Earl of Shaftesbury

“ If the Christian Socialists ever frame a Kalendar of Worthies (after the manner of Auguste Comte) , it is to be hoped that they will mark among the most sacred of their anniversaries the day—April 28, 1801—which gave birth to Anthony Ashley, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. His life of eighty-four years was consecrated, from boyhood till death, to the social service of humanity; and, for my own part, I must always regard the privilege of his friendship as among the highest honours of my life. Let me try to recall some of the outward and inward characteristics of this truly illustrious man. ”

“ My acquaintance with him began in Exeter Hall, at a Sabbath service held to reach the non-church going classes. With one or two others we knelt together in a small side room to invoke a blessing on the service in the great hall, and he prayed most fervently. The Earl of Shaftesbury was not only the author of great reformatory legislation in Parliament, and the acknowledged leader of the Low Church Party in the Established Church. He was also a leader of city missions, ragged schools, shoe-black brigades, and other organizations to benefit the submerged classes in London. ”

“ In April 1672 Ashley was created Earl of Shaftesbury, and in November he became lord chancellor. He made Locke secretary of presentations, with a salary of 500l. a year. Locke had to attend to the church business coming under the chancellor's control, and to appear with the chancellor on state occasions. When Shaftesbury delivered his famous 'delenda est Carthago' speech against Holland, Locke, as the third Lord Shaftesbury states, had to stand at his elbow with the written copy as prompter.
The council of trade was reconstructed, with Shaftesbury as president, in September 1672. ”

“ Lord Shaftesbury, who was never old when business pressed. Strong common sense, knowledge of the statute law, and above all, uncompromising impartiality, made him an autocrat in his department. When once he heard a case, and deliberately pronounced judgment, submission almost invariably followed. A man of the largest experience as a Parliamentary agent has been heard to say that he remembered only one case in which the House reversed a decision of Lord Shaftesbury; and on that occasion it became necessary to prevail on the Duke of Wellington to speak in order to overcome the "old Earl." ”

“ On the other hand, it seems an absurdity, equal almost in degree to the belief of the plot itself, to suppose that it was a story fabricated by the Earl of Shaftesbury and the other leaders of the Whig party; and it would be highly unjust, as well as uncharitable, not to admit that the generality of those who were engaged in the prosecution of it were probably sincere in their belief of it, since it is unquestionable that at the time very many persons, whose political prejudices were of a quite different complexion, were under the same delusion. ”

“ But a large part of the opposition had unfortunately other objects in view. It had been the great error of those who withstood the arbitrary counsels of Charles II. to have admitted into their closest confidence, and in a considerable degree to the management of their party, a man so destitute of all honest principle as the Earl of Shaftesbury. ”

“ Her letters to Lord Halifax in 1680 show that her sympathies were with him in the troubles connected with the Exclusion Bill, and that she hated the Earl of Shaftesbury, with whom her son, Lord Sunderland, was working. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still more absurd is it to suppose that a man in the position of the Lord Chief Justice should have imagined that the Earl of Shaftesbury exercised a favoured influence over the king’s mind. Nor does Scroggs’ conduct on the bench afford good ground for these accusations. ”

“ Some of these arguments were eloquently exhibited by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who had ends of his own to serve by a dissolution, since he trusted by means of it to be carried back to power; and in addition to political reasonings this clever politician held out to all sorts of religionists, hopes the most inconsistent—and, taken altogether, perfectly absurd—as bribes to secure their support of his policy in the approaching struggle. ”

“ It has been adduced by some, in evidence of his immorality, that on one occasion, while still in favour with Charles, the King said to him, ‘I believe, Shaftesbury, you are the greatest profligate in England.’ The Earl bowed low, and replied, ‘For a subject, sire, I believe I am.’ It would be hard to condemn a man on the testimony of a repartee. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the same year he became known to Lord Ashley (afterwards 1st Earl of Shaftesbury) , in whose house he went to reside. Here he made the acquaintance of Buckingham, Halifax, and other leading men of the time, and was entrusted by Ashley with the education of his s., and afterwards of his grandson, the famous 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (q.v.) . He was also employed by him to draw up a constitution for the new colony of Carolina, the provisions of which in regard to religion were regarded as too liberal and were, at the instance of the Established Church, departed from. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Relying on the monarch's love and the people's admiration for this illegitimate scion of royalty, Lord Shaftesbury hoped to place him on the throne. As the first step necessary in this direction was to gain his majesty's avowal of a union with Lucy Walters, he ventured on broaching the subject to the king; at which Charles was so enraged that he declared, "much as he loved the Duke of Monmouth, he had rather see him hanged at Tyburn than own him as his legitimate son." There was, however, another man engaged in a like design to the noble earl, who, if not less scrupulous, was more daring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Three Catholics were hanged in London. Eight priests were put to death in the country. Pursuivants and informers spread terror through every Catholic household. He counted on the reassembling of the Parliament to bring all this terror to bear upon the king. But Charles had already marked the breach which the Earl's policy had made in the ranks of the Country party. He saw that Shaftesbury was unsupported by any of his colleagues save Russell. To Temple, Essex, or Halifax, it seemed possible to bring about the succession of Mary without any violent revolution ”

“ 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. ”

“ The perjury of Oates was proving too much at last for the credulity of juries; and the acquittal of four of his victims showed that the panic was beginning to ebb. A far stronger proof of this was seen in the immense efforts which Shaftesbury made to maintain a belief in the plot. Fresh informers were brought forward to swear to a conspiracy for the assassination of the Earl himself, and to the share of the Duke of York in the designs of his fellow-religionists. A paper found in a meal-tub was produced as evidence of the new danger. ”

“ Instead of a prosecution Shaftesbury was drawn into a negotiation with the court. The French ambassador learned with agitation that the earl went secretly by night to Whitehall to discuss terms of settlement with the king. Shaftesbury offered to let drop the Exclusion bill [245] and assure Charles an ample revenue for the rest of his life if he would consent to a divorce and to marry a Protestant. The king should make a show of resistance, to be overborne by apparently irresistible pressure, the country would be satisfied, and peace return to the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This last transaction, instead of strengthening the opposition, greatly damaged them. The impression of the spectators was that the poor old earl was entirely innocent; and they called to mind that the whole of the victims had died, firmly protesting the same; and several of them even refusing to purchase their lives by confessing any knowledge of a plot. The witnesses throughout, too, were such men as would have damned any cause by their infamy, in any but such times. Shaftesbury and has party were, indeed, called the champions of protestantism ”

“ 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. ”

“ This treaty, however, was kept from public knowledge, and Ashley helped Charles to hoodwink parliament by signing a similar treaty on the 2nd of February 1672, which was laid before them as the only one in existence. His approval of the attempt of the Lords to alter a money bill led to the loss of the supply to Charles and to the consequent displeasure of the king. His support to the Lord Roos Act, ascribed generally to his desire to ingratiate himself with Charles, was no doubt due in part to the fact that his son had married Lord Roos's sister. ”