Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

“ By the marriage of his daughter and heiress with Sir J. Cooper, Bart., the grandson of Sir Anthony Ashley became the first Earl of Shaftesbury. Ashley was undoubtedly the author of an important naval work, although the identity of Ashley, its writer, and Ashley, the clerk of the council, has not been previously pointed out. ”

“ With nine other peers he presented a petition to the king in November, praying for the meeting of parliament, of which Charles took no notice. In April, upon the king’s declaration that he was resolved to send for James from Scotland, Shaftesbury advised the popular leaders at once to leave the council, and they followed his advice. In March we find him unscrupulously eager in the prosecution of the alleged Irish Catholic plot. Upon the king’s illness in May he held frequent meetings of Monmouth’s friends at his house to consider how best to act for the security of the Protestant religion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Much of Shaftesbury’s career, increasingly so as it came near its close, is incapable of defence; but it has escaped most of his critics that his life up to the Restoration, apparently full of inconsistencies, was evidently guided by one leading principle, the determination to uphold the supremacy of parliament, a principle which, however obscured by self-interest, appears also to have underlain his whole political career. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ COOPER, ANTHONY ASHLEY, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) , was born 26 Feb. 1670–1, at Exeter House in London, then the town residence of his grandfather, the first earl [q. v.] He was the son of Lord Ashley, afterwards second earl, by Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John, earl of Rutland. Lord Ashley, a man of feeble constitution and understanding, is the ‘shapeless lump’ of Dryden's famous satire upon the first earl. Locke had acted to some extent as Lord Ashley's tutor, and had taken part in arranging his marriage at the age of seventeen (1669) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ From these results we see that Shaftesbury, opposed to Hobbes and Locke, is in close agreement with Hutcheson (q.v.) , and that he is ultimately a deeply religious thinker, inasmuch as he discards the moral sanction of public opinion, the terrors of future punishment, the authority of the civil authority, as the main incentives to goodness, and substitutes the voice of conscience and the love of God. These two alone move men to aim at perfect harmony for its own sake in the man and in the universe.
Shaftesbury’s philosophical activity was confined to ethics, aesthetics and religion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ What is present Power, or Riches and a great Estate, wherein I have no firme nor fixed property? ’Tis the constitution of the Government and Maintaining it that secures your Lordships and every man else in what he hath. The Poorest Lord, if the Birthright of the Peerage be maintained, has a Fair Prospect before him for himself or his Posterity: But the greatest Title with the greatest present Power and Riches, is but a mean creature, and maintains those absolute Monarchies no otherwise than by servile low flatteries and upon uncertain terms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I look upon it as the ignorance and weakness of the latter Age, if not worse, the effect of the Designes of ill men; that it is grown a general opinion, that where there is not a particular direction in some Act of Parliament the Law is defective, as if the Common Law had not provided much better, Shorter, and Plainer for the Peace and Quiet of the Nation than intricate, long, and perplexed Statutes do: which has made Work for the Lawyers, given power to the Judges, lessened Your Lordships’ Power, and in a good measure unhinged the security of the People. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Lord Shaftsbury presently drew up some words for preserving the same Rights, Priviledges, and Freedoms, which Men now enjoy by the Laws established, that so by a side Wind we might not be deprived of the great Liberty we enjoy as English Men, and desired those words might be inserted in that Proviso before it past. ”

“ Cooke, William (1711-1797) Cooke, William (1757-1832) Cooke, William Bernard Cooke, William Fothergill Cooke, William John Cookes, Thomas Cookesley, William Gifford Cookson, George Cookson, Henry Wilkinson Cookson, James Cookworthy, William Cooley, Thomas Cooley, William Desborough Cooling, Richard Coombes, Robert Coombes, William Henry Cooper, Abraham Cooper, Alexander Cooper, Andrew Cooper, Anthony Ashley (1621-1683) Cooper, Anthony Ashley (1671-1713) Cooper, Anthony Ashley (1801-1885) Cooper, Astley Paston Cooper, Charles Henry Cooper, Charles Purton Cooper, Daniel Cooper, Edward (d.1725?) ”