords on 11 May. On 11 May, the king appointed Ashley as his Chancellor of the Exchequer and under-treasurer (Southampton, Ashley's uncle by marriage, was at the time Lord High Treasurer).

In 1661–1662, Ashley opposed Charles' marriage to Catherine of Braganza because the marriage would involve supporting the Portuguese, and Portugal's ally France, in Portugal's struggle against Spain. Ashley was opposed to a policy that moved England into the French orbit. During this debate, Ashley opposed the policy engineered by Charles' Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, thus beginning what would prove to be a long-running political rivalry with Clarendon.

When the Cavalier Parliament set about enacting the Clarendon Code, Ashley supported a policy of moderation towards Protestant dissenters. In July 1662, Ashley sponsored an amendment to the Act of Uniformity that would have allowed Protestant Nonconformists to allow for late subscription, giving moderate dissenters an additional opportunity to conform. In the latter half of 1662, Ashley joined Sir Henry Bennet, the Earl of Bristol, and Lord Robartes in urging Charles to dispense peaceable Protestant Nonconformists and loyal Catholics from the Act of Uniformity. This led to Charles issuing his first Declaration of Indulgence on 26 December 1662. The Cavalier Parliament forced Charles to withdraw this declaration in February 1663. Ashley then supported Lord Robartes' Dispensing Bill, which would have dispensed Protestant Nonconformists, but not Catholics, from the Act of Uniformity. During the debate on the Dispensing Bill in the House of Lords, Ashley criticised Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Charles' Lord Chancellor, for opposing the royal prerogative to dispense with laws. Clarendon remarked that in his opinion, the declaration was " Ship-Money in religion". The king looked favourably on Ashley's remarks and was displeased by Clarendon's.

In May 1663, Ashley was one of eight Lords Proprietors (Lord Clarendon was one of the others) given title to a huge tract of land in North America, which eventually became the Province of Carolina, named in honour of King Charles. Ashley and his assistant John Locke drafted a plan for the colony known as the Grand Model, which included the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina and a framework for settlement and development.

By early 1664, Ashley was a member of the circle of John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale, who ranged themselves in opposition to Lord Clarendon.

During the debate on the Conventicle Bill in May 1664, Ashley proposed mitigating the harshness of the penalties initially suggested by the House of Commons.

Throughout late 1664 and 1665, Ashley was increasingly in the royal favour. For example, in August 1665, the king paid a surprise visit to Ashley at Wimborne St Giles, and, during a later visit, introduced Ashley to his illegitimate son James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth.

The Second Anglo–Dutch War began on 4 March 1665 after a Royal Navy squadron seized the Dutch colony of New Netherland. During the parliamentary session of October 1665, Sir George Downing proposed that the use of funds voted to the crown should be restricted to the sole purpose of carrying on the war. Ashley opposed this proposal on the grounds that crown ministers should have flexibility in deciding how to use money received from parliamentary taxation.

During the 1666–1667 parliamentary session Ashley supported the Irish Cattle Bill, introduced by the Duke of Buckingham, which sought to prevent the importation of Irish cattle into England. During the course of this debate Ashley attacked Charles' Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde. He suggested that Irish peers such as Ormonde should have no precedence over English commoners. The debate over the Irish Cattle Bill marks the first time that Ashley began to break with the court over an issue of policy.

In October 1666, Ashley met John Locke, who would in time become his personal secretary. Ashley had gone to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection. There he was impressed with Locke, and persuaded him to become part of his retinue. Locke had been looking for a career, and in spring 1667 moved into Ashley's home at Exeter House in London, ostensibly as the household physician. Beginning in 1667, Shaftesbury and Locke worked closely on the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina and its centrepiece, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.

When Southampton died in May 1667, Ashley, as under-treasurer, was expected to succeed Southampton as Lord High Treasurer. King Charles, however, decided to replace Southampton with a nine-man Commission of the Treasury, headed by the Duke of Albemarle as First Lord of the Treasury. Ashley was named as one of the nine Treasury Commissioners at this time.

The failures of the English during the Second Anglo-Dutch War led Charles II to lose faith in the Earl of Clarendon, who was dismissed as Lord Chancellor on 31 August 1667. The court then moved to impeach Clarendon, and was supported in this by many of Ashley's former political allies (including the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Bristol, and Sir Henry Bennett, who by this point had been created Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington). Ashley, however, refused to join in the fight against Clarendon, opposing a motion to have Clarendon committed to the Tower of London on a charge of treason. In 1667, Ashley was a signatory to ''The Several Declarations of The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa'', a document published in 1667 which led to the creation of the Royal Africa Company.

After the fall of Lord Clarendon in 1667, Lord Ashley became a prominent member of the Cabal, in which he formed the second "A". Although the term "Cabal Ministry" is used by historians, in reality, the five members of the Cabal ( Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale) never formed a coherent ministerial team. In the period immediately after the fall of Clarendon, the government was dominated by Arlington and Buckingham, and Ashley was out of royal favour and not admitted to the most powerful group of royal advisors, the privy council's committee on foreign affairs. Nevertheless, Ashley joined Arlington and Buckingham, as well as John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, in introducing government-backed bills in October 1667 and February 1668 to include moderate dissenters within the Church of England. Nothing came of these bills, however. In January 1668, the privy council's committees were reorganised, but Ashley retained a prominent position on the committee for trade and plantations.

Cabal Ministry