Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury

English politician

• Born: July 22, 1621
• Birthplace: Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, England
• Died: January 21, 1683
• Place of death: Amsterdam, United Provinces (now in the Netherlands)

After serving several Interregnum regimes, Shaftesbury played an important role in the Restoration of Charles II and then served in several administrative capacities. In the 1670’s, he broke with Charles II over foreign and religious policies and became the opposition leader. He organized an effective political faction, later called the Whigs, that provided the foundation for party politics in England.

Early Life

The first earl of Shaftesbury (SHAFS-bur-ee) was born Anthony Ashley Cooper on July 22, 1621, to a rich, important, and well-connected Dorset family. His father, Sir John Cooper, had been made a baronet, and his mother, Anne, inherited extensive estates from her father, Sir Anthony Ashley. This marriage represented a union between two prominent families, and when he was raised to the peerage himself, Cooper initially chose the title Lord Ashley in honor of his maternal grandfather.

Cooper’s mother died in 1628 and Sir John followed in 1631, leaving young Anthony and the family estates to the mercy of the Court of Wards. Cooper later claimed that he lost upward of twenty thousand pounds during his wardship. After receiving his early education from tutors, Cooper entered Exeter College, Oxford. From there he proceeded to the Inns of Court and Lincoln’s Inn for some grounding in the law. This was the typical educational pattern for young gentlemen of his day, and in keeping with accepted practices he did not take a degree. Instead, in February, 1639, he married Margaret Coventry, the daughter of Thomas, first Baron Coventry, the lord keeper of England. The match drew young Cooper into the court circle and was, by the standards of the day, highly advantageous. In addition to being wealthy and well connected, Cooper was witty, kind, charming, intelligent, and very ambitious. He appeared to be a young man on the move when Charles I was forced to hold elections for what came to be known as the Short Parliament.

Despite being underage, Cooper was returned to Parliament from Tewkesbury. After the Short Parliament was dissolved, he was elected to the Long Parliament from Downton, Wiltshire. The election was disputed and not settled until 1660, so it is doubtful that he took his seat until just before the Restoration. As England divided between king and Parliament, Cooper first followed his in-laws into the Royalist camp. Present at Nottingham when Charles raised his standard, Cooper served the Royalist cause with both horse and foot regiments, including one raised at his own expense.

Cooper met with Charles I in early 1643 and presented a rather fanciful plan for winning over the Parliamentary garrison in Dorset as a prelude to ending the Civil War. Charles gave qualified approval to the scheme, but Cooper quickly discovered the king’s insincerity in his dealing with France. Frustrated and disturbed, he switched sides in early 1644 and became Parliament’s commander in his home county.

From the end of the First Civil War until the latter years of the Rump Parliament, Cooper confined himself to his estates and county affairs. After serving on a commission for law reform in 1652, he was made a member of the Barebones Parliament in mid-1653. Given that assembly’s sectarian nature, his presence was, to say the least, somewhat unusual, and his role in its dissolution in December, 1653, is clearly in character. Although sympathetic to unorthodox religious opinions, Cooper was first of all a representative of the landed ruling class. It was in that capacity that Cooper came to serve the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He saw Cromwell as the main hope for social and political stability and went so far as to urge him to take the Crown. Cooper was returned to the Protectorate Parliaments from Wiltshire but was denied his seat in 1656 as a result of a disagreement with Cromwell over the proper role of Parliament.

Following Margaret’s death, Cooper had concluded another beneficial match with the sister of the earl of Exeter. She died within three years, however, and during the Protectorate Cooper had designs on one of Cromwell’s daughters. When that match failed, he turned to another Margaret, the niece of the Royalist earl of Southampton. This favorable match allowed Cooper to hedge his bets against a future Stuart revival. At the same time, Margaret proved to be a devoted spouse even after Cooper’s fall and death.

After Cromwell’s death, Cooper returned to politics cautiously, developing important ties with General George Monck and being careful not to commit to the Royalist cause prematurely. With Monck, he had a crucial role in arranging a peaceful Restoration of Charles II and rightfully expected to be rewarded for his troubles. Monck’s support was critical in securing his appointment to the Privy Council and the peerage as Baron Ashley. Shortly thereafter, he became chancellor of the Exchequer.

Life’s Work

For several years, Baron Ashley served as an active but junior member of Charles II’s government, more a senior bureaucrat than a policymaker. In addition to his responsibilities at the Exchequer, he was a member of the Committee for Plantations. He held a similar post under Cromwell and became quite active in trade and colonization issues. He developed close ties with commercial interests in the City and was one of eight proprietors for the Carolina Colony established in 1663.

When Southampton, the lord treasurer, died in 1667, Ashley was one of five men appointed to the Treasury Commission that replaced him. This appointment brought him close to the power and influence he coveted, but Ashley misread the king and supported the earl of Clarendon too long. Only his ability and his value as a link to former Parliamentarians saved Ashley’s position, and he needed several years to recover from this setback.

After Clarendon’s fall, Charles’s government was dominated by a group of ministers pejoratively known as the Cabal: Thomas, Lord Clifford (first Baron Clifford of Chudleigh); Henry Bennet, first earl of Arlington; George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham; Anthony, Lord Ashley; and John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale. The Cabal was not actually a unified group, and the king did not include all five on every issue. Ashley, for example, knew nothing of the secret Treaty of Dover that Charles arranged with France in 1670. Given his long opposition to Catholicism, Ashley could not have been brought into the king’s full confidence. He did, however, support the Third Anglo-Dutch War that grew out of Charles’s policy, seeing it as advantageous for English commerce.

In 1672, Charles II made Ashley the earl of Shaftesbury and lord chancellor. The new earl, however, was about to enter the most important phase of his career as the leader of the opposition to the king and his policies. He had expressed for several years concern about the Catholic James, duke of York, succeeding Charles. Now convinced that Charles had deceived him about his policies toward France, Shaftesbury supported the 1673 Test Act , designed to bar Catholics from appointive positions. He also facilitated a resolution by the Commons trying to block James’s marriage to the Catholic Mary of Modena . He was ousted as lord chancellor in November, 1673, and lost all other national and local positions by the following May.

Within a year, Shaftesbury was clearly the leader of the opposition, calling for the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament and for frequent elections in the future. Both measures would reduce the Crown’s influence and alter the nature of politics. He proclaimed that he would not accept office unless Charles’s policies changed. This was designed to assure supporters that his position was based on principle, not simply ambition.

Parliament met twice in 1675, with Shaftesbury and his supporters successfully frustrating government plans and forcing Charles to prorogue both sessions. A tactical blunder landed the earl in the Tower, courtesy of the House of Lords, when Parliament reconvened in early 1677, but the following year Titus Oates’s outlandish tales of a Popish Plot gave Shaftesbury his great opportunity. Although he did not invent the plot, Shaftesbury opportunistically exploited the anti-Catholic hysteria it engendered.

By early 1679, Charles was forced to dissolve the Cavalier Parliament to save his chief minister, Thomas Osborne, first earl of Danby and later first duke of Leeds, and call new elections. Shaftesbury now concentrated on getting Parliament to pass a bill excluding James from the succession, producing the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-1681 and three general elections.

The key to Shaftesbury’s effort was his creation of an extensive political organization in Parliament and among the public. Based on the Green Ribbon Club, this developed into England’s first coherent political party, the Whigs. Although the elections for the Parliament that met in March, 1679, were not fought over exclusion, by 1681 the Whigs had built up an effective national network. Supporters of the Crown had, in turn, been forced to adopt similar tactics, bringing the Tory Party into existence.

Shaftesbury made exclusion the Whigs’ goal and refused to compromise or allow other issues to distract his followers. He also kept his movement a parliamentary one. Although the Whigs made effective use of petitions to the king in 1680, Shaftesbury did not want the struggle to spill into the countryside, as had happened in the early 1640’s.

Shaftesbury believed that Charles would surrender if faced with determined and consistent opposition. With Parliament effectively paralyzed, the king would have to accept exclusion to obtain money. Shaftesbury misjudged the situation badly on several counts. First, the normally indolent king stood firm and refused to cave in. Second, Charles’s power to prorogue and dissolve Parliament could deprive the Whigs of their arena when necessary. Third, unbeknown to Shaftesbury, Charles’s financial position was secure thanks to administrative reforms, retrenchment, and French subsidies. The Whigs could pass exclusion bills in the Commons, but only the king could bring the Lords to accept such a measure, and he stood firm.

Memories of the Civil War and Interregnum were fresh enough during the Exclusion Crisis that both sides proceeded carefully. Tory propaganda focused on the threat to order that the Whigs posed. In March, 1681, Charles summoned the Third Exclusion Parliament to meet in the Royalist stronghold of Oxford rather than Whiggish London. A number of opposition figures, including Shaftesbury, came to Oxford with armed supporters, making Tory claims appear valid. After another exclusion bill was introduced in the Commons, Charles surprised the Whigs with a sudden dissolution. The session destroyed Shaftesbury’s strategy for forcing Charles’s hand, killed exclusion, and left the Whigs in shambles. Unable and unwilling to resort to force, Shaftesbury’s movement collapsed.

Shaftesbury was sent to the Tower in June and brought before a London Grand Jury on charges of treason in November, 1681. Thanks to a Whig sheriff, the friendly jury refused to indict him. Still, the earl was a marked man, and when Tories got control of the City government in 1682, Shaftesbury was forced to flee. He went to Amsterdam in December and died less than two months later.

Significance

The first earl of Shaftesbury was an ambitious and at times unscrupulous politician who switched sides several times over the course of his career. Although he sought power and influence, he was by no means devoid of principles and sought to serve the interests of his nation and class as he understood them. He was a sincere supporter of religious toleration and believed in the importance of Parliament. He was unwilling to accept any increase in royal absolutism, just as he opposed republicanism.

Had ambition and personal gain been his primary motive, Shaftesbury would have made his peace with Charles II. The king clearly expected him to mute his dislike of government policies when he granted the earldom. Again in 1679, Charles brought Shaftesbury into the government as Lord President of a reconstituted Privy Council. Shaftesbury refused to be bought off, despite the fact that he could easily have turned the position into that of chief minister.

Shaftesbury’s greatest achievement was to introduce party politics and organization into English political life. His Whigs were not a modern party based on mass support, but they did exhibit a coherent system of organization and coordination both in and beyond Parliament. Despite interruptions, English party politics dates from the Exclusion Crisis.

Finally, Shaftesbury served as John Locke’s patron from 1666 until his death. Their relationship was sufficiently close that Locke felt compelled to follow the earl into exile. Locke served Shaftesbury as an adviser, secretary, and physician, and the two men influenced each other’s thoughts. Many of Locke’s works reflect what Shaftesbury sought to accomplish in politics and were written to support Shaftesbury’s activities. Locke’s loyalty indicates that Shaftesbury did, in fact, seek those ends that Locke and the Whigs of the Glorious Revolution enshrined in 1688.

Bibliography

Clark, Sir George. The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955. Reprint. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1961. The basic, if somewhat dated, narrative for the most important parts of Shaftesbury’s career.

Haley, K. H. D. The First Earl of Shaftesbury. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1968. The definitive account of Shaftesbury’s life and works. Very complete and detailed, it replaces W. D. Christie’s A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury (1871) and Louise Fargo Brown’s The First Earl of Shaftesbury (1931). Brown’s work remains useful for commercial and colonial policy.

Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. Reprint. 1982. A livelier and more provocative account of the Stuart years than Clark’s, this work combines narrative and topical chapters. Touches all phases of Shaftesbury’s career.

Hutton, Ronald. The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658-1667. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. A complete and current account and analysis of the Restoration era, with full coverage of Shaftesbury’s role and activities.

Jones, J. R. Country and Court: England, 1658-1714. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. An excellent account of England after Oliver Cromwell’s death, with a full and enlightening treatment of Shaftesbury. Also useful but far more detailed is Jones’s The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1673-1683 (1961).

Kenyon, J. P. Stuart England. 2d ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. An interesting treatment of the seventeenth century that is particularly strong on Shaftesbury in opposition and the Popish Plot. For a detailed treatment of the plot, see Kenyon’s The Popish Plot (1972).

Lee, Maurice, Jr. The Cabal. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. A good study of the politics and personalities of Charles II’s reign from Clarendon’s fall to Danby’s ascendancy. Provides a useful summary of Shaftesbury’s career before 1667 but appeared before Haley’s biography and suffers accordingly.

Ogg, David. England in the Reign of Charles II. 2d ed. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1956. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. The most complete study of Charles’s reign. Remains an important source of information despite its age and Whiggish tone.

Seel, Graham E., and David L. Smith. Crown and Parliament, 1558-1689. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Examines the nature and function of Parliament during the Stuart period.

Shotton, Joshua. “The Exclusion Crisis, 1678-81, and the Earl of Shaftesbury.” History 47 (December, 2003): 33. Shotton defends Shaftesbury, maintaining he is a much-maligned figure who does not deserve his evil reputation.

Smith, David L. The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689. New York: Arnold, 1999. An account of parliamentary activities and functions during the Stuart monarchy.