Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

“ He was suspected, too, of doing all in his power to bring about a revolt in Scotland. By the advice of Temple, Charles now tried the experiment of forming a new privy council in which the chief members of the opposition were included, and Shaftesbury was made president, with a salary of £4000, being also a member of the committee for foreign affairs. He did not, however, in any way change either his opinions or his action. He opposed the compelling of Protestant Nonconformists to take the oath required of Roman Catholics. ”

“ In 1637 he went as a gentleman-commoner to Exeter College, Oxford, where he remained about a year. No record of his studies is to be found, but he has left an amusing account of his part in the wilder doings of the university life of that day, in which, in spite of his small stature, he was recognized by his fellows as their leader. At the age of eighteen, on the 25th of February 1639, he married Margaret, daughter of Lord Coventry, with whom he and his wife lived at Durham House in the Strand, and at Canonbury House in Islington. ”

“ He urged on the bill by which Catholics were prohibited from sitting in either House of Parliament, and was bitter in his expressions of disappointment when the Commons passed a proviso excepting James, against whom the bill was especially aimed, from its operation. A new parliament met on the 6th of March 1679. Shaftesbury had meanwhile ineffectually warned the king that unless he followed his advice there would be no peace with the people. ”

“ Before the prorogation, however, he saw the invaluable Act of Habeas Corpus, which he had carried through parliament, receive the royal assent. In pursuance of his patronage of Monmouth, Shaftesbury now secured for him the command of the army sent to suppress the insurrection in Scotland, which he is supposed to have fomented. In October 1679, the circumstances which led Charles to desire to conciliate the opposition having ceased, Shaftesbury was dismissed from his presidency and from the privy council ”

“ Charles soon regretted the loss of Shaftesbury, and endeavoured, as did also Louis, to induce him to return, but in vain. He preferred now to become the great popular leader against all the measures of the court, and may be regarded as the intellectual chief of the opposition. At the meeting of parliament on the 8th of January 1674, he carried a motion for a proclamation banishing Catholics to a distance of 10 m. from London. During the whole session he organized and directed the opposition in their attacks on the king’s ministers. ”

“ Cooper was again elected for Wiltshire for the parliament of 1656, but Cromwell refused to allow him, with many others of his opponents, to sit. He signed a letter of complaint, with sixty-five excluded members, to the speaker, as also a “Remonstrance” addressed to the people. In the parliament which met on the 20th of January 1658, he took his seat, and was active in opposition to the new constitution of the two Houses. ”

“ He now steadily pursued the design of the Restoration, but without holding any private correspondence with the king, and only on terms similar to those proposed in 1648 to Charles I. at the Isle of Wight. In the Convention parliament he sat for Wiltshire. Monk cut short these deliberations and forced on the Restoration without condition. Cooper was one of the twelve commissioners who went to Charles at Breda to invite him to return. On his journey he was upset from his carriage, and the accident caused an internal abscess which was never cured. ”

“ His only son, Anthony Ashley, succeeded him as 4th earl, and his great-grandson was the famous philanthropist, the 7th earl.
Shaftesbury's amiability of character seems to have been one of his principal characteristics. Like Locke he had a peculiar pleasure in bringing forward young men. Among these may be especially mentioned Michael Ainsworth, a native of W'irnbor11e St Giles, the young man who was the recipient of the Letters addressed to a student at the university, and was maintained by Shaftesbury at University College, Oxford. ”

“ Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, was the first statesman to learn the art of organising support for policy from an entire nation. His course in life was determined by the belief that it is the business of a politician to succeed, and to that mass of mankind which is of the same opinion he should be at once apostle and martyr. ”

“ In the royal collection there are miniatures of Charles II, Queen Catharine of Braganza, James II, James, duke of Monmouth, George Monck, duke of Albemarle, and Robert Walker, the portrait painter. Cooper painted many other celebrated persons of the Commonwealth and the succeeding reign, including John Hampden, General Ireton, General Fleetwood, William Lenthall, Colonel Lilburne, Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, and Edmund Waller, the poet. ”

“ Coomassie, the capital of the negro kingdom of Ashanti, 130 m. NNW. of Cape Coast Castle; once a large populous place; was much reduced after its capture by Wolseley in 1874, though it is being rebuilt.
Cooper, Anthony Ashley. See Shaftesbury.
Cooper, Sir Astley, English surgeon, born in Norfolk; was great in anatomy and a skilful operator, stood high in the medical profession; contributed much by his writings to raise surgery to the rank of a science; was eminent as a lecturer as well as a practitioner (1768-1841) .
Cooper, James Fenimore, an American novelist, born in Burlington, New Jersey ”

“ In the popular mind, Shaftesbury is generally regarded as a writer hostile to religion. But, however short his orthodoxy might fall if tried by the standards of any particular church, his temperament was pre-eminently religious. This fact is shown in his letters. The belief in a God, all-wise, all-just and all-merciful, governing the world providentially for the best, pervades all his works, his correspondence and his life. Nor had he any wish to undermine established beliefs, except where he conceived that they conflicted with a truer religion and a purer morality. ”

“ The Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles II.‘s favourite mistress; very unpopular at the time of the Popish Plot, as well from her religion as her country, being a Frenchwoman and a Catholic.
“Stoutly against all change,” answered the lord—“Little Anthony [*] can make nought of her.”
[*] Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the politician and intriguer of the period.
“Then he shall bring her influence to nought. Hark in thine ear. Thou knowest——” (Here he whispered so low that Julian could not catch the sound.)
“Know him?” answered the other—“Know Ned of the Island?—To be sure I do.” ”

“ If ever there should happen in future ages (which God forbid) a King governing by an Army, without His Parliament, ’tis a Government I own not, am not obliged to, nor was born under. According to this Principle, every honest man that holds it, must endeavour equally to preserve the frame of the Government, in all the parts of it, and cannot satisfie his Conscience to give up the Lords House for the Service of the Crown, or to take away the just rights and priviledges of the House of Commons to please the Lords. ”

“ For though the White Rose and the Red chang'd fortunes often to the ruine, slaugh­ter and beheading of the great Men of the other side; yet nothing could enforce them to secure themselves by a standing force: But I cannot believe that the King Himself will ever design any such thing; for He is not of a temper Robust, and Laborious enough, to deale with such a sort of Men, or reap the advantages, if there be any, of such a Government, and I think, He can hardly have forgot the treatment his Father received from the Officers of his Army, both at Oxford, and Newark ”

“ He succeeded his grandfather, Henry Grey, first earl of Stamford [q. v.] , on 21 Aug. 1673, and took his seat 13 April 1675 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. ii. 48) . He was faithful to the political views of his family, and on entering public life attached himself to Anthony Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury [q. v.] ; and on 2 May 1679 Stamford and Shaftesbury appear among the signatories to a protest against a bill for the better discovery of papists, on the ground that it might press hardly on dissenters (Protests of the Lords, i. 61) . ”

“ Nothing is more destructive to true religion than quarrels about religion, and the use of punishments to compel one man to believe as another.
NOTE K, p. 608.
That Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was deeply engaged in the intrigues of this busy time is sufficiently manifest. He appears to have held himself out to every party as a friend, and to have finally attached himself to the royalists, when he saw that the royal cause was likely to triumph. ”

“ My Lords, ’Tis not only your Interest, but the Interest of the Nation that you Maintain your Rights, for let the House of Commons and Gentry of England think what they please, there is no Prince that ever governed without Nobility or an Army: if you will not have one; you must have t’other, or the Monarchy cannot long support, or keep itself from tumbling into a Democratical Republique. ”

“ Your Lordships and the people have the same cause, and the same Enemies. My Lords, would you be in favour with the King? ’Tis a very ill way to it, to put yourselves out of a future capacity, to be considerable in his service. I do not find in Story, or in Modern Experience, but that ’tis better, and a man is much more regarded that is in a capacity and opportunity to serve, than he that hath wholly deprived himself of all for his Prince’s service. ”

“ He left one son, Anthony Ashley, the fourth earl of Shaftesbury.
Shaftesbury was a man of lofty and ardent character, forced by ill-health to abandon politics for literature. He was liberal, though much fretted by the difficulty of keeping out of debt. He was resolved, as he tells his steward, not to be a slave to his estates, and never again to be ‘poorly rich.’ He supported several young men of promise at the university or elsewhere. He allowed a pension of 20l. ”

“ I put your Lordships the case plainly, as ’tis now before us. My principle is, That the King is King by Law, and by the same Law that the poor Man enjoys his Cottage; and so it becomes the concern of every man in England, that has but his liberty, to maintain and defend, to his utmost, the King in all his Rights and Prerogatives. My Principle is also, That the Lords House, and the Judicature and Rights belonging to it, are an Essential part of the Government, and Established by the same Law ”

“ My Lords, to conclude, your Lordships have seen of what consequence this matter is to you, and that the appointing a day to consider, is no less than declaring yourselves doubtful, upon second and deliberate thoughts, that you put yourselves out of your own hands, into a more than a moral probability, of having this Session made a precedent against you. You see your Duty to yourselves and the People; and that ’tis really not the interest of the House of Commons, but may be the inclination of the Court, that you loose the Power of Appeals ”

“ Many co-operated to bring about these results, but the chief advocate of all the beneficent reforms which have reinvigorated the English working-classes, saved the women from slavish toil and given them opportunity to make homes for their families, rescued the children from benumbing toil, and given them time for healthful recreation and mental improvement, is, by the common award of all, this simple-hearted Christian, Antony Ashley Cooper. ”

“ The fiercest attack of all came from Sir Ashley Cooper, a Dorsetshire gentleman who had changed sides in the Civil War, had fought for the King and then for the Parliament, had been a member of Cromwell's Council, and had of late ceased to be a member of it. His virulent invective on "his Highness of deplorable memory, who with fraud and force deprived you of your liberty when living and entailed slavery on you at his death," was followed by an equally virulent invective against the army. "They have not only subdued their enemies," said Cooper, "but the masters who raised and maintained them! ”

“ Cooper, in his interesting "Autobiography," published in 1872, gives us a vivid glimpse of the adolescent representative of Sheffield: "I had been appealing strongly one evening to the patriotic feelings of young Englishmen, mentioning the names of Hampden, Sydney, and Marvell, and eulogizing the grand spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice which characterized so many of our brave forerunners, when a handsome young man sprang upon our little platform, and declared himself on the people's side, and desired to be enrolled as a Chartist. ”

“ The merits of the present Earl of Shaftesbury are not of the same exalted species; he is an active and industrious man. When toryism was in power (for he is a strong tory) he managed to secure the profitable office of president of the committees, and in that situation he exhibited all the patient and practical intelligence which the office demanded. He is also one of the vice-speakers of the House, and occasionally he exhibits his little black person on the red woolsack; but as he is only allowed to figure in that situation in his ordinary, unimposing costume, the honor is a rare one ”

“ Little of this exists in America, where no man is much praised for himself, but for the purposes of party, or to feed national vanity. In the country in which, of all others, political opinion ought to be the freest, it is the most persecuted, and the community-character of the nation induces every man to think he has a right of property in all its fame. England exhibits a great deal of this weakness and injustice, which, it is to be feared, is a vicious fruit of liberty ”