No. 3 Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl Of
SHAFTESBURY.
By Sir Peter Lely.
BORN 1621, DIED 1683.
In coloured Chancellor’s robes.
Son of Sir John Cooper of Rockbourne, county Hants, by Anne, daughter and sole heir of Sir Anthony Ashley, Bart., of Wimborne St. Giles, county Dorset, where the future Chancellor was born.
In his autobiography, he describes his mother of ‘low stature,’ as was also the aforesaid Sir Anthony, ‘a large mind but his person of the lowest,’ while his own father was ‘lovely and graceful in mind and person, neither too high nor too low,’ therefore the pigmy body of which Dryden speaks must have been inherited from the maternal side.
Sir Anthony was delighted with his grandson, and although at the time of the infant’s birth, the septuagenarian was on the point of espousing a young wife, his affection was in no wise diminished for his daughter, or her boy.
Lady Cooper and her father died within six months of each other. Sir John married again, a daughter of Sir Charles Morrison, of Cassiobury, county Herts, by whom he had several children. He died in 1631, leaving the little Anthony bereft of both parents, with large but much encumbered estates, and law-suits pending.
Many of his own relations being most inimical to his interests, Anthony went with his brother and sister to reside with Sir Daniel Norton, one of his trustees, who—we once more quote the autobiography—‘took me to London, thinking my presence might work some compassion, on those who ought to have been my friends.’
He refers to the suit in which they were now engaged. The boy must have had a winning way with him (as the old saying goes), for when only thirteen, he went of his own accord to Noy, the Solicitor-General, and entreated his assistance as the friend of his grandfather. Noy was deeply touched, took up the case warmly, and gained one suit in the Court of wards, stoutly refusing to take any fee whatever.
After Sir Daniel Norton’s death, Anthony went to live with an uncle, Mr. Tooker, near Salisbury, though it was supposed Lady Norton would gladly have kept him under her roof, with a view to a match with one of her daughters. He says himself,—‘Had it not been for the state of my litigious fortune, the young lady’s sweet disposition had made me look no farther for a wife.’
In 1637 he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he ‘made such rapid strides in learning as to be accounted the most prodigious youth in the whole University.’ By his own showing, he was popular with his companions and well satisfied with himself, indeed a general spirit of self-complacency pervades these pages. In little more than a year he went to Lincoln’s Inn, where he appears to have found the theatres, fencing galleries, and the like, more to his taste than the study of the law.
An astrologer who was in old Sir Anthony’s house at the time of the grandson’s birth, cast the horoscope, and to the fulfilment of these predictions, may probably be attributed young Anthony’s own predilection for the study of astrology in later days. The horoscope in question foreboded feuds and trouble at an early age, and some years afterwards the same magician, foreseeing through the medium of the planets that a certain Miss Roberts (a neighbour without any apparent prospects of wealth) would become a great heiress, he endeavoured to persuade his pupil to marry her. The lady did eventually come into a considerable fortune; but Mr. Tooker, who was not over-credulous, had other views at the time for his nephew; and accordingly, at eighteen, Ashley Cooper became the husband of Margaret, the daughter of my Lord Keeper Coventry, ‘a woman of excellent beauty and incomparable gifts.’
The young couple resided with the bride’s father in London, Anthony paying flying visits to Dorsetshire. He was subject to fits, but even this infirmity redounded to his advantage according to his own version; how that being in Gloucestershire on one occasion, and taken suddenly ill, ‘the women admired his courage and patience under suffering,’ and he contrived to ingratiate himself with the electors of Tewkesbury to some purpose.
He gives us an amusing and characteristic description of how he won the favour of the electors and bailiffs of this town by his conduct at a public dinner, where he and a certain Sir Henry Spiller were guests, and sat opposite each other. The knight, a crafty, perverse, rich man, a Privy Councillor, had rendered himself very obnoxious in the hunting-field, and at the banquet aforementioned, began the dinner with all the affronts and dislikes he could possibly put on the bailiffs and their entertainment, which enraged and disgusted them, and this rough raillery he continued. ‘At length I thought it my duty to defend the cause of those whose bread I was eating, which I did with so good success, sparing not the bitterest retorts, that I had a complete victory. This gained the townsmen’s hearts, and their wives’ to boot. I was made free of the town, and at the next Parliament (though absent at the time), was chosen burgess by an unanimous vote, and that without a penny charge.’
Sir Anthony had strange humours: he loved a frolic dearly. He had a confidential servant who resembled him so much that, when dressed in his master’s left-offs, the lackey was often mistaken for his better. This worthy was a clever man-milliner, and had many small accomplishments which made him popular in country houses, and his master confesses that he often listened to the valet’s gossip, and made use of it, in the exercise of palmistry and fortune-telling, which produced great jollity, and ‘of which I did not make so bad a use as many would have done.’ With this account he finishes the record of his youth. A time of business followed, ‘and the rest of my life is not without great mixture of public concerns, and intermingled with the history of the times.’
Sir Anthony sat for Tewkesbury in 1639, but that Parliament was hastily dissolved. He raised a regiment of horse for the king’s service, and occupied places of trust in his own county; but believing himself unjustly treated and slighted by the Court, he listened to the overtures of the Parliament, and returned to Dorsetshire as colonel of a regiment in their army.
In 1649 he lost the wife he dearly loved, to whose memory he pays a most touching tribute in his diary. But she left no living child, and before the expiration of the year the widower had espoused Lady Frances Cecil, daughter of the Earl of Exeter, a royalist.
The friendship of the Protector and Sir Anthony was of a most fitful and spasmodic nature,—now fast allies, now at daggers drawn. Some writers affirm that, on the death of his second wife, he asked the hand of one of Cromwell’s daughters; others, that he advised the Protector to assume the Crown, who offered it to him in turn!
He held many appointments under the reigning Government, and continued to sit in Parliament; but having, with many other Members, withstood the encroachments of the great man, Oliver endeavoured to prevent his return, and not being able to do so, forbade him to enter the House of Commons. (See the history of the times.) The Members, with Ashley Cooper at their head, insisted on readmittance. Again ousted, again readmitted; nothing but quarrels and reconciliations. The fact was, that Sir Anthony was too great a card to lose hold of, entirely. He had still a commission in the Parliamentary army, and a seat at the Privy Council, circumstances that in no wise prevented him carrying on a correspondence with the King ‘over the water.’ Indeed, he was accused of levying men for the Royal service; arrested, acquitted, sat again in Parliament under Richard Cromwell, joined the Presbyterian party to bring back Charles, and when the Parliament declared for the King, Sir Anthony was one of the twelve Members sent over to Breda, to invite his return. When in Holland Ashley Cooper had a fall from his carriage, and a narrow escape of being killed. Clarendon (there was no love lost between them) says it was hoped that by his alliance (as his third wife) with a daughter of Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, a niece of the Earl of Southampton, ‘his slippery humour would be restrained by his uncle.’
He now took a leading part in politics, was appointed one of the Judges of the Regicides, created Baron Ashley at the coronation, and afterwards became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Under-Treasurer, and further high offices, and in 1672 Lord Cooper of Pawlett, county Somerset, and Earl of Shaftesbury; and so quickly did honours rain on him, that the same year saw him Lord High Chancellor of England. He appears to have given great umbrage to many of the law officers, by his haughty bearing. We are told ‘he was the gloriousest man alive; he said he would teach the bar that a man of sense was above all their forms; and that he was impatient to show them he was a superior judge to all who had ever sat before on the marble chair.’
He maddened the gentlemen of the long robe by his vagaries, and innovations, and defiance of precedents. He wore an ash-coloured gown instead of the regulation black, assigning as his reason, that black was distinctive of the barrister-at-law, and he had never been called to the bar.
He went to keep Hilary term ‘on a horse richly caparisoned, his grooms walking beside him,’ all his officers ordered to ride on horseback, ‘as in the olden time.’
No doubt the good Dorsetshire country gentleman, the lover of sport and of horse-flesh, who had been accused of regaling his four-footed favourites on wine and cheese-cakes, had a mischievous pleasure in seeing the uneasy and scared looks of his worshipful brethren, some of whom perhaps had never sat on a saddle till that day.
At all events, poor Judge Twisden was laid in the dust, and he swore roundly no Lord Chancellor should ever reduce him to such a plight again. Shaftesbury lived at this time in great pomp at Exeter House, in the Strand, and was in high favour with his royal master, who visited him at Wimborne St. Giles during the Plague, when the Court was at Salisbury.
At Oxford, when Parliament sat, he made acquaintance with the celebrated John Locke, who afterwards became an inmate of his patron’s house, his tried friend, and medical adviser.
The situations of public employment which Shaftesbury obtained for this eminent man were, unfortunately, in the end, the source of difficulty, and distress rather than advantage. The history of the Cabal, of which he was the mainspring, and of which he formed the fourth letter (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale), would suffice for his biography, during the five years of its life. But it must never be forgotten that to Shaftesbury England owes the passing of the Habeas Corpus Bill, as likewise one for making judges independent of the Crown.
The reader must seek elsewhere, and elect for himself, whether Shaftesbury was or was not guilty of all the plots and conspiracies against King and country of which he has been accused. To the Duke of York he made himself most obnoxious. He was instrumental in establishing the Test Act, which made Roman Catholics ineligible for public offices; he was, moreover, the champion of the Exclusion Bill, and opposed James’s marriage with Mary of Modena; and there is little doubt that the Duke did all to undermine Shaftesbury’s favour with the King.
There was always an element of humour mixed up with his doings, even when fortune frowned on him. Finding that the King meant to unseat him from the Woolsack, and that his successor was already named, he sought the royal presence; the King was about to proceed to chapel. The fallen favourite told Charles he knew what his intentions were, but he trusted he was not to be dismissed with contempt. ‘Cod’s fish, my lord,’ replied the easy-going monarch, ‘I will not do it with any circumstances that may look like a slight,’ upon which the ex-Minister asked permission to carry the Great Seals of Office for the last time before the King into chapel, and then to his own house till the evening.
Granted permission, Shaftesbury, with a smiling countenance, entered the sacred building, and spoiled the devotions of all his enemies, during that service at least. Lord Keeper Finch, who was to succeed him, was at his wit’s end, believing Shaftesbury reinstated, and all (and there were many) who wished his downfall were in despair.
The whole account is most amusing and characteristic, including the manner in which the Seals were actually resigned, but we have not space to say more. Shaftesbury was indeed now ‘out of suits with fortune.’ In 1677 he, with other noblemen, was committed to the Tower for contempt of the authority of Parliament, and although other prisoners were soon liberated, he was kept in confinement thirteen months. On regaining his freedom he was made Lord President of the Council, but opposing the Duke of York’s succession, was dismissed from that post in a few months. In 1681 he was again apprehended, on false testimony, and once more sent to the Tower on charge of treason, and that without a trial.
His papers were searched, but nothing could be found against him except one document, ‘neither writ nor signed by his hand.’ The jurors brought in the bill ‘Ignoramus,’ which pleased the Protestant portion of the community, who believed the Earl suffered in the cause of religion.
Bonfires were kindled in his honour; one of the witnesses against him narrowly escaped from the fury of the mob; a medal was struck in his honour to commemorate his enlargement. Hence the poem of that name from the pen of Dryden, suggested by the King. On regaining his liberty, Shaftesbury went to reside at his house in Aldersgate Street, when, finding his enemies were still working against him, he took the friendly advice of Lord Mordaunt, and after lying perdu in another part of London, for a night or two, he set off for Harwich en route for Holland with a young relative, both disguised as Presbyterian ministers, with long black perukes. Adverse winds detained them at a small inn, when one day the landlady entered the elder gentleman’s room, and carefully shutting the door, told him that the chambermaid had just been into his companion’s apartment, and instead of a swarthy sour-faced dominie, had found a beautiful fair-haired youth. ‘Be assured, sir,’ said the good woman, ‘that I will neither ask questions, nor tell tales, but I cannot answer for a young girl’s discretion.’
The man who had been so hunted of late, was touched, thanked the good soul, and bade his handsome young friend make love to the maid, till the wind changed.
The fugitives, however, had an extra run for it, as it was, for the hounds were on their track. Fortunately the capture of one of Shaftesbury’s servants, dressed like his master, gave them time to embark.
They arrived at Amsterdam after a stormy passage, where Shaftesbury hired a large house, with the intention of remaining some time, and all the more that he found himself treated with great respect, by all the principal inhabitants. But misfortune pursued him. He was seized with gout in the stomach, and expired on the 1st of January 1683. His body was conveyed to England, and landed at Poole, whither the gentlemen of his native county flocked, uninvited, to pay a tribute to his memory, by attending the remains to Wimborne St. Giles.
We leave the sentence to be pronounced on the first Earl of Shaftesbury to wiser heads than ours, but one remark we feel authorised to make,—that we are not called on to believe him as black as Dryden has painted him, since we cannot but question the justice of the pen that described Charles the Second as the God-like David, in the far-famed poem of ‘Absalom (the Duke of Monmouth) and Achitophel’ (Shaftesbury). He loads the latter with invective:—
‘A man to all succeeding nations curst,
For close designs and crooked councils fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace,
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.
Great wits are sure to madness close allied;
Oh, had he been content to serve the Crown
With virtues only proper to the gown,’ etc. etc.
There spoke the Poet-Laureate, and woe indeed to the man who had such a poet as Dryden for his censor! Yet for all this abuse which he had written to order, Dryden could not help bearing testimony as follows:—
‘Yet fame deserved, no memory can grudge,
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge;
In Israel’s court ne’er sate an Abithin
With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.’
Lord Shaftesbury was kind and charitable to the poor in his neighbourhood, and was very hospitable. In 1669, Cosimo de’ Medici, being in England, went to St. Giles’s, and was so much pleased with his reception, that he kept up a correspondence with his English friend, and sent him annually a present of Tuscan wine. 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.