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Full text of "A life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683"

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A LIFE 



ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 



FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. 



16211683. 



W. D. CHRISTIE, M.A., 

FORMERLY HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER TO THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATIO1 
AND TO BRAZIL. 



TWO VOLUMES. 

vo,, ^ )(| 

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fortiori anb $J.efo JJ0rk : 

MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1871. 

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.] 



,/ 



A LIFE 



OF 



ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 

FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. 
VOL. I. 



TO THE 

(Sari of Slraftelrarg, |t.<S, 

THIS LIFE OP HIS 
CELEBRATED AND MUCH MALIGNED ANCESTOR 

|s Inscribed, 

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OP 
AID KINDLY GIVEN FOR THE WORK, 

AND AS A 
MARK OF PERSONAL RESPECT. 



a 2 



PREFACE. 

I PUBLISHED, some twelve years ago, a volume of papers 
illustrating Shaftesbury's Life to the Eestoration, then 
intending to make a second similar volume with the 
papers which I had collected for the remaining and 
more important portion of his life. Several causes 
delayed the prosecution of the second volume ; and I 
ultimately judged it better to relinquish it, and to 
prepare from the materials which I had acquired a 
connected biography of Shaftesbury. The first volume 
of this work contains, either incorporated into the nar- 
rative or inserted in the Appendices, all the important 
materials of the volume of 1859. 1 The remainder of 
this work, after Chapter VIII. of the first volume, is 
entirely new. 

The original materials for this Life of Shaftesbury 
have been chiefly derived from the following sources : 
1. The papers preserved at St. Giles's, to which the pre- 
sent Lord Shaftesbury has given me access. 2. The 
Locke papers in possession of the Earl of Lovelace. 

1 " Memoirs, Letters, and Speeches of A. A. Cooper, first Earl of 
Shaftesbury, Lord Chancellor, with other Papers illustrating his Life. 
Edited by "W. D. Christie." London, 1859. 



-X PREFACE. 

3. The papers of Mr. Thynne, afterwards Viscount 
Weymouth, nephew of Shaftesbury's first wife and of 
Sir William and Henry Coventry, and cousin of Lord 
Halifax, which are at the Marquis of Bath's seat at 
Longleat. 4. The Archives of the French Foreign 
Office. 5. The Domestic Papers of Charles the Second's 
Reign, in our State Paper Office. 

I have also found much material, hitherto unworked 
for the study of Shaftesbury's character and career, in 
the large collection of Diaries, Correspondence, and 
Biographies of Shaftesbury's time published in the 
present century. Truth is gleaned, and new light 
obtained, from casual notices in such works as the 
Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, the Eawdon Papers, 
and the Diary and Correspondence of Henry Sidney, 
afterwards Earl of Eomney. 

The reader will see by my references in notes what 
great aid I have derived from the valuable work of M. 
Mignet, founded on the documents in the Archives of 
the Foreign Office in Paris, on the negotiations relative 
to the succession to the Spanish throne in the reign 
of Louis XIV., beginning with the Pyrenean treaty and 
Louis's marriage with Maria Theresa of Spain and end- 
ing with the treaty of Mmeguen and the marriage of 
Charles II. of Spain with Marie Louise, niece of Louis 
XIV. 1 In this work M. Mignet has minutely traced the 

1 " Negotiations relatives a la Succession d'Espagne sous Louis XIV. ; 
ou Correspondances, Mehioires, et Actes diplomatiques concernant les 
Pretentious et 1'Avenement de la Maison de Bourbon au Trone d'Espagne, 
nccompagnes d'un Texte historique, et precedes d'une Introduction. Par 
M. Mignet, Membre de 1'Institut, &c." 4 tomes 4to. Paris, 1835. 



PREFACE. XI 

negotiations and intrigues between England and France 
from the beginning of the reign of Charles the Second 
to the Peace of Mmeguen of 1678, and has given to the 
world a large important addition to the valuable mate- 
rials for the history of England in Charles the Second's 
reign, which were published in the last century by Sir 
-John Dalrymple. 1 It is surprising that this im- 
portant work of M. Mignet has been so little noticed and 
known in England. Its great size, and its being part 
of a very voluminous series of government publica- 
tions of original documents on the history of France, 
have probably stood in the way of general circulation. 
But there are few histories which equal this bulky 
work in attractiveness, for the documents are arranged 
with exquisite skill and connected by a commentary 
displaying all the graces of M. Mignet's charming 
style. 

I may mention that I have myself carefully examined 
in the French Foreign Office the despatches of the 
French Ambassadors in England for the years 1659 
to 1665, 1669, 1672 to 1674, and 1679 to 1681. 

When engaged in examining them, in the year 
1850, seeing the immense bulk of the correspondence, 
and finding it impossible to attempt to go carefully 
through the whole, I suggested to Lord Palmerston, 
then at the head of the Foreign Office, that it might 

1 " Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, from the'Dissolution of the 
last Parliament of Charles II. until the sea-battle of La Hogue." 3 vols. 
4to. 1771, 1773, 1788. 



Xll PREFACE. 

be worthy of the consideration of our Government to 
incur a moderate expense for making complete copies, 
if the French Government would permit it, which 
might be rendered accessible in England to historical 
inquirers, or eren published to the world. Lord Pal- 
merston received the suggestion with his invariable 
kindness, and acted with characteristic promptitude. 
I was immediately authorized to incur a reasonable 
expense on the public account, for the copies of the 
despatches from England of the reign of Charles the 
Second ; and Lord Normanby, then our Ambassador in 
Paris, was instructed to apply for the permission of 
the French Government. The permission was refused. 
A distinction was made between allowing individuals 
to make extracts by special permission and under the 
supervision of the Director of the Office of Archives, 
and allowing the publication of the whole series. I 
hope that this decision may yet be reconsidered. These 
despatches now belong to history. They are, alas ! the 
best sources for the history of English government 
during a period of humiliating memories, when the 
English Sovereign, some English Ministers, and many 
English legislators were the mendicant retainers of the 
French King, and when the chief business of the 
French Ambassador in London was the base one of 
bribing members of Parliament to worry the King, 
and bribing the King to resist the Parliament. Large 
extracts from these despatches have been published by 
Sir John Dalrymple, M. Mignet, and others ; and more 



PREFACE. Xlll 

are published in this work. No reserve can now lessen 
the shame for both nations of the known flagrant 
corruption by Louis- the Fourteenth of our King and 
public men. 

Some writers having cast discredit on Dalrymple's 
valuable work, and doubted the truth of Barillon's 
statements about money given to members of Parlia- 
ment, 1 I wish to say that I have always found Dal- 
rymple's extracts correct and fair, that I believe him 
to be an honest, as he is unquestionably an able, 
writer, and that I can see no good ground for dis- 
believing Barillon's accounts of his disbursements, 
which not only leave untouched but place in a strong 
light the honour of Shaftesbury and Eussell, while 
they prejudicially affect the reputation of Algernon 
Sidney. 

The want of a Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury 
has been often mentioned by historical writers. 

Shaftesbury has been indeed unfortunate in his fame. 
He lived in times of violent party fury ; and calumny, 
which fiercely assailed him living, pursued him in his 
grave, and still darkens his name. He lived in times 
when the public had little or no authentic information 
about the proceedings of members of the Government 
or of Parliament, when errors in judging public men 
were more easy than now, and when venal pam- 



1 See the Introduction to the "Letters {of Lady .Russell," &c., 
8vo. 1801, and Lord John Russell's "Life of William Lord Russell," 
chap. x. 



XIV PREFACE. 

phleteers, poets, and playwriters drove a profitable 
trade in libels on public men. The power of Dryden's 
poetry eclipsed all the efforts of the inferior versifiers 
who battled for Shaftesbury and the Whigs: and the 
undying verse of the brilliant, but not conscientious, 
author of " Absalom and Achitophel " and " The Medal " 
has been a powerful cause of Shaftesbury's condemna- 
tion by posterity. Another of several causes has been 
the willing credulity of Hume, a prejudiced friend of the 
Stuarts, whose attractively written History long swayed 
the public mind. The falsehoods of detraction have 
produced counter falsehoods of excuse and eulogy, and 
the result has been a great agglomeration of errors. It 
will be seen from the first piece in the Appendices of 
this volume that Shaftesbury formed in old age the 
design of placing his own story before posterity, and 
vindicating his fame from the calumnies of contempo- 
rary faction. He has left but a small fragment, which 
terminates at the moment of his entrance into public 
life, before attaining the age of twenty-one. 1 There is, 

1 Mr. Martyn says that a work, of which the fragment in Appendix I. 
of this first volume was only the beginning, was entrusted by Shaftes- 
bury, when he fled to Holland, to the care of Locke, who, after 
Shaftesbury's death and Algernon Sidney's execution, burnt it from 
fear of the Court. (Life, i. pp. 3, 10.) He gives no aiithority for these 
statements, and I am not aware of any. There is no reference to this 
story in any Life of Locke, nor in any of his published correspondence, 
nor in his letters existing at St. Giles's (among which, besides many to 
the grandson, the author of the "Characteristics," are some written 
shortly after Shaftesbury's death to his widow and his son), nor in any 
of the Shaftesbury papers, nor in the Locke papers which I have 
examined at the Earl of Lovelace's. Nor is there much reason to believe 
that Shaftesbury had regularly composed this work beyond where the 
fragment abruptly terminates. Itj is possible that the two short 
passages referring to events in 1640 (see pp. 35-6 of this volume), 



PREFACE. XV 

I think, no sufficient authority for the story of his 
Memoirs having been burnt by Locke. But there is 
no doubt that Shaftesbury's distinguished grandson, the 
author of the " Characteristics," cherished the hope that 
his illustrious friend and tutor, the intimate friend of 
Shaftesbury in his later life, would write a biography 
of his departed patron. There can be no doubt that 
Locke's powers of analysis, knowledge of human nature, 
and zeal for truth, applied to the portrayal of Shaftes- 
bury's character, which he had had great opportunities 
of studying, and to the history of his life and times of 
which he had personal knowledge, would have pro- 
duced a most excellent work. Boswell records a dictum 
of Dr. Johnson : " They only who live with a man* can 
write his Life with any genuine exactness and discrimi- 
nation, and few people who have lived with a man 
know what to remark about him." Locke would have 
known what to remark. When Locke died, leaving 
only a small collection of crude materials, just enough 
to show that he had meditated a biography, there came 
for a moment a new gleam of hope to the grandson, 
piously attached to Shaftesbury's memory, that the 
work which Locke had failed to execute might be 

and the fragment of a narrative composed by Shaftesbury of events 
shortly before the Eestoration, printed in Chapter VII., may have been 
intended for a continuation of the Autobiography ; but I am inclined 
to believe that the short narrative of events between Richard Crom- 
well's fall and the Restoration was composed about the time of the 
Restoration. The paper headed " The Present State, of the Kingdom 
at the Opening of the Parliament, March 1679," printed in the second 
volume, in Chapter XVI., may have been a part of Shaftesbury's Auto- 
biography, but it is quite as likely to be a distinct memorandum. 



XVI PREFACE. 

undertaken by his distinguished nephew and exe- 
cutor, the future Lord Chancellor King. But here 
again came disappointment. 

The fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, the son of the author 
of the "Characteristics," who was born in 1711 and 
succeeded to the title in infancy in 1713, was very 
anxious, on reaching manhood, for a biography of his 
great ancestor and an effective vindication of his fame; 
and, shortly after he became of age, he placed all 
the materials in his possession at the disposal for 
this purpose of Mr. Benjamin Martyn, who had 
been recommended to him as competent for the 
task. Mr. Martyn was the author of a successful tra- 
gedy, called " Timoleon," now forgotten, and a friend 
of Dr. Birch, the well-known literary and historical in- 
quirer of the last century. He appears to have begun 
the work in the year 1734, and he was employed 
upon it for some years. The fourth Earl and other 
members of the family took an active interest in it; 
and there are many judicious notes by the fourth 
Earl preserved among Lord Shaftesbury's papers. Mr. 
Martyn's work, when completed, did not satisfy his 
patron. It is evident that Martyn had no knowledge 
of history, and no capacity for writing such a work. In 
the year 1766 the work was consigned by the fourth 
Earl to Dr. Sharpe, Master of the Temple, for improve- 
ment. The fourth Earl of Shaftesbury died in 1771 ; 
his son then placed the manuscript in the hands of Dr. 
Kippis, the editor of the Biographia Britannica. Dr. 



PREFACE. XVU 

Kippis appears to have made many suggestions. The 
work was then printed. No cobbling could make a 
good book of a bad one ; and the fifth Earl was justly 
dissatisfied with the performance, when in print. It 
is stated that the whole impression was destroyed with 
the exception of two copies. One copy exists at St. 
Giles's; another, having found its way into the hands 
of Mr. Bentley, the publisher, was edited in 1836 by 
Mr. George Wingrove Cooke, the author of the "History 
of Party." 1 Mr. Cooke erred greatly in his estimate of 
the value of the work which he edited, and in his own 
notes and additions to the narrative increased the stock 
.of errors about Shaftesbury. 

One serious mistake made by Mr. Wingrove Cooke 
is in ascribing to Shaftesbury the authorship of a 
Letter on Toleration, which is among the papers at 
St. Giles's, and which he considers "an early sketch, 
from which Locke's Essay upon the same subject was 
afterwards filled up." Locke is undoubtedly the author 
of the manuscript at St. Giles's. 

I stated, perhaps too strongly, in the notes to the 
volume which I published in 1859, an opinion of the 
improbability of Locke's being the author of the small 
fragment of a biography, which has been printed in 
Locke's works with the title " Memoirs relating to the 

i " The Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury, from original documens 
in the possession of the family, by Mr. B. Martyn and Dr. Kippis, 
now first published. Edited by G. "Wingrove Cooke, Esq., author of 
'Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke,'" 2 vols., 1836. Dr. Kippis's con- 
nexion with the work does not justify his being named as joint 
author. 



XV111 PREFACE. 

Life of Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury." 1 There are some 
flagrant inaccuracies in that fragment for the period of 
the Civil War. The manuscript of the fragment, which 
is at St. Giles's, is in Locke's handwriting. Practically 
it is for the most part a series of statements relative to 
Shaftesbury's early life, of which Locke himself knew 
nothing, and which he probably jotted down from 
Stringer's information, as so much raw material to be 
afterwards worked upon ; and Stringer, though a per- 
fectly respectable man, is inaccurate, confused, and 
injudicious. It contains a few statements of opinions 
of Shaftesbury, which Locke learnt directly from his 
conversations. In all else, I remain of opinion that 
Locke is not to be held responsible for the Memoir, 
found in his own handwriting, beyond his having 
written out for future study and use information 
given him by another or others. 

I have not been able to find among Lord Shaftes- 
bury's papers the rest, and doubtless the larger portion, 
of the Memoir of Shaftesbury by Stringer, of which a 
fragment for the years 1672 and 1673 is printed at 
the end of the second volume. It is clear that Martyn 
saw a longer Memoir, and took much from it for both 
the earlier and later parts of Shaftesbury's life. It 
would have been satisfactory to see the remainder of 
Stringer's Memoir, as no reliance can be placed on 
Martyn's judgment, and it may have been sometimes 
inaccurately represented by Martyn, or it may have 

1 Locke's Works, vol. ix., p. 266, 3d edition, 1812. 



PREFACE. Xix 

contained information which he has omitted to extract, 
But, on the other hand, it is clear that Stringer's accu- 
racy is not to be relied on, and that many of Martyn's 
errors are derived from Stringer. Of Shaftesbury's 
early life Stringer would have known nothing of his 
own knowledge. In the years 1672 and 1673, for 
which Stringer's Memoir is before us, he was in close 
connexion with Shaftesbury, being one of his Secretaries 
when he held the office of Lord Chancellor. He had 
been previously Shaftesbury's solicitor, and continued 
to be so after Shaftesbury's removal from the Chancel- 
lorship, and he remained a confidential friend till 
Shaftesbury's death. But Stringer's Memoir, even for 
this period, though containing much useful information 
and fundamentally true, as it is throughout honest, has 
many mistakes of exaggeration and imperfect judgment, 
which show that he is far from being an altogether safe 
guide. Stringer's Memoir was written about seventeen 
years after Shaftesbury's death, and twenty-seven years 
after Shaftesbury ceased to be Lord Chancellor. It 
was written when he was an old man, and his death, 
which was in 1702, may have stopped an unfinished 
work. He undertook to write the Memoir in conse- 
quence of the disparaging treatment of Shaftesbury in 
Sir William Temple's Memoirs, published in 1691. 
Lapse of time, failure of memory, and warm zeal for 
the good name of his departed patron, whom he loved, 
would have all combined to impair the value of a work 
written by a man who in his best days had no literary 



XX PREFACE. 

power, and of whom his widow ingenuously says that 
writing was not poor Mr. Stringer's talent. 1 

I have occasionally referred to a manuscript at St. 
Giles's, which is a vindication of Shaftesbury from the 
aspersions of Bishop Burnet in the " History of his Own 
Time," first published in 1724, and which was written 
by a Mr. Wyche, who had been an amanuensis in 
Shaftesbury's service. The manuscript bears the title, 
"A Vindication of the Character and Actions of the 
Eight Hon. Anthony late Earl of Shaftesbury, late 
Lord High Chancellor of England, from the Detractions 
and Misrepresentations of the late Eight Eeverend 
Gilbert Bishop of Sarum, by Philoecus." This Vindi- 
cation is more a dissertation than a biography : it is 
long, and unskilfully written : I have found it occasion- 
ally useful, but I have not thought it worth printing. 

Lord Campbell's Life of Shaftesbury in his " Lives of 
the Chancellors" is freely criticised in this work. Those 
who have followed the criticisms on other Lives by 
Lord Campbell will not expect that his Life of Shaftes- 
bury should be one of great accuracy. It is perhaps 
one of the most inaccurate. In the volume which I 
published in 1859, when Lord Campbell was alive and 
Lord Chancellor, I inserted a minute dissection of the 
first chapter of his Life of Shaftesbury, which covered 
the period from his birth to the Eestoration. It is a 
satisfaction to me to know that I criticised Lord 



1 Letter of Mrs. Hill, Stringer's widow, to Lady Elizabeth Harris, 
Appendix VIII. of vol. ii. 



PEEFACE. XXI 

Campbell, when he was alive, as freely as I do now 
after his death. I am more anxious now to offer to 
his memory the respect which I expressed for him 
when he was living ; and I therefore proceed to repeat 
the substance of observations which I made in the 
Preface to my volume of 1859. I repeat, then, that it 
is not easy, with every desire to avoid offensiveness, 
to make a long and minute criticism in an agreeable 
manner. I hope I shall not be thought to over-esti- 
mate the talents required for writing an accurate Life, 
or for exposing the inaccuracies of another. A great 
author, in a biographical work which, in spite of much 
injustice, and notwithstanding great subsequent addi- 
tions of knowledge, has achieved lasting fame, and is 


always read with enjoyment, has modestly gauged the 

requirements for literary biography ; and legal or poli- 
tical biography is not dissimilar. "To adjust the 
minute events of literary history," said Dr. Johnson 
in his " Lives of the Poets," 1 " is tedious and trouble- 
some ; it requires indeed no great force of understand- 
ing, but often depends upon inquiries which there is 
no opportunity of making, or is to be fetched from books 
and pamphlets not always at hand." There can be no 
doubt that, if Lord Campbell had taken the necessary 
time, and put out all the powers of his acute and 
vigorous mind, to write a careful biography of Shaftes- 
bury or any one of the Chancellors, he might have left 
little employment for critics. As it is, he does not 

1 In the Life of Dryden. 
VOL. I. I 



XX11 PREFACE, 

depend on his Lives for lasting reputation. It will, 
however, always be no mean embellishment of the 
solid fame which he has secured, that, in the evening 
of a life of great professional labours and successes, he 
found amusement and relaxation from high duties in 
pursuits of literature, and in composing a long series 
of biographies which, if often inaccurate, are always 
lively and agreeable, and, if often unjust, are always 
unjust in ignorance and without determination of injus- 
tice. I should be sorry to be unfair towards one 
who, in my early life, honoured me with his friend- 
ship ; and whose strong intellect, kindly nature, public 
services, and great career have my respect and 
admiration. 

I wish specially to mention my obligations for assist- 
ance and advice often kindly given by an old and 
warm-hearted friend, Mr. John Forster, the author of 
" The Statesmen of the Commonwealth," the " Life of 
Sir John Eliot," the "Life of Goldsmith," and many 
other works. 

W. D. C, 

i 

32, DORSET SQUARE, LONDON, 

April, 187]. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEK I. 
16211639. 

Birth and parentage Baronetcies of father and maternal grandfather 
The Coopers and Ashleys Sir Anthony Ashley Death of mother and 
of father Sir A. A. Cooper a King's ward Losses of property by Court 
of Wards Litigation with Sir Francis Ashley and Denzil Holies Sir 
A. A. Cooper's wealth His guardians Goes to Exeter College, Oxford, 
when sixteen His life at Oxford Entered at Lincoln's Inn Marries 
at eighteen daughter of Lord Keeper Coventry Predictions of a Ger- 
man astrologer His brothers-in-law, Henry and Sir William Coventry, 
and sisters-in-law, Lady Savile, mother of Lord Halifax, and Lady 
Pakington Sketch of his youth Page 1 

CHAPTER II. 
1639-1644. 

Lives, after marriage, with his father-in-law Hanley bowling-green in 
Dorsetshire Sir A. A. Cooper's neighbours Lord Digby Visit to 
Worcestershire with Mr. Coventry Elected member for Tewkesbury, 
at age of eighteen, for the Short Parliament of April 1640 Termina- 
tion of Fragment of Autobiography- The Parliament quickly dissolved 
Lord Coventry's death in January 1640 Letter of John Coventry, 
February 1640 Lord Savile's forged letter Petition of twelve peers 
to the King for a parliament Returned in a double return for Downton 
to Long Parliament Petitions Holies said to have prevented his being 
seated Came forward for the King in Dorsetshire in spring of 1643 
Dispute about his being made Governor of Weymouth and Portland 
Ultimately appointed Letter from the King to Marquis of Hert- 
ford Appointed King's Sheriff of Dorsetshire In February 1644, goes 
over to the Parliament His statement of his motives made before the 
Committee of both kingdoms Page 24 

CHAPTER III. 
16441653. 

Retrospect of public affairs The war in the West Sir A. A. Cooper goes 
into Dorsetshire for the Parliament, Julv 1644 Appointed to act with 
the army as Field Marshal General Taking of Wareham Made one of 
the Dorsetshire Committee for the army Allowed to compound for his 



XXIV CONTENTS. 

estates with a fine of 500L Appointed Commander-in-chief of the Par- 
liament's forces in Dorsetshire, October 1644 Takes Abbotsbury by 
storm Narratives by himself and by one of his officers of the storming 1 
of Abbotsbury Takes Sturminster and Shaftesbury Instructions of 
Dorsetshire Committee Cooper's notes on the military condition in 
Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and Somersetshire, November 1644 Letter 
from Colonel Butler Want of money Cooper relieves Blake besieged 
; at Taunton, December Cooper's letter to Essex on relief of Taunton 
Siege of Corfe Castle 1645 Endeavours unsuccessfully to gain admis- 
sion into the House of Commons on his former petition, September 
1645 Self-denying Ordinance Termination of Cooper's military ser- 
viceHigh Sheriff of Wiltshire for the Parliament, 1647 Cooper's 
Diary, 1646-50 Story of his advice to Holies to be forbearing with 
Cromwell Selections from Diary Execution of Charles the First 
Death of Cooper's wife His second marriage with daughter of Earl of 
Exeter Subscribes the engagement and is a commissioner for adminis- 
tering it Appointed member of the Commission for reforming the 
laws, January 1652 House of Commons absolve him from all delin- 
quency, March 1653 Page 54 



CHAPTER IV. 

16531656. 

Cromwell's ejection of the Kump Reasons for the Act Temporary Coun- 
cil of State A Convention summoned Meets, July 4, 1653 Sir A. A. 
Cooper a member Proceedings of Barebone's Parliament Parties in 
that assembly Questions of Church and Law Reform Cromwell allied 
with the moderate party The Parliament resigns its powers to Crom- 
' well, December 12, 1653 Cooper had acted with the moderate party 
and Cromwell, and had promoted the resignation Idle rumour that 
Cromwell meant to make Cooper Lord Chancellor Cromwell refuses 
to be King, and is made Protector Cooper said to have pressed him 
to be King Cooper one of the new Council of State The Instrument 
of Government Milton serves under the Council Cooper elected to 
the new Parliament for Wiltshire, Poole, and Tewkesbury Sits for 
Wiltshire Ludlow's account of the Wiltshire election Parliament 
meet, September 3, 1654 Cromwell's difficulties with the Parliament 
He dissolves it Cooper ceases to attend the Privy Council His 
estrangement from Cromwell Ludlow's mistakes about this estrange- 
ment Death of Cooper's second wife in 1654 Story of Cooper wishing 
to marry Cromwell's daughter Mary He marries, in 1656, a daughter 
of Lord Spencer of Wormloighton Her character She survives 
Shaftesbury Page 90 



CHAPTER V. 

16561658. 

Cooper now in opposition to Cromwell He falls back on the Presbyterian 
party Elected for Wiltshire to new Parliament Prevented by the 
Council from taking his seat Is one of the sixty-five who sign a letter 
to the Speaker protesting Afterwards signs Remonstrance The 
Humble Petition and Advice Cromwell refuses to be King House 
adjourned from June 26, 1657, to January 20, 1658 Cromwell's Peers 
or "Other House" Cooper not one The 5QOI. fine for composition, 



CONTENTS. XXV 

imposed by Long Parliament in 1644, remitted by Cromwell Cooper's 
friendship with Henry Cromwell, and letter to him Cooper and the 
other excluded members take their seats on meeting of Parliament, 
January 1658 Formidable opposition to Cromwell and the new Con- 
stitution Debates about the "Other House" Cooper's speeches 
Cromwell dissolves the Parliament, February 4 Cromwell's 
death Page 123 



CHAPTER VI. 
16581659. 

Richard Cromwell proclaimed Protector The military commanders jealous 
of his civilian advisers A Parliament called for January 27, 1659 
Members for England and Wales elected under old constitution Scotch 
and Irish members according to Instrument of Government, but not to 
sit till approved Cromwell's Peers summoned by writs of old House of 
Lords Cooper elected for Wiltshire and Poole Sits for Wiltshire 
Debates on bill for recognition of Richard Cromwell as Protector 
1 Cooper's many speeches The " Other House" Question of transacting 
k with it Cooper's long speech against time Cooper's taunts against 
one of Cromwell's peers for changes His abuse of Cromwell House of 
Commons agrees to transact with other House during this Parliament 
Unsuccessful attempt to settle revenue on Richard Cromwell Message 
to other House as to a day of humiliation Discussions thereon 
Quarrel between Richard Cromwell and the military chiefs Resolu- 
tions of House of Commons against the army- -Richard Cromwell 
orders dissolution of Council of Officers Fleetwood and Desborough 
rally the army, and force Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament 
Fall of Richard Cromwell Page 144 



CHAPTER VII. 
1659-1660. 

Restoration of the Rump Parliament, May 7 Committee of Safety ap- 
pointedCooper's election petition for Downton of 1640 referred to a 
committee Not seated Cooper elected member of Council of State 
Suspicions of him as a Royalist by some colleagues --Scot accuses him 
of correspondence with Hyde He denies the charge Cooper rejects 
Royalist overtures Letter from Monk to Cooper Distractions of 
Council and Parliament Sir George Booth's rising Cooper arrested 
in Dorsetshire, and accused of complicity with Booth Council of 
State and Parliament acquit him Military revolution by Lambert 
The Rump suppressed, October 13 Committee of Safety nominated 
by Lambert and his coadjutors, October 25 Cooper opposes Lambert 
and the Committee of Safety Monk also opposes Cooper's narrative 
from October 25, 1659, to February 6, 1660 Treaty of Monk's Com- 
missioners with Committee of Safety Attempt to arrest Cooper 
Overthrow of Committee of Safety and restoration of Rump Cooper 
one of five temporary Commissioners for the Army Prompt measures 
for dispersing Lambert's forces Cooper appointed member of new 
Council of State Admitted as member for Downton Made colonel of 
regiment taken from Fleetwood Monk's march to London Monk's 
changes of conduct Admission of secluded members, February 26 
Cooper commands the guard on their admission Council of State 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

appointed of Royalists and Presbyterians Cooper one New Parlia- 
ment called for April 25 Letter of Montagu to Cooper Haselrig, Scot, 
and others offer Monk the crown Monk refuses False story of Monk 
aiming to be made king with help of French Ambassador Lambert's 
insurrection and defeat by Ingoldsby Cooper's letter of rejoicing to 
Montagu Cooper acts with the Presbyterian leaders for bringing in. 
the King on conditions Meeting of Convention Parliament Monk 
outstrips the Presbyterians, and brings in Charles without conditions 
Cooper one of twelve Commissioners of the Parliament sent to the 
King at Breda Accident on his journey Friendship with John Locke 
Cooper's changes during the last twenty years Satires of Butler and 
. Dryden Page 172 



CHAPTER VIII. 
1660. 

Sir A. A. Cooper made a Privy Councillor at Canterbury His pardons 
Distribution of offices and honours Privy Council Hyde Chief 
Minister Committee for Foreign Affairs or Cabinet King's active 
supremacy in Government Convention Parliament Sir A. A. Cooper's 
speeches The Bill of Pardon and Indemnity Cooper desired no ex- 
ceptions for life Monk and Cooper unjustly reproached by Ludlow 
and Mrs Hutehinson Royal assent to the Act, August 29 Cooper's 
speeches on details Helped to save Haselrig Trials of the Regicides 
and others Cooper one of the Judges His sitting on the trial de- 
fended Appointed member of Councils of Trade and Plantations 
His cavalry regiment disbanded Revenue and Church questions 
Abolition of Court of Wards Cooper supports postponement of Bill 
for Church Settlement Defends the King in debate on grievances- 
Dissolution of Convention Parliament, December 27 ... Page 227 



CHAPTER IX. 
16611664. 

Meeting of new Parliament Cooper made Lord Ashley at the Coronation 
Appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Under Treasurer 
Violent policy of the new Parliament The Corporation, Uniformity, 
and Militia Acts Lord Ashley's opposition to these measures The 
King and Clarendon endeavour to check the violence of the High 
Church party Bill for confirming Presbyterian ministers in vacant 
livings- -Dispensing clause proposed in the Uniformity Bill by Claren- 
don on the King's recommendation Refused by the Lords Charles 
promises a three months' suspension of the Act of Uniformity, but 
cannot fulfil his promise King's marriage Sale of Dunkirk King's 
Declaration of Indulgence, December 26, 1662, advised by Bennet, 
Bristol, and Lord Ashley Dispensing Bill presented to House of Lords 
by Lord Roberts by the King's desire Lord Ashley warmly supports 
the Bill Clarendon opposes it Despatches of the French Ambassador, 
M. de Comminges Clarendon's inaccuracies The Dispensing Bill 
dropped Proclamation for banishing Jesuits and Roman Catholic 
priests Conventicle Act Lord Ashley grows in favour with the King 
His ability and influence Bristol's attack on Clarendon Lord 
Ashley and others work against Clarendon with encouragement from the 
King Testimonies to Lord Ashley's assiduity and ability . Page 255 



CONTENTS. XXVH 

CHAPTER X. 

16641667. 

Lord Ashley's position at the beginning of 1664 Attention to revenue and 
trade Dutch war Opposed by Clarendon, Southampton, and Ormond 
and supported probably by Ashley Appointed Treasurer of Prizes 
Clarendon's hostility to the appointment Affectionate letter to his 
wife, Februaiy 26, 1665 Grant of Carolina to Lord Ashley a,prl g^vpr. 
others The Plague The King visits Lord Ashley at Wimborne St. 
briies's Session of Parliament at Oxford, October 1665 Appropriation 
Clause in Supply Bill unsuccessfully opposed by Clarendon and Ashley 
The Five Mile Act Opposed strongly by Southampton and Ashley, 
but prosecuted by Clarendon Bill for general imposition of oath 
against endeavouring change in Church or State opposed by Ashley 
Letter to his wife from Oxford, November 23, 1665 Beginning of 
acquaintance with Locke Friendship of Locke and Shaftesbury 
Session of 1666-67 Complaints of expenditure and misappropriation- 
Act against importation of Irish cattle Supported by Ashley Earl of 
Ossory's insult and apology Discussion with Viscount Conway-- 
Kumoured possible Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Secret treaty between 
Louis XIV. and Charles II. Dutch fleet enters the Thames and burns 
three men-of-war at Chatham Peace of Breda Death of Earl of 
Southampton Office of Lord High Treasurer put in commission and 
Lord Ashley one of the Commissioners Clarendon's account of the 
appointment of the Commission Proceedings of the Commissioners 
; Sir William Temple and Lady Fanshawe blame Shaftesbury for their 
' economies Clarendon removed from the Chancellorship Lord Ashley 
unjustly accused of conspiring against Clarendon Opposes the im- 
peachment of Clarendon without specific treason assigned and falls into 
disgrace with the King for supporting Clarendon Clarendon's exile 
Lord Cstonpbell's misstatements Charge of licentiousness against 
Shaftesbury Paye 276 



APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX I Page iii. 

APPENDIX II ,, xxv. 

APPENDIX III Ivi. 

APPENDIX IV Ixiii. 

APPENDIX V Ixxiv. 

APPENDIX VI , Ixxviii. 



ILLUSTRATION. 

Sm ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, BART Frontispiece. 

(From a Painting by SIK PETER LELY.) 



INDEX. 



Though bearing in succession the titles of "Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper," "Lord 
Ashley," and "Earl of Sfiaftesbury," the Earl is uniformly referred to in this 
Index under the name of SHAFTESBURY, which, for the sake of brevity, is indicated 
by the letter S. 



Abbotsbury stormed and burned by S., i. 
6267 ; App. II. xxx. 

" Absalom and Achitophel" (see Dryden). 

Act of Uniformity, its mischievous nature, 
i. 259; opposed by S., 261; clause pro- 
posed to enable the King to dispense 
with its provisions, 263 ; rejected, Act 
passed, 264 ; its effects, 265, 268 ; Charles 
II. 's declaration, 266 ; bill introduced to 
dispense with the Act, 26G; "Dispens- 
ing BUI" supported by S., 267269; 
dispensing clause proposed by Charles 
II., rejected by House of Lords, App. VI. 
Ixxviii, ii. 72. 

Admiralty, Duke of York Lord High 
Admiral, resigns on the passing of the 
Test Act, ii. 141 ; the office put into 
commission, 144. 

Agricultural depression in 1667 and 1668, 
remarks by Pepys, 300. 

Ague, S. attacked 'with, i. 84. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, for peace be- 
tween France and Spain, ii. 12, 13. 

Albemarle, Monk, Duke of, as General 
Monk supports Richard Cromwell, i. 145 ; 
his first letter to S. , 182 ; opposes the 
proceedings of Lambert, 193 ; his own 
subsequent proceedings, 193 203 ; 
enters London, 204 ; '* Narrative " of 
his proceedings by S., 205212; offer 
by the Republicans to make him King, 
his refusal, alleged influence of S., 215 
218 ; effects the Restoration, 220 ; 
made K.G. and Privy Councillor, 227 ; 
other honours conferred on him, 228 ; 
made Duke of Albemarle, 229 ; appointed 
a Treasury Commissioner, 305 ; his 
notice of Sir W. Morrice, ii. 45. 

Aldersgate Street (see Thanet House). 

Ambassador's plate, a customary gift, re- 
fused by S. and the Treasury Commis- 
sioners, i. 308. 

Amsterdam, S. arrives there after his 
flight from London, ii. 452 ; contradic- 



tory accounts of his reception, 452, 456, 
460 ; made a burgher, 452, 457, 461 
death of S. at, 455; his will, 457 
459. 

Ancestors of S., i. 2. 

Anecdotes, of S.'s sagacity, ii. 104; of 
Locke's playfulness, 106. 

Apple trees planted by S. at Wimborne St. 
Giles, ii. 49. 

Arlington, Earl of, as Sir Henry Bennet, 
appointed Secretary of State, his opposi- 
tion to Clarendon, i. 265 ; letter from 
him to S., 275 ; his power after the fall 
of Clarendon, ii. 2 ; his rivalry with 
Buckingham, 4 ; defeats Buckingham's 
plan for a French alliance, negotiates 
with De Witt, triple alliance of England, 
Holland, and Sweden against France, 
11 ; again opposes Buckingham's in- 
trigues with France, 13 ; opposes fresh 
negotiations with France, 13 ; Colbert 
endeavours to gain his support, 14 ; 
further intrigues, 15 ; attempts to estab- 
lish a French alliance and restore Popery 
in England, 16, 18 ; signs secret treaty 
with France for war with Holland and 
restoration of Popery, 19, 55 ; 8. igno- 
rant of this treaty, 22 ; joins Buckingham 
in fresh negotiations, 22 ; signs mock 
treaty, 26 ; and further treaty, 28 ; re- 
ceives present from Louis XIV., 31 ; his 
rivalry with Buckingham, letter from S. 
to Morrice, 45 ; promotes the war with 
Holland, 80; created an Earl, 84; ac- 
companies Buckingham to Louis XIV., 
Colbert's eulogy of him, 85; disappointed 
at not being made Lord Treasurer, 98 ; 
alarmed by the opposition of the Com- 
mons, abandons the " Declaration of 
Independence," 134 ; supposed to have 
aided the " Test Act," 136 ; disposed to 
abandon the Popish design, 139 ; informs 
S. of the secret treaty, 90, 140 ; attacked 
by the House of Common*, 188 ; Lord 
Chamberlain in 1679, 328 ; supports pro- 
1 osed grant of Phoenix Park to Duchess 



XXX 



INDEX. 



of Cleveland, App. IV. xlix ; speech in 
conference with Charles II., App. VII., 
cxxi. 

Army, in a minority in the Council of 
State, i. 177; disbanded, S. ceases to 
hold his colonelcy, 249 ; Duke of York 
Commander-in-Chief, resigns on the 
passing of the " Test Act," ii. 141 ; 
mustered at Blackheath for war with 
Holland, 146 ; encamped at Yarmouth, 
147 ; voted a grievance by House of 
Commons, 155 (see Desborough, Fleet- 
wood, Military Power). 

Ashley, Anne, mother of S., i. 1, 5. 

Ashley, Sir Anthony, maternal grandfather 
of S., i. 1, 2 ; his career and pedigree, 3. 

Ashley, Sir Francis, grandunele of S., i. 
79 ; his sudden death, 11, App. I. ix. 

Astrology believed in by S., i. 20. 

Astrop mineral waters prescribed for S. , 
i. 295. 

Aubrey, John, on equestrian processions 
of the Judges to Westminster, attempt 
of S. to revive the custom, ii. 168. 

Autobiographical sketch of S., from 1621 
to 1645, diary, January 1646 to July 
1650, i. App. II. xxv. 

Autobiography of S., fragment from birth 
(1621) to 1639, Preface, xiv, i. App. I. iii. 

B. 

Bahamas, the, granted by Charles II. to 
S. and five others ; his attention to the 
affairs of the colony, i. 288 ; ii. 60. 

Bankers, their advances to Government 
(see "Stop of the Exchequer"). 

Banks, Sir John, his son placed by S. 
under the care of Locke, ii. 235. 

Barbadoes, plantation there belonging to 
S., who binds two boys for the planta- 
tion for seven years, i. App. II. xxxiv. 

Barebone's Parliament nominated (see 
Parliament). 

Barillon, French Ambassador, his reports 
to Louis XIV. on the marriage of Wil- 
liam and Mary, ii. 247 ; his negotiations 
to maintain the French alliance, 255 ; 
bribes Buckingham and Opposition 
members, 267 ; negotiates with Charles 

, II. as to French subsidies, 274 ; despatch 
to Louis XIV. on the Privy Council, 
App. VII. cix ; his account of negotia- 
tions for French subsidy, 305; letter 
to Louis XIV. on proposals of Charles 
II. for subsidy and treaty, 359 ; on views 
of S. as to the Duke of York, 371 ; on 
the designs of Monmouth and Duchess 
of Portsmouth, 379 ; on conversation 
between S. and Charles II. about Mon- 
mouth and the succession, App. VII. 
cxvi. 

Baronetcy, institution of the order, i. 2. 

Bath visited by S , i. 83 ; App. II. xliii. 

Bear-baiting, bears killed by Col. Pride 
for its suppression, i. App. IV. Ixxi. 

Bedloe, a perjured witness in support of 
Titus Oates, ii. 287, 300. 



Beer, "size" of, at Oxford University, 
i. 17, App. I. xii. 

Belvoir Castle, S.'s son married there to 
Lady Dorothy Manners, ii. 36. 

Bennet, Sir Henry (see Arlington). 

Bishops excluded from the House of 
Lords, i. 55 ; restored, 257 ; letter from 
S. to Bishops as to sequestrated livings, 
ii. App. IV. liv. 

Black Bull Inn, Holborn, the property of 
S., i. 7. 

Blake, his defence of Lyine and Tauuton, 
i. 59, 72. 

Booth, Sir George, his insurrection to 
favour the Restoration, its defeat, i. 185 ; 
S. arrested on a charge of participation 
in it, 185 ; his acquittal, 186 ; complicity 
of S. asserted by Ludlow, App. III. Ixi. 

Bordeaux, M. de, French Ambassador, his 
account of the ejection of the ' ' Rump " 
Parliament, i. 94. 

Bowls, the game practised by S., i. 24, 
App. I. xiv., App. II. xxxviii, xliii. 

Bradshaw. the regicide, attainted, his 
body exhumed, i. 247. 

Breda, S. sent there by Parliament to in- 
vite Charles II. to return, i. 221 ; his 
accident on the journey and its conse- 
quences, 222 ; treaty of peace with Hol- 
land signed there, 304. 

Bribes given by Louis XIV. to Charles II. 
to prorogue Parliament ; to members 
to espouse the French alliance (see 
Louis XIV. and Parliament). 

Bridgman, Sir Orlando, appointed Lord 
Keeper, ii. 1 ; deprived of the Great 
Seal, 93 ; hesitates to seal the "Declara- 
tion of Indulgence," 94; is succeeded 
by S. , 93 ; causes of his removal, 95 ; 
S. ace-used of urging his dismissal, 162 ; 
the charge refuted, 163. 

Bridgwater, Earl of, letter from him to S. , 
ii. 362. 

Bristol, Earl of, character of him by S., 
i. 26. App. I. xviii ; his attempt to im- 
peach Clarendon, 272 ; a promoter of the 
Dutch war, 278. 

Brodrick, his reports to Hyde on the 
politics of S., i. 180, 181, 202. 

Broghill, Lord, afterwards Earl of Orrery 
(see Orrery). 

Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 
released from prison by the aid of S., i. 
155 ; his power after the fall of Claren- 
don, ii. 2 ; caricatures Sir W. Coventry, 
who is sent to the Tower, 3 ; his rivalry 
with Arlington is supported by S. , 4 ; 
in favour of toleration of Dissenters, 5 ; 
supports Charles II. in his desire for a 
divorce, 8 ; supports a French alliance 
against Spain, 10, and against Holland, 
13, 15; promotes a fresh negotiation 
with France against Holland, 13 ; is sent 
to Paris to negotiate, 23 ; his paramour, 
Countess of Shrewsbury, pensioned by 
Louis XIV., 24 ; urges S. and Arlington 
to form a French alliance, 22 ; his igno- 
rance of the secret treaty promoted by 



INDEX. 



XXXI 



Arlington, 24, shared by S. and Lauder- 
dale, 55, 85; signs mock treaty with 
France, 26, and further treaty, 28 ; his 
objections to give prominence to the 
French navy, supported by ',S., 29 ; his 
personal views in the French treaty, 30 ; 
disappointment at not commanding 
forces; receives presents from Louis 
XIV. ; similar presents to S. and others, 
31 ; his rivalry with Arlington ; his 
notice of Sir W. Morrice ; letter from 
S. to MoiTice, 45 ; his loss of 3,0001. 
by the "Stop of the Exchequer," 68; 
sent with Arlington to Louis XIV. ; his 
debts, necessity for bribing him, 85 ; is 
told of secret treaty by the Duke of 
York, 86 ; his fraud on Parliament; in 
concealing it, 186; attacked by the 
House of Commons, 188; discarded by 
Charles II., 203 ; joins S. in opposing 
Danby's Test Bill, 206; moves for a 
dissolution of Parliament in conse- 
quence of the prorogation for fifteen 
months, 230 ; supported by S., Salis- 
bury, and Wharton, 231 ; called to ac- 
count, ordered to ask pardon, refuses, 
and is sent to the Tower, 232, 233 ; 
petitions the King for release, 237 ; 
released, 239 ; record of imprisonment 
cancelled, 260 ; bribed by France, 267 ; 
stated by Stringer to have become a 
Roman Catholic, App. III. xxxiii. 

Burnet, Bishop, his suggestion that Crom- 
well offered to make S. King refuted, 
i. 105 ; his notice of Sir W. Morrice, 
ii. 45; ascribes the "Stop of the Ex- 
chequer to S., 66 ; letter from widow of 
Stringer on his misrepresentations of S. , 
App. VIII. cxxiii; his errors with re- 
ference to S.. 121, 137. 

Burton's Diary, reports of S.'s speeches in 
Richard Cromwell's Parliament, i. 148 
168 ; other notices of S., 138, ii. 46. 

Butler, Colonel, his letter to S. on the 
siege of Corfe, i. 71. 

Butler, Samuel, his Satire on S., in 
" Hudibras," i. 223 ; ii. 435. 



C. 



Cabal, or Cabinet, temp. Charles II., its 
constitution, i. 230; its origin, 231, 232; 
of Lord Lauderdale, complained of by 
Clarendon, 273; its members in 1667 
named by Pepys, ii. 2 ; its members in 
1670 named by Andrew Marvel, 43 ; 
change in the meaning of the word, 53 ; 
rival "cabals" in the same ministry, 
Pepys's use of the word in the sense of 
" cabinet, 1 ' 54 ; its powers explained, 64 ; 
cabals at Court in 168, 370. 

"Cabal" Ministry (Clifford, Arlington, 
Buckingham, Ashley Lauderdale), its 
notoriety, ii. 53, App. III. xxxvi ; 
caused by the results of the Dutch war, 
54 ; its members not unanimous, their 
colleagues, 54, 55. 



Cabinet (see Cabal). 

Campbell, Lord, his Life of S., Preface, 
xx xxii ; his errors and misrepresenta- 
tions, i. 53, 60, 74, 75, 76, 89, 98, 103, 113, 
117, 249, 256, 274, 310, 314, 315, ii. 69, 
95, 96, 151, 162169, 172, 176, 177, 2D1, 
428, 453, 457. 

Canonbury House, Islington, a residence 
of S., i. 24, App. I. xiv. 

Capel, Lady, aunt of the first wife of S., 
i. 75. 

Carlisle, Earl of, letter to from S. advo- 
cating a new Parliament, ii. 200. 

Carlyle's errors with reference to S., i. 93. 

Carolina, granted by Charles II. to S. and 
eight others, his attention to its affairs, 
i. 288, ii. 160. 

Cashiobury, the early home of S., i. 6, 
App. I. v. 

Castlemaine, Lady (see Cleveland, Duchess 
of). 

Catherine, Queen of Charles II., accused 
by Titus Gates of participation in plot 
to assassinate the King, S. supports 
address for her removal from Whitehall, 
ii. 300. 

Cattle (see Irish Cattle Bill). 

Cecil, Lady Frances, the second wife of 
S., their marriage, i. 86, App. II. Iv ; 
her death, 120. 

Cellier, Mrs., her connection with the 
"Meal-tub" Plot, ii. 348; her alleged 
intent to murderS., 349. 

Chancellor, Lord, S. appointed, ii. 93 ; the 
office not uniformly held by a lawyer, 
96 ; conduct of S. when Chancellor, in 
connection with politics, 112 154 ; his 
dismissal, 155 ; Stringer and Martyn's 
accounts of it, App. III. xli, xlii ; his 
conduct as a judge, 162 178 ; receives 
the usual protecting pardon, 157 ; ex- 
planation by Lord Keeper Finch, 159 ; 
equestrian procession of S. to West- 
minster, 167 ; his speech on swearing 
in Baron Thurland, 169 ; Stringer's ac- 
count of his family, officers, and cere- 
monies, 171 ; his official costume criti- 
cized by Roger North, 172; right, of 
appeal to House of Lords maintained by 
him, 209 ; appeal from one of his decrees 
dismissed, 286 ; letters to and from him 
when Chancellor, App. IV. xlvi Ivii ; 
his speeches as Chancellor, App. V Iviii 
Ixxvi ; speech on Dr. Shirley's appeal, 
App. VI. Ixxxiv. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer, S. appointed 
by Charles II., i. 256; retains the office 
after the fall of Clarendon, ii. 4. 

Chancery, Court of, its abolition passed by 
Barebone's Parliament, i. 100 ; reformed 
by Cromwell's Council, 113. 

" Character of a Trimmer," its authorship, 
i. 21. 

Charles I., his cause espoused by S. in 
1643, i. 40, 43 ; his negotiations with S. 
in 1643, 41 ; his letter to S. in 1644, 48 ; 
letter to the Marquis of Hertford, 45 ; 
separation of S. from him, 47, App. II. 



INDEX. 



xxix, ii. 463 ; his campaign in Dorset- 
shire, Devonshire, Cornwall, and Berk- 
shire, ii. 61 ; his trial and execution, 77, 
85. 

Chnrles II., S. accused of being in his 
interest, his denial, i. 179 181 : sup- 
posed letter from him to S., 182; his 
hopes of a Restoration, 185 ; intrigues 
for it, 205212 ; supported by S. con- 
ditionally, effected by Monk uncon- 
ditionally, 220 ; King enters London, 
221 ; the subject of Dryden's flattery 
and satire, 224 ; his supremacy in the 
Government, i. 232, ii. 13, 64; his fa- 
vourites, and their opposition to Cla- 
rendon, i. 233 ; discussions in Parlia- 
ment on his revenue, speech of S.. 250 ; 
creates Hyde Earl of Clarendon, and S. 
Baron Ashley, appoints the latter Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer and Under 
Treasurer, 256 ; opposed to the legisla- 
tion of the High Church party, his desire 
for religious toleration, 262, 263, 270 ; his 
marriage, 265 ; his desire to pass the 
" Dispensing Bill," 267 ; his estrange- 
ment from Clarendon, 272 ; S. rises in his 
favour, 271 ; appoints him Treasurer of 
Prizes in the Dutch war, 279 ; Clarendon 
remonstrates, Charles confirms the ap- 
pointment, 280 282 ; grants Carolina 
and the Bahamas to S. and others, the 
attention of S. to the affairs of the 
colonies, 288 ; visits S. at Wimborne St. 
Giles, 289 ; appoints hint; a Treasuiy 
Commissioner, 307 ; dishonourable pro- 
posals to Miss Stuart, her marriage to 
the Duke of Richmond, 309, 310 ; makes 
Buckingham chief favourite and leading 
minister, ii. 2 ; his efforts for religious 
toleration, 6 ; his desire for a divorce, 
8 ; plan for legitimatizing Monmouth 
supported by S., 9; his intrigues with 
France, 14 ; declares himself a Roman 
Catholic, his natural son a Jesuit, 16 ; 
attempts to establish Popery in England, 
17 24, 26, 78 ; supports Lord Roos's 
Remarriage Act, attends the debate in 
House of Lords, 42 ; at a wrestling 
match in St. James's Park, 45 ; enforces 
a " stop of the exchequer," its immediate 
consequences, 56 ; the King's "explana- 
tory declaration" appeases discontent, 
57; makes a ''Declaration of Indul- 
gence" for Dissenters and Roman Ca- 
tholics, 71 ; his object in promoting the 
Dutch war, 78 ; creates Ashley Earl of 
Shaftesbury and Baron Cooper, 84 ; his 
negotiations with the Pope to establish 
Popery, 87, 89, 99 ; speech to Parliament 
defending " Declaration of Indulgence," 
113 ; appoints S. Lord Chancellor, 93 ; 
justifies the issue of new writs by S., 
120 ; dismisses him, 155 ; makes Lady 

, Castlemaine Duchess of Cleveland, and 
Mademoiselle de Querouaille Duchess of 
Portsmouth, 160 ; his lavish gifts to 
them, 161 ; his opinion of S. as a judge, 
178 ; his desire to restore him, 180, 182 ; 



dismisses him from the Privy Council, 
and orders him to leave London, 198 ; dis- 
cards Buckingham, 203 ; his secret per- 
sonal treaty with Louis XIV., 210; bribed 
by Louis XIV. to prorogue Parliament, 
210 ; incensed by application of S. to the 
King's Bench for release from the Tower, 
239; his debts, supply granted, 240; 
urged by Parliament to oppose France, 
241 ; dissatisfied with amount of sup- 
plies, 242 ; bribes offered by Spain 
and Germany for English alliance, 
243 ; refuses to submit to Parlia- 
mentary dictation, 244 ; sends Courtin 
to Louis XIV. for subsidy, obtains it, 
and adjourns Parliament, 245 ; relaxes 
severity of S.'s imprisonment in the 
Tower, 249 ; offers alliance to France for 
600, OOOZ., 268 ; applies for six million 
francs annually for three years, 270 ; 
speeches to Parliament, and amplifica- 
tion of them by S., 113, 154, 274, 292, 
298, 331, 372, 382, 404, App. V. Ixiii, 
Ixxii ; proofs that he was a Roman 
Catholic, 289 ; his belief in the Popish 
Plot, 292 ; alleged intent to murder him, 
294 ; refused a subsidy by Louis XIV. , 
305 ; disavows a marriage with Mon- 
mouth's mother, 308, S64 ; account of his 
character and conduct by S., 309 311; re- 
fuses to approve of Seymour as Speaker, 
316 ; pardons Danby, 318 ; urges him to 
fly, and deserts him on his surrender, 
319 ; remodels his Privy Council, with S. 
as President, 323 ; speech to Parliament, 
331 ; asserts his right to prorogue and 
dissolve, 355, 356 ; sends for the Duke 
of York, 356 ; dissolves Parliament 
against advice of Council, S. enraged, 
342 ; his illness, Duke of York sent for, 
343 ; recovers, orders Monmouth to leave 
England, 344 ; fresh intrigue for subsidy 
from France, 345 ; treaty not concluded, 
346 ; dismisses S. as President of the 
Council, 347 ; further attempt to obtain 
French subsidy, 359 ; is reconciled to 
Monmouth, 360 ; agrees to send Duke of 
York from England, 371 ; attends debate 
on bill for his exclusion, 377 ; and on 
proposal by S. for his divorce and re- 
marriage, 380 ; prorogues and dissolves 
Parliament, 386 ; meets Parliament at 
Oxford, protected by guards, 401 ; ob- 
tains subsidy for three years from France 
on a verbal treaty, 402, 403 ; speech to 
Parliament, on succession, 404 ; dis- 
solves Parliament, 405 ; his conversation 
with S. about Monmouth and the suc- 
cession, 408, App. VII, cxvii ; reigns 
without a Parliament, 469 ; refuses S. 
leave to retire to Carolina, 419 ; anxiety 
to strengthen evidence against him, 
420; suggests and pays for Dryden's 
satires on S., 429, 434 ; intrigues to elect 
sheriffs of London, 444 ; his misgovern- 
ment a justification of S.'s rebellion, 
450 ; memorial to, from S. , as to religion, 
land, and trade, App. II. v ; advice 



INDEX. 



xxxm 



of S. to him for development of trade, 
ix ; memoir by Colbert, on his views as 
to the Dutch war and establishment of 
Popery, xii ; his conference with Privy 
Council, App. VII. cxx. 

Charlton, Sir Job, Speaker of the House 
of Commons, official speeches to him by 
S., ii. App. V. Ixi. 

Cheke, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower, his 
kindness to S., ii. 415. 

Chicheley, Commissioner of Ordnance, 
notices of by S. and Pepys, i. 287. 

" Chits, the," nickname applied to Sun- 
derland, Godolphin, and Hyde, ii. 
353. 

Christian names of Shaftesbury, i. 5, 134, 
App. I. iv. 

Church reform (see Religion). 

Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde), his de- 
scription of S. in 1643, i. 44 ; errors in 
his account of S., 47 ; his intrigues for 
the restoration of Charles II., 180, 181 ; 
made Lord Chancellor and a Peer by 
Charles II., 229; his cabinet, 232; his 
Declaration to conciliate Presbyterians, 
252; created Earl of Clarendon, 256; 
opposed to High Church measures, 262 ; 
his conduct with reference to Act of 
Uniformity and " Dispensing Bill," 262 
270 ; his account of support of " Dis- 
pensing Bill "by S., 269; S. in favour 
with Charles II., opposes him, 271 ; 
Bristol's attempt to impeach him, its 
failure, 272 ; unfavourable to war with 
Holland, 278 ; dissatisfied with appoint- 
ment of S. as Treasurer of Prizes, 279 ; 
remonstrates with the king and S., 280, 
281 ; joins S. in opposing appropriation 
clause in supply bill, 289291 ; opposes 
bill to prohibit importation of Irish 
cattle, his strictures on the support of it 
by S., 299 ; objects to putting Treasury 
in Commission, 305; suggests S. as a 
necessary Commissioner, 306 ; his ani- 
mosity to S., 307 ; deprived of the seals, 
influence of Lady Castlemaine, 309 ; op- 
poses the king's designs on Miss Stuart, 
310 ; S. accused of contributing to his 
fall, 310 ; the charge refuted, 311, 312 ; 
his exile in France, Act requiring his 
surrender for trial, illness and death, 
313; his "History of the Rebellion," 
314 ; his notice of Sir William Morrice, 
ii. 45. 

Clarendon, Laurence Hyde, second Earl, 
with Sunderland and Godolphin, chief 
ministers, nicknamed "the Chits," ii. 
353 ; supports the Duke of York, 370 ; 
his speech in Committee of Privy Coun- 
cil advising arrest of S., App. VII. 
cxviii. 

Cleveland, Duchess of (Castlemaine, Lady), 
her opposition to Clarendon, i. 233 ; S. 
attends the king in her apartment, 311 ; 
created Duchess of Cleveland, ii. 160 ; S. 
opposes grant of Phoenix Park, Dublin, 
to her, 160 ; letters of Essex to S. against 
the grant, App. IV. xlvii liv. 



Clifford, Lord, appointed (as Sir Thomas 
Clifford) Commissioner of the Treasury, 
i. 305 ; promotes Charles.II.'s scheme for 
establishing Popery, ii. 55 ; first pro- 
poser of the " Stop of the Exchequer," 
58, 62, 65 ; his advice given to the king 
himself, 64 ; created a Peer, 84 ; ap- 
pointed Lord Treasurer, 97 ; speech of 
S. on swearing him in, App. V. Iviii ; 
his violent speech against the Test Bill, 
137 ; his Popish enthusiasm, 139 ; resigns 
as Lord Treasurer on the passing of 
the Test Act, 141; his retirement and 
death, 143 ; anecdotes of him by Evelyn, 
144 ; extracts from Williamson's corre- 
spondence, App. III. xxxii. 

" Clubmen " in the Civil War, i. 41. 

Colbert de Croissy, M., French Ambas- 
sador, his notices of S. and other states- 
men, and political intrigues, ii. 3, 14 31 ; 
on the " Stop of the Exchequer," 57 ; the 
Dutch war, 79, 80, 83 ; his eulogy of 
Arlington, 85 ; o:: the design to establish 
Popery, 89 ; on the appointment of S. 
as Lord Chancellor, 97 ; on speeches of 
Charles and S. to Parliament, 121 ; on 
the " Declaration of Indulgence," 134, 
135 ; on the Test Bill and Clifford's vio- 
lent speech, 137 ; on Charles II.'s desire 
to marry Mary of Modena, 147 ; on the 
endeavour of Louis XIV. to bribe S., 
182 ; memoir to Louis XIV. on " affairs 
in England, and the views of Charles II. 
about the Dutch war, and establishment 
of the Roman Catholic religion," App. 
II. xii xxi. 

Coleman, Secretary to the Duchess of York, 
his letters proving the Popish Plot, ii. 
287, 294 ; examined in Newgate by S. 
and others, 297, 301. 

College, Stephen, a follower of S., tried 
and executed for treason, ii. 417, 418. 

Comminges, Count de, French Ambassador, 
his notices of S. and Clarendon, i. 267, 
268, 271. 

Commission for the trial of the Regicides, 
S. a member of it, his sitting as a Judge 
defended, i. 243, 247. 

Commission to command the army, S. a 
member of it, i. 201. 

" Committee for Foreign Affairs," origin of 
the Cabinet, i. 231. 

Committee for Sequestrations, its report 
on the estates of S., i. 60. 

" Committee of both Kingdoms " Eng- 
land and Scotland (1644), i. 57. 

"Committee of Safety," formed by the 
"Rump" Parliament, i. 175; another 
formed by Lambert, 191; its proceedings, 
192, 199; opposed by S., 193. 

Commonwealth established after the fall 
of Richard Cromwell, i. 173. 

Conventicle Act (see Religion). 

Convention Parliament (see Parliament). 

Conway, Lord, his quarrel with S. on 
Irish affairs, i. 301 ; letter from him to 
S., with papers on Irish affairs, ii. 5; 
appointed Secretary of State, ii. 387 ; 



XXXIV 



INDEX. 



speech in Committee of Privy Council, 
App. VII. cxix. 

Cooper, Cecil, first son of S., i. 87. 

Cooper, Sir George, his grateful letter to 
his brother, 8., ii. 262. 

Cooper, Philippa, sister of S., i. 6. 

Cooper, Sir John, father of S., i. 1 ; his 
ancestors, 2. 

Cooper, Sir William, gives bail for S. on 
his release from the Tower, bail dis- 
charged, ii. 441 ; letter to Stringer on 
death, will, and funeral of S., 459. 

Corfe besieged by the Parliament, i. 71 ; 
S. ordered there, 74, 75, App. II. xxx, 
xxxi. 

Corporation Act passed by Charles II. 's 
Parliament, opposed by S., i. 258, 260 ; 
repealed in 1828, 300. 

Coste, Peter, on Locke's friendship with 
and opinions of S., i. 298, ii. 469. 

Council of Officers, under Fleetwood, its 

* effect in the fall of Richard Cromwell, 
i. 169173 (see Desborough, Fleetwood, 
Wallingford House). 

Council of State appointed by Cromwell, 
i. 94 ; S. added to it, 99, 102 ; his ap- 
pointment renewed, 106 ; S. and other 
members excluded from sitting, 124 ; 
they apply to the Speaker, and are re- 
ferred to the Council, 125 ; Richard Crom- 
well recognized by it, 144; another 
formed by the Rump Parliament, 176 ;' 
S. a member of it, 177, 182 ; superseded 
by a "Committee of Safety," rival 
council formed by Lambert's party, 191 ; 
its proceedings, 199 ; a new council 
appointed, 202, 213 ; S. again a member, 
202 (see Privy Council). 

Court of Chancery (see Chancellor, Chan- 
cery). 

Court of Wards, abuses in, S.'s litigation 
in it, i. 7, 10, 11, 70, App. I. vii ; abo- 
lished, speech of S., 250. 

Courtin, M. , French Ambassador, obtains 
subsidy from France for Charles II., 
offers him a bribe to prorogue Parlia- 
ment, ii. 227, 245. 

"Coursing," an old custom at Oxford 
University, i. 16, App. I. xi. 

Coventry, Henry, sent to S. on his dis- 
missal for the great seal, ii. 155 ; letter 
to Sir J. Williamson on imprisonment of 
S. in the Tower, 249 ; resigns as Secre- 
tary of State, 359 ; violent speech against 
S., 364 ; notices of, by Burnet and North, 
App. III. xxiv. 

Coventry, Margaret, first wife of S., her 
marriage, his eulogium of her, i. 19; 
her family, 21 ; her sudden death, 85. 

Coventry, Sir John, assaulted and woun ded, 
letter to S. from him, " Coventry Act " 
passed, i. 38. 

Coventry, Sir William, Commissioner of 
the Treasury, his prominence in the fall 
of Clarendon, i. 21, ii. 2 ; caricatured by 
Buckingham, sent to the Tower, 3. 

Cromwell, Henry (son of Oliver Crom- 
well), letter from S. to him, i. 135. 



Cromwell, Mary, statement that S. sought 
her in marriage ; its improbability, i. 
120, App. III. Iviii. 

Cromwell, Oliver, remits the fine on 
sequestration of the estates of S., i. 61 ; 
sent to the relief of Taunton, 74 ; in- 
crease of his power, 77 ; thanks S. for 
advice to Denzil Holies, 78 ; ejects the 
Rump Parliament, his motives, 90 93 ; 
appoints a Council of State, 94 ; nomi- 
nates the Barebone Parliament, 95 ; S. 
and others deputed to ask him to join 
it, 96 ; said to have offered S. the office 
of Lord Chancellor, 103 ; zealously sup- 
ported by S. 103, 105 ; refuses to be 
King, 104; made Protector, 105; his 
' ' Instrument of Government " opposed 
by Parliament, 105110, 115118; dis- 
solves Parliament, 118 ; S. separates 
from him, 119, 123 ; " Petition and Ad- 
vice " to him to assume the title of King 
refused, 130 ; " Peers " appointed by 
him, 133; debates thereon, dissolves 
Parliament, 138 ; his death, 142 ; his 
memory abused in a speech by S., 160, 
App. IV, Ixv ; motives of S. for sepa- 
rating from him, 163 ; his body exhumed 
and hung at Tyburn, 237247. 

Cromwell, Richard, nominated as one of 
" Cromwell's Peers," i. 133 ; named by 
his father to succeed him, 142 ; recog- 
nized by the Council as Protector, 144 ; 
proclaimed, 145 ; summons " Oliver 
Cromwell's Peers " to the " other 
house," 147 ; bill in Parliament for hig 
recognition, 148 ; discussion on its terms, 
149 ; bill to settle revenue on him, 
opposed by S., 164 ; compelled by Fleet- 
wood's party to dissolve Parliament, 
170 ; his fall, 171, 173. 

" Cromwell's Peers " summoned to the 
"other house" (see "Other House," 
and Parliament). 

Cronstrom, M., letter to S. on appoint- 
ment as Chancellor, ii. App. IV. xlvii. 

Cropredy Bridge, battle of, i. 58. 



D. 



Danby, Earl of (Sir Thomas Osborne), 
created Viscount Latimer and Earl of 
Danby, succeeds Clifford as Lord Trea- 
surer, ii. 144 ; speech of S. on swearing 
him in, 145, App. V. Ixxi ; opposes Dutch 
war and French alliance, 149 ; proposes 
a non-resistance "Test Bill," 203; 
opposed by S. , 204 ; his reasons against 



. , 

e bill, 205, App. VI. Ixxvii ; his sym- 
pathy with Holland. 227 ; aids the King 
in obtaining a subsidy from France, 245, 
246 ; promotes treaty with Holland 
against France, 255; bribe offered him 
by Louis XIV., 256 ; his letter to Mon- 
tagu, applying to France for large sub- 
sidies, 270 ; intrigues of Duke of York 
for his removal, 283 ; accuses Montagu 
of Popish intrigues, his letters for 



INDEX. 



XXXV 



French subsidies produced, his impeach- 
ment, 304 ; negotiates with Opposition, 
305 ; new Parliament adverse to him, 
306 ; account by S. of his character and 
conduct, 312 ; pardoned by the King, 
318 ; his flight, bill passed against him, 
surrenders for trial, 319 ; dismissed as 
Lord Treasurer, 320 ; his pardon de- 
clared illegal by Parliament, 332 ; ac- 
cused of ordering the murder of Godfrey, 
true bill against him, 409 ; notices of, 
by Stringer^ Burnet, Evelyn, and S., 
App. III. xxxiv. 

Dangerfield, his plot, charging S. and lead- 
ing Protestants with conspiracy, ii. 348 ; 
states he was hired to murder S., 349. 

Death, punishment of, in 1646-7, i. 8184. 

Da Bordeaux, French Ambassador, on the 
offer of the throne to Monk, i. 216. 

"Declaration of Indulgence " (see Re- 
ligion). 

De Ronquillos, Don Pedro, Spanish Am- 
bassador, urges appointment of S. as 
Lord Treasurer, ii. 370. 

Desborough supports Richard Cromwell, i. 
144 ; his jealousy of the Council of State, 
145 ; his share in the deposition of 
Richard Cromwell, 169173 ; his com- 
mand in the army, 188. 

De Witt negotiates the Triple Alliance, 
ii. 11. 

Diary kept by S. from 1646 to 1650, i. 
App. II. xxxii. 

Digby, Lord, quarrel of S. with him on 
the election for Dorsetshire, action for 
slander brought by S., 1,0001. damages 
recovered, and 152Z. costs, ii. 214, 215, 
220, 222, 224. 

Dispensing Bill (see Act of Uniformity and 
Religion). 

Dissenters (see Religion). 

Dolben, Archbishop of York, his friend- 
ship for S., ii. 47 ; advocates divorce 
and remarriage of Charles II., 381. 

Dorchester, surrenders to the King's army, 
i. 43. 

Dorchester House, Covent Garden, a resi- 
dence of S.,i. 33. 

Dorsetshire, S. appointed Sheriff, i. 46 ; 
its position between King and Parlia- 
ment, 52 ; military services there of S., 
i. 5975 ; quarrel of S. with Lord Digby 
at the election in 1675, S. recovers 
damages for slander, ii. 215, 216. 

Double returns of members of Parliament, 
i. 37. 

Dover, secret treaty between France and 
England against Holland signed at, 
ii. 19 (see Arlington, Buckingham, 
Charles II., Colbert, Louis XIV.). 

Downing, Sir George, Ambassador to the 
Hague, ii. 79. 

Downton, Wilts, S. elected memberfor it in 
a double return, i. 36, 40, 76 ; his attempt 
to obtain his seat in the " Rump " Parlia- 
ment, 176 ; application for his seat, 
described by Ludlow, App. III. Ix ; 
claim at last recognized, 202. 



Dryden, his satires on S. in 
and Achitophel" (Monmouth and S.), 
and "The Medal," Preface, xiv, i. 54, 
98; their bitterness and falsehood, 
general character of his satire, i. 223 
226 ; does not ascribe the "Stop of the 
Exchequer" to S., ii. 69; his incon- 
sistency, 70 ; his eulogium of S. as a 
judge, 175 ; becomes a Roman Catholic, 
289; accuses S. of inventing circum- 
stances in the Popish Plot, 288, 289; 
falsehood and inconsistency of the 
charge, 290, 300 ; eulogizes Halifax, ii. 
875 ; extracts from his poem, " Absalom 
and Achitophel," 429 432 ; from " The 
Medal," 432 434; the satires suggested 
and paid for by Charles II., 429, 434: 
his "Albion and Albanius," 437; Lord 
Macaulay's opinion of him, 474. 

Dunkirk sold to France, i. 265. 

Dupuy, valet of the Duke of York, ac- 
cused of the murder of Godfrey, ii. 409. 

Durham House, Strand, a residence of S. , 
i. 24. 

Dutch war, declared, opposed by Claren- 
don, promoted by S., i. 278 ; popularity 
of the war, 279 . S. appointed Treasurer 
of Prizes, Clarendon's dissatisfaction, 
279 ; he remonstrates with the King 
and S., 280; appointment of S. con- 
firmed, 282 ; questions as to the appropri- 
ation of prize-money, 283 ; secret treaty 
between Louis XIV and Charles II., 
peace concluded, 303, 304 ; Triple 
Alliance of England with Holland and 
Sweden against France, ii. 11 ; secret 
treaty between CharlesII. and Louis XIV. 
against Holland, 18 ; war against Hol- 
land commenced by England and France, 
27 ; treaty between Holland and Spain- 
77 ; object of Charles II. in promotion 
the war, 78 ; supported by S. , his rea, 
sons, 78 ; attack on the Dutch fleet 
before declaration of war, denounced as 
piratical, 81 ; grievances stated in de- 
claration of war, 82 ; sea fight near 
Southwold Bay, Earl of Sandwich killed, 
84 ; victories of Louis XIV., 84 ; negoti- 
ations, 85 ; treaty between France and 
England not to make peace without 
agreed conditions, 86 ; conditions re- 
jected by Holland, 87 ; official speech of 
S. as Lord Chancellor, 114 ; severe 
comments on it, 115, 117; unpopularity 
of the war, 145; the Dutch form 
alliances, 148; opposed by S., 149; 
negotiations for peace, 185 ; peace con- 
cluded between England and Holland, 
191 ; Charles II. mediates between 
France and Holland, 210; secret per- 
sonal treaty between Charles [I. and 
Louis XIV., 211 ; ineffectual negotia- 
tions, 227 :-Courtin, French Ambassador, 
treats with S., 228 ; Charles II. urged 
by Parliament to join allies against 
France, 241 ; negotiations with Prince 
of Orange for peace, 246 ; endeavour of 
Charles II. to make peace, 254 ; terms 



XXXVI 



INDEX. 



refused by Prance, 255 ; treaty between 
England and Holland, 256 ; negotiations, 
bribes, and subsidies, peace of Nimeguen 
between France and Holland, 265276 ; 
S. s written opinion on the peace of 
Nimeguen, 281 ; memoir of Colbert to 
Louis XI V., App. II. xii. 
Dysart, Countess of, afterwards Duchess 
of Lauderdale (see Lauderdale). 



Elections to Parliament (see Parliament) 

Elizabeth of Bohemia, Princess, letter 
fromhertoS.,i. 275. 

Ely Rents, Holbom, the property of S i 
7, 8 ; App. II. xxxii, xlvi. 

Emigration, the result of religious in- 
tolerance, iii. 7. 

Essex, Earl of, his mysterious death in the 

. Tower, various opinions on, ii. App 
VIII. cxxv. 

Essex, Earl of, the Parliamentary General 
his services in Dorsetshire in connection 
with S., i. 58, 72; letter to him from 
S., ii. 101 ; his proceedings as Privy 
Councillor, ii. 328 ; resigns as first Com- 
missioner of Treasury, 352 ; dismissed as 
Privy Councillor, 387; petitions against 
meeting of Parliament at Oxford. 890; 
his letters to S. against granting Phoenix 
Park to the Duchess of Cleveland, App 
IV. xlvii liv. 

Evelyn, John, proposed marriage of his 
niece to S.'s son,ii. 35; describes atten- 
dance of Charles II. in House of Lords 
on Lord Koos's Remarriage Act, 42 his 
notice of Sir W. Morrice, 45; on the 
qualities of the sycamore, 51 ; ascribes 
the " Stop of the Exchequer" to Clifford 
65 ; member of Council of Trade and 
Plantations, 93. 
Exchequer, Chancellor of (see Chancellor 

of the Exchequer). 

Exchequer (see "Stop of the Exchequer"). 
Execution of Charles I., i. 85. 
Executions in Dorsetshire for desertion 

horse-stealing, &c., i. 8184, App. II , 

xxxiv xli. 
Exeter College, Oxford, life of S. there, 

i. 1518. 
Exeter, Earl of, his daughter married to 

S., i. 86. 
Exeter House, Strand, the residence of S 

when Lord Chancellor, ii. 166 ; disposed 

of by him to builders, 222, 223, 224 
Fairfax replaces Essex as Parliamentary 

General, i. 75 ; tribute to him by S., 



Falston House, Salisbury, proposed by S 

to be garrisoned, i. 69. 
Fanshawe, Lady denounces S. for refusing 

to give Ambassador's plate, i. 309. 
Faria, Francisco, states he was hired to 

murderS., ii. 350. 



Fell, Dr., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford 
letter of S. to him, recommendin^ Locke 
for preferment, his servility to royalty 
deprives Locke of his studentship, ii.' 

Ferguson, Rev. Robert, joins S. in an in- 
tended rising satirized in "Absalom 
and Achitophel," ii. 447; accompanies 
S. to Amsterdam, 452 ; legacy left to 
him by S., 458. 
Fiennes, Nathaniel, attacked in a speech 

byS.,i. 161; App. IV. Ixvii. 
Fifth Monarchists excluded by S from 

toleration, ii. 6. 

Finch, Sir Heneage, succeeds S. as Lord 
Keeper, ii. 157, 158 ; his account of the 
protecting pardon given to S. as Chan- 
cellor, 159; as Lord Chancellor, urges 
Charles II. to disown the Duke of York 
370 ; his speech in conference with 
Charles II. App. VII., cxx. 
Fire of London, its effects, ii. 7. 
Fitzharris, Edward, impeached by Com- 
mons for treason, Lords resolve to pro- 
ceed at common law, S. protests, ii. 407 
accuses Danby of ordering the murder 
of Godfrey, 409 ; tried and executed in- 
terest of S. in his trial, 410. 
' Five Mile Act," against Dissenters, sup- 
ported by Clarendon, opposed by S., i. 
292. 

Fleetwood concurs in the recognition of 
Richard Cromwell, i. 144 ; his jealousv 
of the Council of State, 145 ; his share 
in the deposition of Richard Cromwell 
169173 ; made Commander-in-Chief bv 
the "Rump," 188; appointment re- 
voked, 189 ; takes S. prisoner, released 
on parole, attempts to arrest him again 
197 ; S. made Colonel of his regiment of 
horse, 203 ; letter to him from S. and 
others on their attempt to secure the 
Tower of London, App. V. Ixxiv 
Foreigners (see Naturalization of Fo- 
reigners). 
Fortune telling, skill of S. in, i. 29 ADD 

I. xxiii. 
Fox, Charles James, his opinion of S. ii. 

France, at war with England, secret treaty 
between Louis XIV. and Charles II 
peace concluded, i. 303, 304; at war 
with Spain, negotiations for an English 
alliance, ii. 9, 10 ; defeated, 11 ; peace 
concluded, 12 ; secret treaty with Eng- 
land for war with Holland, 19 ; mock 
treaty made to enlist support of S. and 
Lauderdale, signed by them, 26 ; a fur- 
ther treaty signed by them, 27 ; joined 
by England, commences war with Hol- 
land, 27 ; S. averse to French alliance, 
28, 29 ; endeavours of S. to improve 
treaty, 29; unpopularity of alliance 
145 ; opposed by S., 149 ; intrigues with 
English statesmen, 227, 228 ; endeavour 
of Charles II. to make peace, 254 ; terms 
refused by Louis XIV., 255 ; English and 
Dutch alliance against, 256 ; progress of 



INDEX. 



XXXVll 



negotiations, peace of Nimeguen, 265 
276 ; French bribes and subsidies, 267, 
268 (and see Dutch war, Louis XIV.). 
Fuller, Dr. , Bishop of Lincoln, letter from 
him to S., ii. 193. 



G. 



"Gantelope" (gauntlet), running the, a 
punishment for deserters, i. 81. 

Gardening, apple trees planted by S. at 
Wimborne St. Giles, ii. 49; remarks 
by S. on planting timber trees, on the 
s\camore, and wall fruit, 50; Locke's 
observations on vines, olives, &c., writ- 
ten at the request of S., 49 : Evelyn's 
remarks on the sycamore, 50; letter 
from S. to Locke, 61 ; 8. commissions 
Locke to buy orange and other trees, 
vines, and seeds for him, 220, 221. 

Gardening in the seventeenth century, i. 
App. I. xviii. 

Gentry of the West of England in the 
seventeenth century, i. 25. 

Godfrey, Sir Edmund Bury, murder of, ii. 
296, 409. 

Godolphin, Sidney, made Privy Councillor, 
ii. 352 ; with Sunderland and Laurence 
Hyde, chief ministers, nicknamed " the 
Chits," 353. 

Goldsmiths' Hall, fines for recovering 
sequestered estates received at, i. 70. 

Government interference in Parliamentary 
elections (see Parliament). 

Grafton, Duke of, son of Charles II. by 
Duchess of Cleveland, married to daugh- 
ter of Arlington, ii. App. II. xiii. 

" Granadoes " used by S. in the storming 
of Abbotsbury, i. 62 ; proposed to be 
used to murder S. , ii. 350. 

Grey, Lord, his calumnies against S., ii. 
400 ; joins S., Monmouth, and Russell, 
to raise an insurrection, 445 ; his account 
of participation of S. in intended rising. 
447, 448. 

Grimstone, Sir H., letter to S. on the state 
of the records, ii. App. IV. lv; notice 
of him by Burnet, Ivi. 

Guerden, Dr., first tutor of S., i. 12, App. 
I. vi. 

Guinea stock, speculations of S. in, ii. 
226. 

Guizot, M., his notices of S., i. 186, 190 ; 
on the offer of the throne to Monk, i. 
217. 



H. 



Habeas Corpus Act carried by S. , its pro- 
visions explained, ii. 333, 334; said to 
have been carried by a trick, 335. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, a member of the Law- 
Reform Commission (1052), i. 87. 

Halifax, Lord, his relationship to S.,i. 22, 
121 ; made Privy Councillor, ii. 84 ; his 
mission to France during the Dutch 
war, Colbert's account of him, 85 ; his 

VOL. I. 



ignorance of the design to establish 
Popery, 8(5 ; presents petition of S. for 
release from the Tower, 257 ; his pro- 
ceedings as Privy Councillor, 328 ; 
promotes design for introducing the 
Prince of Orange, 341 ; opposes bill for 
exclusion of Duke of York, 375, 376 ; 
address for his removal, 381 ; speeches 
in Committee of Privy Council, advising 
arrest of S., App. VII. cxviii. 

Hallam, his opinions of S., ii. 472. 

Hampden, his attempted arrest by Charles 
I., i. 55. 

Hampton Court Palace offered to, but 
refused by, Cromwell, i. 103. 

Hanley bowling green, Dorsetshire, i. 25. 

Harwich, flight of S. from London, his 
stay at, ii. 451. 

Haselrig, Sir Arthur, his description of 
the ejection of the "Rump" Parlia- 
ment, i. 93 ; refuses to sit as one of 
"Cromwell's Peers," 133 ; his influence 
aft a member of the Rump, 173, 188 ; his 
intrigues with Monk described by S. , 
212 ; excepted from the " Pardon and 
Indemnity Bill," his life spared on an 
address from Parliament, supported by 
S., 241, 243. 

Hastings, Mr., account of him by S., i. App. 
I. xv. 

Hawking, practised by S. , i. 14. 

Hawles, Sir John, condemns Chief Justice 
Pemberton's charge on the trial of S., ii. 
425. 

Hebden, the Russian resident, his notices 
of S., i. 274. 

Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., her 
letter to S. as to payment of her pen- 
sion, i. 317. 

Hertford, Marquis of, commands the Royal 
army, i. 48. 

Hewson, Colonel, one of "Cromwell's 
Peers," attacked in a speech by S., i. 
161. 

Highmore, Rev. John, chaplain to S. , his 
letter to S. on the "Meal-tub" Plot, ii. 
351. 

Hill, Mrs. (widow of Stringer), letter from, 
on Burnet' s misrepresentations of S., ii. 
App. VIII. cxxiii. 

Holland (see Dutch war). 

Holies, Denzil (afterwards Lord Holies), 
his relationship to S., i. 11 ; his litigation 
with S., 39 ; his opposition to Cromwell, 
advice to him by S., 78 ; co-operates 
with S. in the House of Lords, ii. 200 ; 
presents petition of S. for release from 
the Tower, 257 ; letter from him to S., 
their early litigation and late friendship, 
365. 

Hooke House, Dorsetshire, proposed by 
S. to* be garrisoned, i. 69. 

Horses belonging to S., his instructions 
when in the Tower for their sale, ii. 418. 

Howard of Escrick, Lord, committed to 
the Tower, ii. 411. 

" Humble petition and advice " to Crom- 
well to assume the title of King, i. 130 ; 



XXXV111 



INDEX. 



discussed in Richard Cromwell's Parlia- 
ment, 148, 151. 

Hunt dinner at Tewkesbury, i. 28, App. I. 
xxi. 

Hyde, Ann, Duchecs of York (see York). 

Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (see Clarendon). 



Independents (see Religion). 

Inspruek, Archduchess of, her proposed 
marriage to the Duke of York, ii. 148. 

"Instrument of Government," promul- 
gated by Cromwell, i. 105110, 123; 
superseded by Parliament, 130. 

Interest of money, Parliamentary report 
on, ii. App. I. v. 

Ireland, its representation in Richard 
Cromwell's Parliament, i. 146, 158 ; 
quarrel between Lord Conwayand S. on 
Irish affairs, 301 ; inclination of S. to 
be Lord-Lieutenant, 303; 'letter from 
Lord Conway to S. on politics, ii. 5 ; 
speech of S. on its condition, Lord 
Ossory's reply, 321 ; S. informs Privy 
Council of a plot there, 363 ; " con- 
cealed lands " belonging to the Crown, 
general value of land, App. IV. liii, 
liv ; speech of S. on the state of, App. 
VI. cii. 

Irish cattle, bill to prohibit importation, 
supported by S , i. 299 ; discussion on 
the bill, 300 ; quarrel between the Earl 
of Ossory and Lord Conway and S., 
300. 

Ireton, the regicide, attainted, his body 
exhumed and hung at Tyburn, i. 237, 
247. 

Isle of Wight, S. appointed governor, i. 
213, 249. 

J. 

James II. (see York, Duke of). 

Jenkins, Sir Leoline, appointed Secretary 

of State, ii. 359; speeches on foreign 

affairs, App. VII. cxix, cxxi. 



Keck, Abraham, a merchant of Amster- 
dam, death of S. in his house, ii. 455. 



La Cloche, James, a Jesuit, natural son of 
Charles II., ii. 16. 

Lambert, Colonel, his influence in restor- 
ing the "Rump" Parliament, i. 173; 
defeats Sir George Booth's insurrection, 
185 ; his discontent with the Parliament, 
188 ; suppresses the "Rump" by mili- 
tary force, 189; efforts of S. to restore 
it, 193 ; " Narrative " by S. of his pro- 
ceedings, 194 ; imprisoned by the 
"Rump," 218; escapes, raises troops, 



is defeated, letter thereon from S. , 219 ; 
condemned as a regicide, his life spared, 
248. 

Land, decay of rents, remedies proposed 
by S. , ii. 6 ; registration of titles recom- 
mended, 7 ; " concealed lands " belong- 
ing to the Crown in Ireland, App. IV. 
liii. liv. (see Registration of Titles). 

Lauderdale, Duke of, his co-operation with 
S. against Clarendon, i. 273 ; letter to S. 
for payment of a grant from the King, 
16 ; supports an alliance with France 
against Holland, ii. 22 ; his ignorance- 
of the secret treaty, 24 ; shared by S. 
and Buckingham, 55 ; signs a mock 
treaty excluding provision for restoring 
Popery, 26 ; receives present from Louis 
XIV., 31; attacked by House of Com- 
mons, 155, 188 ; addresses for his re- 
moval, 272, 329, 332. 

Lauderdale, Duchess of, Burnet's notice 
of her, ii. App. III. xxiii. 

Law-reform Commission (1652), S. ap- 
pointed a member of it, i. 87, 89. 

Law-reforms projected in Barebone's Par- 
liament, i. 100 ; ordinances by Crom- 
well's Council, 113 (see Chancery, Court 
of Wards). 

La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV., his 
correspondence with Coleman on Popish 
Plot, ii. 294. 

Le Clerc, on Locke's friendship with S., i. 
297. 

"Letter from a Person of Quality" (1676), 
ascribed to Locke, his denial, i. 261, 
293 ; explains reasons of S. for support- 
ing " Declaration of Indulgence," ii. 74 ; 
ordered by House of Lords to be burnt, 
supposed to have been written by S., 
207, 285. 

Letters and Reports by S. , on the storm- 
ing of Abbotsbury, i. 62 ; to the gover- 
nor of Poole on military affairs, 68 ; 
to Earl of Essex on the relief of Taun- 
ton, 72 ; to Henry Cromwell, 135 ; to 
Charles II., 179 ; to Montagu on Lam- 
bert's defeat, 219 ; to his wife, 285, 294 ; 
to Fleetwood on attempt to secure 
the Tower of London, App. V. Ixxiv ; 
to Locke on the marriage of his son, 
second Earl, ii. 3537 ; to Sir W. Mor- 
rice, 44, 47, 100 ; to Dr. Fell, 48 ; to his 
Bailiff, Hughes, 49; to Locke on the 
" Stop of the Exchequer," 61 ; to Earl of 
Essex, 101 ; to Duke of York, urging 
him to renounce Popery, 150; to Mr. 
Bennett, on his quarrel with Lord Digby, 
216 ; to Locke, consigning to his care a 
son of Sir John Banks, 235 ; to Charles 
II. and Duke of York, and circular to 
Peers, whilst imprisoned in the Tower, 
251254 ; to his bailiff, 261 ; to Bishops 
for information as to sequestrated liv- 
ings, App. IV. liv ; to Russell and other 
Privy Councillors, advising them to 
resign, 357 ; to Locke, 361 ; to Locke 
on arrangements for his residence at 
Oxford, 398400. 



INDEX. 



XXXIX 



Letters to S., from Montagu, i. 214 ; Prin- 
cess Elizabeth of Bohemia, 275 ; Arling- 
ton, 275; Lauderdale, 316; Henrietta 
Maria (Queen of Charles I.), 317 ; Lord 
Conway, ii. 5 ; Sir W. Morrice, 46, App. 
IV. xlvi ; Charles II. dismissing him as 
Lord Chancellor, 145 ; Dr. Fuller, Bishop 
of Lincoln, 193 ; Eftrl of Salisbury, 258 ; 
M. Cronstrom, App. IV. xlvii ; Earl of 
Essex, xlvii liv ; Sir H. Grimstone, 
Iv ; Sir R. Southwell, App. VII. cvii ; 
Ormond, on Irish affairs, 337; Rev. J. 
Highmore, 351 ; Earl of Bridgwater, 362 ; 
Lord Holies, 365; Locke, on politics, 
367 ; Locke, on arrangements for his 
residence at Oxford, 392. 

Letters, Lady S. to Earl of Sunderland, i. 
122 ; Locke to Earl of Pembroke, 261 ; Sir 
Peter Pett to Archbishop Bramhall, 262 ;. 
Locke to Earl of Pembroke, 296 ; Lady 
Dorothy Ashley to Locke, ii. 38, 39; Lady 
Ashley (wife of S.) to Locke, 40; Lord 
Conway to Sir George Rawdon, 43 ; T. 
Thynne to Sir W. Coventry, 98 ; Sir W. 
Coventry to Thynne, 149 ; Stringer to 
Locke on imprisonment of S. in the 
Tower, 236, 239, 248, 250, App. VII. 
cxii ; H. Coventry to Sir J. Williamson, 
249 ; Danby and Charles II. to Montagu, 
270 ; Coleman, secretary to Duchess of 
York, to La Chaise, confessor to Louis 
XIV., 294 ; Lady Russell to Lord William 
Russell, 307; Barillon to Louis XIV., 
359 ; Sir Thomas Cheke to Sir Leoline 
Jenkins, 415 ; Lady S. to Locke, 450 ; 
Sir William Cooper to Stringer, 459 ; 
Locke to Stringer, on proceedings of 
Parliament at Oxford, 1681, App. VII. 
cxii cxv ; widow of T. Stringer to 
Lady Elizabeth Harris, grand-daughter 
of S.,'on Burnet's misrepresentations, 
App. VIII. cxxiii, 

Lingard, his errors with reference to S.,ii. 
120. 

Locke, John, his "Commonplace Book," 
i. 35; his Life of S., Preface xv, xvii, 
40, 47 ; its errors, 78, 80, 195, 197, 
219 ; dedicates " Essays of Nicole" to 
LadyS., 122; his intimacy with S., 
its origin, 222 ; accident to S. on their 
journey the cause of satires and lam- 
poons, 222, ii. 438, 456 ; his denial of 
pamphlets ascribed to him, i. 261 ; pre- 
pares for S. a constitution for Carolina, 
288 ; friendship of S..for him, 295298 ; 
his verses, his work on the "Human 
Understanding," 297 ; advises a surgical 
operation on S., ii. 34; letters to him 
from S. on the marriage of his son to 
Lady Dorothy Manners, 3537 ; from 
Lady Dorothy Ashley, 38, 39 ; from Lady 
Ashley (wife of S.), from S., 40; letter 
from S. to Dr. Fell, recommending 
Locke for preferment, 48; his "Obser- 
vations on the Growth of Vines, Pro- 
duction of Silk," &c,, written at the 
request of S., 49 ; letter to him from S. 
proving that the latter opposed the 



" Stop of the Exchequer," 60 ; appointed 
Secretary to Council of Trade and Plan- 
tations, 93; anecdote of, 107; his ill- 
health, residence at Montpelier, letters 
to him from Stringer, 219224; letter 
from S. to 'him, consigning to his care a 
son of Sir John Banks, 235 ; letter from 
S. to him, 361 ; from him to S., on poli- 
tics, 367 ; makes arrangements for S. to 
reside at Oxford to attend Parliament, 
their correspondence, 391401 ; his re- 
collections of S.'s conversation, 468 ; 
Coste's account of his opinions of S., 
469 ; letter to Stringer on proceedings 
of Parliament at Oxford, App. VII cxii. 

London, petitions for the recall of the 
"Rump" Parliament, i. 1T3; Monk's 
proceedings there described by S., 207 
212 ; riot in the City, design to murder 
S., 362 ; the City beg Charles II. to follow 
the advice of Parliament, his astonish- 
ment, 374 ; sheriffs elected by Court in- 
trigues, 443 445 ; S. joins Monmouth 
and Russell to promote an insurrection, 
undertakes to raise men in Wapping, 
446 ; meetings to arrange plans, 446, 
447. 

Long Parliament (see Parliament). 

Lords, House of, as nominated by Crom- 
well 'see Parliament). 

Louis XIV., his negotiations with Charles 
II. for an alliance against Spain, ii. 9; 
against Holland, 18; secret treaty of 
Dover, 19; further negotiations with 
Buckingham, 23 ; urges Charles II. to 
treat with the Pope for establishing 
Popery, 24 ; prefers alliance to establish- 
ment of Popery, 135 ; endeavours to 
bribe S. to return to Court, 182; his 
anger at negotiations for peace with 
Holland, 185 ; bribes Charles II. to pro- 
rogue Parliament, 209 ; his secret per- 
sonal treaty with Charles II., 21 ; offers 
Charles II. another bribe to prorogue, 
bribes members to support French alli- 
ance, 227 ; prosecutes war against the 
Dutch and their allies, 240 : grants siib- 
sidy to Charles II., who adjourns Par- 
liament, 245 ; his annoyance at the mar- 
riage of William and Mary, 246 ; refuses 
terms of peace proposed by Charles II. 
255 ; offers further bribes for proroga- 
tion, 256 ; his intrigues with English 
statesmen, 267, 280 ; applied to by 
Charles II. for large subsidies, 268, 270'; 
agrees to his terms, and signs a secret 
treaty, 273 ; not ratified by Charles, L'7<i ; 
refuses Charles II. a subsidy, 305; at- 
tempts of Charles II. to obtain French 
subsidy, 359; gives Charles II. a sub- 
sidy for three years on a verbal tr. at y. 
402, 403; despatch from Barillon to 
him on the Pi-ivy Council, App. VII. 
cix. 

Ludlow, Edmund, a candidate for Wilt- 
shire, his account of the election, de- 
feated by S., i. 112 ; his statement as to 
the separation of S. and Cromwell, 119 ; 

2 



INDEX. 



his erroneous statements as to S,, 238 ; 
from his Memoirs 



referring to S., App. III. Ivi. 
Lulw.orth, Dorset, during the rebellion, i. 

67. 
Lund, his deposition as to design on the 

life of S.,ii. 305. 
Luttrell, Narcissus, his Diary, notices of 

danger to S. before his flight to Holland, 

ii. 448. 

Lyme, besieged by Prince Maurice, i, 58. 
Lytton, Lord, lines on S. in his poem "St. 

Stephens," ii. 430. 



Macaulay, Lord, on S., and Dryden's 
satires, i. 224, 225, ii. 474; on the 
treacheiy of Dr. Fell, 48 ; his opinions 
of S. refuted, 474482. 

Manners, Lady Dorothy, her marriage to 
Anthony Ashley, son of S., letters of S. 
to Locke on the subject, ii. 3537. 

Martyn,Benjamin,employedby fourth Earl 
to write Memoir of S., Preface, xvi, xviii ; 
his work improved by Dr. Sharpe and 
by Dr. Kippis, edited by G. W. Cooke, 
printed, the copies destroyed, Preface, 
xvi, xvii ; errors in his Life of S., i. 40, 
53, 75, 89, 102, 113, 116, 136, 182, 183, 
195, 293, ii. 459, 479, App. I. iii, IL 
xxviii, xxxi ; his account of the opposi- 
tion of S. to the Corporation Act and 
Act of Uniformity, i. 260, 261 ; of the 
support given by S. to the " Dispensing 
Bill," 268. 

Marvel, Andrew, on the motives of S. for 
supporting Lord Roos's Remarriage Act, 
ii. 43 ; on the King's claim to dispensing 
power in religion, 73 ; praises opposition 
of S. to Danby's Test Bill, 206. 

Mary of Modena, Queen of James II,, wish 
of Charles II. to marry her, ii. 147 ; her 
marriage to the Duke of York, 148 ; S. 
advocates her divorce and remarriage of 
the King to a Protestant, 377, 378. 

Massal, an Italian spy, employed by Arch- 
bishop Bancroft, his offer to murder Sir 
William Waller, ii. 454 ; his account of 
the death of S. , 455. 

Maurice, Prince, commands the Royal 
army, i. 43, 45, 58, 59. 

Mazarin, Duchess of, her influence with 
Charles II. in French interests, ii. 384. 

" Meal-tub" Plot, charging S. and leading 
Protestants with conspiracy, 348. 

Medal struck to- commemorate acquittal 
of S., ii. 428; Dryden's poem, "The 
Medal," 432. 

Medici, Cosmo de, dines with S. in English 
style, preserves the bill of fare, ii. 110. 

Mews, Dr., Bishop of Bristol, his letter 
canvassing for Lord Digby as member 
for Dorsetshire, ii. 218. 

Mignet, M., his " Histoiy of the Nego- 
tiations relative to the Spanish succes- 
sion," Preface, x., ii. 13. 



Military government taken by Parliament 
from Charles I., i. 55. 

Military power reorganized by Cromwell, 
i. 108, 110 (see Army). 

Militia Act passed by Charles II. 's Par- 
liament, its miscliievous nature, opposed 
by S., i. 260, 261. 

Milton, his connection with Cromwell and 
Thurloe, i. 111. 

Minors sitting in Parliament, i. 30. 

Monk (see Albemarle). 

Monmouth, Duke of, his legitimization pro- 
posed by Buckingham, ii. 9 ; a plenipo- 
tentiary to Lons XIV 7 ., 85 ; S. favours a 
project for declaring him legitimate, 148 ; 
S. favours his succession to the throne, 
329, 330 ; suppresses Scotch rebellion, 
S. proposes his commanding a troop of 
Guards, 341 ; ordered to leave England, 
goes to the Hague, 344: deprived of 
offices, S.'s connection with him, 347 ; 
proposal that he should join the Prince 
of Orange, 353 ; returns to England, 354 ; 
reconciled to Charles, 360 ; Charles de- 
nies marriage to his mother, 364; sup- 
ports bill for exclusion of the Duke 
of York, 376 ; resolution of Parliament 
for his restoration to favour, 386 ; con- 
versation between Charles II. and S. as 
to his succession, 408, App. VII. cxvii ; 
visits S. in the Tower, 413 ; joins S. and 
Russell to raise an insurrection, 445 ; 
arrested at Stafford, released on bail, 
446; complains of recklessness of S., 
449. 

Montagu, Earl of Sandwich (?ee Sandwich). 

Montagu, Ralph, Ambassador at Paris, 
letters to him from Danby and the King, 
pressing Louis XIV. for large subsidies, 
ii. 270 ; accused by Danby of Popish 
intrigues, his papers seized, produces 
Dauby's letters, Danby's impeachment, 
303, 304. 

Mordaunt, Lord, his agency in the resto- 
ration of Charles II., i. 181, 184. 

Moreton, Sir George, account of him by 
S., i. App. I. xvii. 

Morrice, Sir W., a coadjutor of Monk, 
letters from S. to him, ii. 44, 47, 100 ; 
from him to S., 46, 100, App. IV. 
xlvi ; his learning and rhetoric, 45, 46 ; 
judge of a wrestling match before 
Charles II., 45. 

Mulgrave, Sheffield, Earl of, lines on S. ill 
his "Essay on Satire," ii. 430. 



X. 



Nappeir, Sir Gerar<l, account of him by 

S., App. I. xvii. 
Natural! , atiou of foreigners proposed by 

S. for improvement of trade, ii. 7; his 

memorial to Charles II., App. I. v ; 

proceedings hi Parliament, v, vi. 
Newbury, battle of, i. 61. 
Nimeguen, peace of, between France and 



INDEX. 



xli 



Holland, ii. 276 ; S.'s written opinion of 
the peace, 281. 

North, Roger, ascribes the "Stop of the 
Exchequer" to S., ii. 66; his misrepre- 
sentations of S. 's conduct as Chancellor, 
ii. 162169, 172, 174. 

Norton, Sir Daniel, guardian of S.', i. 13. 

Nottingham, Lord Chancellor (see Finch, 
Sir Heneage). 

Noy, Attorney-General, counsel for S. in 
Court of Wards, i. 10. App. I. ix. 



o. 

Oates, Titus, his perjuries in connexion 
with the Popish Plot, ii. 287, 291, 293, 
2iM, 300. 

Oath or Test of Protestantism (see Reli- 
gion). 

Olivian, Dr., his predictions respecting S., 
i. 20, App. I. iv, v, xiii, xiv. 

Orange, Prince of, advises rejection of 
terms of peace with Holland, ii. 87 ; 
his visit to England, and marriage with 
Mary, daughter of the Duke of York, 
246, 247; Charles II. negotiates with 
him for peace, 246 ; his influence with 
the King, 254 ; design of English states- 
men to place him on the throne, ii. 339 ; 
views of S. thereon, 340. 341 ; his own 
views of succeeding to the throne, 345 ; 
proposal that he should join Monmouth, 
352, 354; favours bill for exclusion of 
Duke of York and himself, 387, 888. 

Orleans, Duchess of (sister of Charles II. X 
supports an alliance of England with 
France, ii. 13, 14, 15, 19, 21 ; her death, 
22. 

Ormond, Duke of, made Lord Steward by 
Charles II., i. 229 ; envy excited by his 
wealth and station, 300 ; removed from 
Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, ii. 4 ; his 
friendly relations with S., 47, 322; as- 
cribes the "Stop of the Exchequer" to 
Clifford, 65 ; acts in the Cabinet with 
Arlington and S. against France and 
Popery, 144 ; joins S. in opposing Dutch 
war and French alliance, 149 ; letter to 
S. on Irish affaire, 337. 

Orrery, Ean o f, attacked in a speech by S., 
i. 161, App. iv. Ixvii. 

Osborne, sir Thomas, afterwards Earl of 
Danby ( se e Danby). 

Ossory, Earl of, his quarrel with S., or- 
dered by the House of Lords to apologize, 
i. 300301 ; replies to reflections of S. 
on his father, ii. 322 ; comments of 
Ormond on his speech, 338; ordered to 
Tangier, his death, 368. 

"Other House, the," comprising "Peers" 
named and summoned by Cromwell 
(see Parliament). 

Otway, his satire on S. in "Venice Pre- 
served," ii. 437. 

Oxford, life of S. at Exeter College, i. 15, 
18, App. I. x, xi ; Parliament meets there, 
289; second Earl of Shaftesbury sent 



there, 285, 286, 294 ; S. visits him, 294, 
295 ; Parliament called at, ii. 386 ; 
Locke's arrangements for residence of 
S. there, 391 401 ; townsmen refuse to 
lodge King's guards, 401 ; Parliament 
meets, 404 ; dissolved, 405. 
Oxted, Surrey, S.'s residence at, i. 75. 



P. 



" Pardon and Indemnity Bill " introduced 
for supporters of the Commonwealth, 
i. 235 ; exception of the regicides, dis- 
cussed in Parliament, 235 342 ; regi- 
cides tried and executed, others spared, 
243-248. 

" Pardon, protecting," granted to S. on 
his dismissal as Chancellor, ii. 157, 159. 

Pardons granted by Charles II. to sup- 
porters of the Commonwealth, including 
S. i. 228. 

Parliament, minors sitting in, i. 30 ; "the 
Short" (1640), 31; "the Long," 35; 
double return of members, 37 ; Parlia- 
mentary cause joined by S., 47, Y7, 86 ; 
his statement of his motives, 49 ; its 
proceedings in 1641-1644, 55, 56 ; tie 
"Rump," its supremacy in the Com- 
monwealth, 77 ; it absolves S. from 
delinquency, 89 ; the Rump ejected by 
Cromwell, number of its members, 90 
93 ; descriptions of the scene, 93 ; Bare- 
bone's Parliament nominated by Crom- 
well, 95 ; its proceedings and character, 
96, 98, 99 ; its powers resigned to Crom- 
well, 102; New Parliament, S'. elected 
for three places, 112; its opposition to 
Cromwell, 115 ; its dissolution injurious 
to Cromwell, 124 ; meets again, S. 
elected for Wilts, but with others ex 
eluded by the Council of State, 124, 125, 
126; "Remonstrance" of excluded 
members, 127 ; " Address " to Cromwell 
in favour of two Houses and of his being 
King, carried, 128, 129; altered to a 
"Petition and advice," creation of 
another House earned, 120 ; adjourned, 
reassembled as two Houses, 132 ; 
" Cromwell's Peers " summoned to the 
"other House" by IJichard Cromwell, 
133, 147, 158, 164 ; debates on the "other 
House," 137 ; dissolution, 138 ; speeches 
of S., 139, App. IV. 65 ; New Parliament 
summoned by Richard Cromwell, 146 ; 
its peculiar constitution, 147 ; " other 
House," the speeches of S. against it dur- 
ing Richard Cromwell's Parliament, 148 
168 ; his long speech against time, 160, 
App. IV. Ixiii ; power of Parliament to 
make peace and war upheld by S. 157 ; 
Fleetwood's party compel HichardCroni- 
well to disserve, 170: the "Rump" 
restored, 173 ; its sovrn-ixn authority, 
number of its members, 175 ; S. fails to 
recover his .seat for Downton, 176 ; Par- 
liament fails to satisfy the army, 187, 
188 ; is suppressed with military force by 



xlii 



IXDEX. 



Lambert, 18ft ; exertions of S. to restore 
it, 19.3 ; share of S. in its restoration, 
201 ; S. admitted to sit for Downton, 
'29-2 ; Monk's proceedings described by 
S., 205-212; the " secluded members " 
admitted, 212 ; S. leaves the republi- 
cans and joins the royalists, 213 ; new 
Parliament of Lords and Commons, S. 
represents Wiltshire, 220 ; " Convention 
Parliament," bill passed with the assent 
of Charles II. declaring its legality, 234; 
discussions on " Pardon and Indemnity 
Bill," for supporters of the Common- 
wealth, 235242 ; S. in favour of spar- 
ing the lives of the regicides, 238 ; 
adjourned, 243 ; reassembles, 249 ; dis- 
cussions on revenue and the ehuri;'.., 
speeches of S., 250, 251 ; dissolved, 253 ; 
new Parliament meets, S. in the House 
of Lords as Baron Ashley of Wimborne 
St. Giles, 255 ; bishops restored to the 
House, its first measures high church 
and royalist, 257 ; Corporation Act, Act 
of Uniformity, and Militia Act passed, 
provisions of these acts, their mis- 
chievous nature, 258260 ; opposed by 
S. , 261 ; discussions on Act of Unifor- 
mity, 261, clause to enable the King to 
dispense with its provisions, 263 ; re- 
jected, Act passed, 264; "Dispensing 
BUI" supported by S., 2G7 269; address 
to Charles II. to banish Jesuits and 
priests, Conventicle Act, 270; ses- 
sion at Oxford, discussion on appro- 
priation clause in Supply Bill, opposed 
by Clarendon and S., 289 291 ; " Five 
Mile Act," supported by Clarendon, ^ 
opposed by S., 292; "Non-resistance 
Oath Bill " rejected, 293 ; bill to pro- 
hibit importation of Irish cattle, Claren- 
don's strictures on support of it by S., 
299; Earl of Ossory quarrels with S., 
ordered by the House of Lords to apo- 
logize, SOU ; Commons propose to im- 
peach Clarendon for general treason, 
Lords refuse to join unless particular 
treason assigned, 313 ; scheme for "com- 
prehension " of Dissenters rejected, 
Conventicle Act renewed, ii. 6 ; Com- 
mittee on land and trade, opinions of 
S. adopted, 8 ;. question of privilege 
arranged by suggestion from S., 19 ; 
money granted for war, dispute as to 
right of Lords to alter money bills, 27 ; 
Buckingham objects to making war 
without advice of Parliament, S. con- 
curs with him, 30; discussion of Lord 
Roos's Remarriage Act, Charles II. 
attends debate in House of Lords, 42 ; 
bill supported by S., his motives, bill 
passed, 43 ; privilege, letter by S. to 
Morrice, 45 refusal to find means to 
remove the "Stop of the Exchequer," 
70 ; clause in Conventicle Act asserting 
King's supremacy, modified by Com- 
mons, 73 ; repeated prorogations, another 
at instance of Louis XIV. , 92 ; meets 
after an interval of two years, strong 



opposition to arbitrary power, S. Lord 
Chancellor, discussion on writs issued 
by him during prorogation, 112 ; King's 
speech, defends ' ' Declaration of Indul- 
gence," official speech of S., 113 ; custom 
for Chancellor to make such a speech, 
115 ; King justifies the issue of new 
writs, 120 ; places of the Chancellor and 
Heir-apparent, 118; discussion on issue 
of writs, precedents in favour of the 
practice, statements of Bishop Burnet, 
T. Thynne, Roger North, and Bishop 
Parker adverse to S., their inaccuracy, 
121125 ; right of the House to issue 
writs in future established, 126 ; minis- 
terial influence in elections, 126 ; letter 
from S.to Recorder of Chester in favour 
of Duke of York's friend, its failure, 127; 
supply granted, 128 ; discussion on 
" Declaration of Indulgence," addresses 
to the King, his evasive replies, 128, 
129 ; addresses of Commons against 
" Declaration of Indulgence," 129 ; King 
appeals to Lords, reasons of S. for this 
step, 129134; its failure, 132; Decla- 
ration cancelled, 131 ; "Test Act," im- 
posing Protestant oath on officials, 
passed, 135 ; Clifford's violent speech, 
137 ; supply granted, 140 ; satisfaction 
of Commons, 141 ; Commons' address 
against Duke of York's marriage to Mary 
of Modena, 152 ; official speech of S. as 
Chancellor, 154 ; supply refused, 154 ; 
Buckingham conceals secret treaty, 186 ; 
speech of Charles II. on French alliance, 
opposition led by S., 187; address to 
remove Papists from London, 188 ; dis- 
cussions on restraining Popery in the 
royal family, 189 ; prorogued to gratify 
Louis XIV., 199 ; letter from S. to 
Earl of Carlisle advocating new Parlia- 
ment, 200; Danby's Test Bill opposed 
by S., discussions and speeches, dispute 
on privilege, prorogation, 203, 208 ; 
further prorogation for fifteen months, 
209 ; interference of Peers in elections, 
letter from Bishop of Bristol canvassing 
for Lord Digby, 218 ; Earl of Bristol 
attacks S. and Lord Mohun, and is 
ordered to ask pardon, 219 ; legality of 
long prorogation disputed, 226, 230 ; 
Buckingham supported by S., Salisbury, 
and Wharton, moves for dissolution, 
ordered to ask pardon, they refuse and 
are sent to the Tower, 230233 ; the 
question discussed in House of Com- 
mons, 234, 236 ; S. kept in confinement 
by repeated adjournments, 236 ; supplies 
restricted, 242 ; alliance against France 
urged, members bribed by Spain and 
Germany, 243 ; S. petitions the Lords, 
is heard and released, 257260 ; record 
of his imprisonment cancelled, 260 ; 
bill against Popery in House of Lords, 
265 ; alliances urged upon the King, 
intrigues of Louis XIV., Buckingham 
and members or Opposition bribed, 266, 
267 ; war against France again urged, 



INDEX. 



xliii 



26S, 271, 275 ; address to remove Lauder- 
dale, 272 ; resolves to disband army and 
stop supplies, 275 ; S. distrusts the King 
and fears French power, 279 ; members 
bribed by France, 280; speech of S. 
on claim to Purbeck peerage, 286 ; in- 
trigues of Duke of York for dissolution, 
283, 285 ; S. protests against Bishops 
voting in trial of a peer for murder, 
286; inquiries into the Popish Plot, 
measures against Papists, their exclu- 
sion from Parliament, 297 ; called the 
" pensioned Parliament," prorogued and 
dissolved, 305 ; new Parliament meets, 
306, 316 ; Speaker Seymour's election 
opposed by the King, 316 ; Serjeant 
Gregory agreed to, 317 ; debates on 
Danby's attainder, 319; S. advocates 
his banishment, 320 ; speech of S. on 
the state of the nation, 321 ; meetings 
of the Commons on Sundays, 329, 331 ; 
stringent measures against Papists and 
the Duke of York, 329, 330 ; bill to ex- 
clude him from the succession, 331 ; 
Danby's pardon declared illegal, sudden 
prorogation, 332 ; indignation of S. , 333 ; 
Habeas Corpus Act carried by S., its 
provisions explained, 333, 334 ; dissolved 
against advice of Privy Council, 343 ; 
new Parliament meets in fifteen months, 
343 ; prorogued, petition for its meeting 
presented to Charles II. by S. and other 
Peers, 354 ; other petitions, 355, 356 ; 
Charles issues proclamation against 
"seditious" petitions, receives them 
with anger, 355 ; Parliament meets after 
fourteen mouths, 356 ; King's speech, 
372 ; discussions on Popery, Commons 
pass bill for exclusion of Duke of York, 
372, 373 ; thrown out by the Lords, 374 ; 
again discussed, speech by S., 383 ; 
divorce of the Queen, and remarriage 
of Charles to a Protestant, advocated by 
S., 377, 378 ; address to the King to re- 
move Halifax, 381, 385; also Worcester, 
Clarendon, and others, 3S5 ; other strong 
resolutions against lending to the King, 
3S5 ; prorogation, and dissolution, 386 ; 
new Parliament called at Oxford, 386 ; 
pj.ition from S. and other Peers for 
meeting at Westminster, 390 ; its recep- 
tidii by the King, 390 ; instruction by 8. 
for guidance of members, 391, App. VII. 
cxi ; S. prepares to reside at Oxford, 
correspondence with Locke, 391 401 ; 
Charles II. 's last Parliament meets at 
Oxford, King's speech, his expedient for 
Duke of York to govern by a regent, 
rejected, exclusion uAl adhered to, dis- 
solution in ten days, 404,405,409 ; Locke's 
account of proceedings, 406, App. Vii. 
cxii; speeches of 8. as Chancellor on 
election of Speaker (CharLmi), App. V. 
Ixi ; speeches of S. in amplification 
of the King's speeches, Ixiii, Ixxii ; 
speeches of 8. to Speaker (Seymour), 
Ixix ; speech of S. on Dr. Shirley's appeal 
from Chancery to the House of Lords, 



App. VI. Ixxxiv ; on the Purbeck Peer- 
age, xcvi ; on the state of the nation, 
xcix ; on foreign policy and religion, 
cii ; instructions supposed to be by S. 
to members elected in 1681, App. VII. 
cxi ; letter from Locke on proceedings 
of Parliament at Oxford, cxii. 

Parliamentary soldiers condemned to 
death, reprieved by the influence of S., 
i. 82, 83. 

"Peers," Cromwell's (see Parliament). 

Pemberton, Chief Justice, refuses to admit 
S. to trial on bail, ii. 416 ; and to admit 
his indictment of the magistrate and 
witnesses, 417 ; his charge to grand jury 
on trial of S., 421 ; strictures thereon by 
Sir John Hawles and Lord Campbell, 
425, 426. 

Pembroke, Earl of, tried by his peers for 
murder, ii. 286. 

Pensioned Parliament (see Parliament). 

Pepys, Samuel, on the conduct of S. as 
Treasurer of Prizes, i. 283, 284, 307 ; 
other notices of S., 271, 273, 274, 298 ; 
on agricultural depression (1667, 1668), 
300 ; on proceedings of Treasury Com- 
missioners, 308 ; on connection of S. 
with Clarendon after his fall, 311 ; names 
members of Cabal in 1667, ii. 2 ; on S.'s 
support of Buckingham, 4 ; illness of S. 
and surgical operation, 34 ; dines with 
S., conversation of S. and Lady Ashley, 
106 ; asserts that S. took a bribe, 107 ; 
and was greedy of money, 109 ; elected 
M.P., accused of being a Roman 
Catholic, reference to S., letter from 
him, Iy4. 

Peters, Hugh, his share in Law Reform 
Commission (1652), i. 87, 88 ; executed 
as a regicide, 243. 

Phoenix Park, Dublin, proposed grant of, 
to the Duchess of Cleveland, ii. App. IV. 
xlvii liv ; particulars of its area and 
value, liii, liv. 

Pilkington, Sheriff of London, dinner 
given by him to S. and his party, ii. 441, 
442. 

Plague, notices of the, i. 289, 295, ii. 7. 

Plantations (see Trade and Plantations). 

Planting (see Gardening). 

Poole, Dorsetshire, during the Rebellion, 
i. 67 ; S. elected member for, 112 ; S. 
again returned to Richard Cromwell's 
Parliament, sits for Wiltshire, 147. 

Popery (see Religion). 

Popish Plot of 1678 (see Religion). 

Portland, surrenders to the King's army, 
i. 43 ; 8. appointed governor by Chas I. , 
46. 

Portsmouth, Duchess of (Mademoiselle de 
Querouaille), so created by Charles II., 
ii. 160 ; S., as Treasurer of Prizes, re- 
fuses her warrant, 161 ; her influence 
on public affairs, and in the interest of 
France, ii. 308, 320, 326 ; account of her 
character and conduct by S., notice 
of, by Evelyn, 311 ; Charles refuses 
ministers' request to dismiss her, 360 



xliv 



INDEX. 



indictment against her as a recusant, 
grand jury dismissed, 366 ; endeavours to 
gain S. as Secretary of State, 3U7 ; sup- 
ports bill for exclusion of Duke of York, 
374 ; loses favour with the King, 387 ; 
Charles jealous of her political con- 
nexion with Sunderland, 403. 

Presbyterian party in the Parliamentary 
army replaced by Independents, i. 75, 
76, 77 ; Cromwell's fear of it the cause 
of the ejection of the " Rump," 92 ; 
joined by S. in opposition to Cromwell, 
124 ; S. leaves it and joins the Republi- 
cans, 180 ; Presbyterians join Royalist 
rising under Sir George Booth, 185. 

Presbyterians (see Religion). 

Presents by Louis XIV. to plenipoten- 
tiaries for signing treaties, ii. 31 ; given 
by S. to his son's bride, 35, 36 ; by 
Louis XIV. as bribes to English states- 
men and members of Parliament (see 
Louis XIV.). 

Pride, Colonel, attacked in a speech by S., 
i. 161, App. IV. Ixviii ; accused of 
cruelly killing bears, Ixxi. 

Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, tutor of 
S. at college, i. 14, App. I., x. 

" Prime Minister," a name of French 
origin, not used by Clarendon, i. 230. 

Privilege (see Parliament). 

Privy Council, S, nominated by Charles II., 
i. 227 ; its constitution, 229 ; motion to 
remove Duke of York, he withdraws, 
298; reorganized by Charles II., S. ap- 
pointed President, ii. 323 ; its origin 
and constitution, 324 ; salary of S., 327 ; 
King dissolves Parliament against its 
advice, 342 ; S. dismissed as President, 
347 ; Russell and others resign at insti- 
gation of S. , 357 ; discussion in Com- 
mittee, arrest of S. urged by Halifax and 
Clarendon, 412, App. VII. cxviii : S. 
arrested, examined, and' committed to 
the Tower, 412, 413 ; S. dismissed from, 
197 ; Barillon's despatch to Louis XIV. 
on its new constitution, App. VII. ex. 

Prize money (see Dutch war). 

Procession, equestrian, of S. as Chancellor, 
to Westminster, ii. 167. 

"Project of Association" for defence of 
religion and Protestant succession, ap- 
proved by S., used against him at his 
trial, ii. 423 ; opposed by the Court, 
addresses in "abhorrence" of it, 443. 

Punishment of death in 1646, i. 8184. 

Purbeck Peerage, speech of S. on a claim 
to the, ii. App. VI. xcvi. 

Pyne, a servant of S., his humour, i. 28, 
App. I. xxii. 

Q. 

Querouaille, Mademoiselle de, Duchess of 
Portsmouth (see Portsmouth). 

R. 

Radnor, Earl of, speech in conference with 
Charles II. ii. App. VII. cxxi. 



Raleigh, Carew, son of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
related to S. by marriage, satire on him, 
i. App. II. xxxiii. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, his head buried in 
his son's coffin, i. App. II. xxxiii. 

"Rawleigh Redivivus," notices of S. in, i. 
47, 52, 249, ii. 459 ; on equestrian pro- 
cession of S. as Chancellor, ii. 168. 

Records, report of Master of the Rolls to 
S. on their condition, ii. App. IV. Iv. 

Regicides, discussions in Parliament as to 
their punishment, some executed, others 
spared, i. 235242; S. in favour of 
sparing all, 238, 242 ; S. one of their 
judges. 243 ; his acting so condemned, 
244 ; defended, 24-4247, ii. 465, 476 ; 
punishment of Lord Monson and others, 
i. 248. 

Registration of titles to land, proposed by 
8.. ii. 7; his memorial to Charles II., 
App. I. v ; proceedings in Parliament, 
v., vi. 

Religion, Independents in Parliament and 
the army, i. 75, 76, 77 ; their predomi- 
nance in Barebone's Parliament, 95, 101 ; 
Cromwell's " Instrument of Govern- 
ment," 109; S. a Commissioner for 
ejection of ministers in Wilts and 
Dorset, 113 ; debates in Parliament, 
speeches of S., 250251, 252; Acts 
passed by High Church party to im- 
pose oaths, Act of Uniformity, opposed 
by S., 258 261; passed, 264 ; its effects, 
265, 268 ; bill introduced to dispense 
with it, 266; "Dispensing Bill," sup- 
ported by S., 267269 ; copy of the bill, 
App. VI. Ixxix ; address of Parliament to 
Charles II. to banish Jesuits and Priests, 
Conventicle Act passed, 270, 277 ; <; Five- 
Mile Act" against Dissenters, opposed 
by S., 292 ; " Non-resistance " Oath Bill, 
rejected, 293 ; religion in Dorsetshire, 
described by S., App. I. xx ; Dispen- 
sing clause proposed by Charles II. in 
Act of Uniformity, rejected by House of 
Lords, App. VI. Ixxviii; Buckingham 
and S. favour toleration of Dissenters, 
ii. 5; scheme of "comprehension" re- 
jected by Parliament, 6 ; new Conven- 
ticle Act passed, 6 ; Roman Catholics 
not included in S.'s views of toleration, 
6 ; toleration urged by S. in a paper on 
trade, &c., 6, 7 ; attempt of Charles II. 
to establish Popery, supported by Ar- 
lington, secret treaty, Buckingham, 
Lauderdale, and S. ignorant of it, 16 
24, 28 ; " Declaration of Indulgence," 
for Dissenters and Roman Catholics, 
issued by Charles II. , supported by S. , 
71 ; his statement of his reasons, 74 ; 
debates on Dispensing Bill, 72 ; clause 
in Conventicle Act asserting King's su- 
premacy, modified by House of Com- 
mons, 73; Buckingham and S. learn 
the design to establish Popery, 86, 
87; Charles II. defends "Declaration 
of Indulgence," promises Parliament 
to preserve Protestant religion, 113 ; 



INDEX. 



xlv 



Charles II. 's speech to Parliament, is "re- 
solved to stick to Declaration of Indul- 
gence," 113 ; debates thereon, addresses 
to King against it, his evasive answers, 
128, 129 ; beginning of Test Act, 129 ; 
King appeals to House of Lords without 
success, 129, 130 ; cancels Declaration, 
S.'s announcement, 131; his reasons for 
appeal to the Lords, 132 ; " Test Act " 
passed, imposing Protestant Oath on 
officials, supported by S., 136; public 
fear of coercion into Popery, 146; S. 
regarded as the protector of Protes- 
tantism, 149; S.'s fear of assassination 
by Papists, 150 ; addresses of House of 
commons against Duke of York's mar- 
riage with Mary of Modena, 153 ; S. 
leads opposition in House of Lords, 187 ; 
carries address to remove Papists from 
London, 188; discussions on restrain- 
ing Popery in the royal family, 189; 
measures aimed against Duke of York, 
193 ; Danby's Test Bill, opposed by S., 
his reasons against it, 203205, App. VI. 
Ixxvii ; proofs that Charles II. was a 
Roman Catholic, 288, 289 ; Popish Plot 
of 1678, its mixture of truth and false- 
hood, perjuries of Titus Gates, 2S7 301 ; 
murder of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, 
exclusion of Papists from Parliament, 
299, 409 ; the measure supported by S. , 
299 ; Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), 
repeal of Test and Corporation Acts 
(1828), 299, 300; five Roman Catholic 
Peers sent to the Tower, 297 ; 
Charles II. asserted by S. to be con- 
cerned in the plot, 310 ; Parliament 
expresses belief in the plot, bill intro- 
duced against Popery, 318 ; speech of 
S. on danger to Protestantism, 321 ; S. 
opposes imposition of oaths on Dissen- 
ters, 328 ; stringent measures against 
Popery and Duke of York, 329, 330 ; 
bill to exclude him from the succession, 
331; "Meal-tub" Plot, accusing S. 
and Protestants of conspiracy, attempts 
by its authors to murder S. , 348, 349 ; 
riots in the city, 362 ; S. informs 
Privy Council of a plot in Ireland, 363 ; 
Duke of York indicted by S. .and others 
as a recusant, grand jury dismissed, 366 ; 
debates, Duke of York's Exclusion Bill, 
passes the Commons, rejected by the 
Lords, 372 374 ; again discussed, speech 
by S., 383; S. advocates the King's 
divorce and marriage to a Protestant, 
:;77 ; strong resolutions by Parliament, 
386 ; Bill for Relief of Dissenters passed, 
Charles II. refuses assent, S. moves for in- 
quiry, 386, 405, 406 ; penal laws against 
Dissenters put in force, 443 ; memorial 
li-om 8. to Charles II. on Indulgence to 
Dissenters, &c., App. I. v; proceed- 
ngs in Parliament, v., vi ; memoir of 
Colbert to Louis XIV. on the views of 
Charles II. about establishing Popery, 
App. II. xii. ; reasons of S. against 
Danby's Test Bill, App. VI., Ixxvii ; 



speeches of S. on Protestant doctrine 
Ixxxi ; on Popery and the state of the 
nation, c. 

Reports and Letters by S. (see Letters). 

Remarriage Act, in favour of Lord Roos 
(see Roos, Lord). 

Reynolds's description of ejection of 
" Rump " Parliament, i. 93. 

Roekbourne, Dorsetshire, the property of 
S. , i. 1, 8. 

Roberts, Lord, introduces Dispensing Bill, 
to mitigate Act of Uniformity, i. 266, 
supported by S., 267; made Earl of 
Radnor and President of Council, ii. 
347. 

Roman Catholics ^ee Religion). 

Romney, Henry Sidney, Earl of, Envoy 
to the Hague, promotes design to intro- 
duce the Prince of Orange, ii. 339 ; con- 
fers with S. , 340 ; extracts from his 
Diary, 339, 353, 375, 431. 

Ro:>s, Lord (afterwards Duke of Rutland", 
his divorce, bill in Parliament to 
enable him to remarry, ii. 41 ; sup- 
ported by Charles II., opposed by Duk. 
of York, King present at the debate, 
scene described by Evelyn, bill sup- 
ported by S., his motives, 42 ; Lord 
Roos afterwards twice married, 43. 

" Rose," the ship, interest of 8. in its 
trade to Guinea, App. II. xlvi. 

Running the gauntlet, a punishment for 
deserters, i. 81. 

" Rump," joke on the word by S., i. 209. 

Rump Parliament (see Parliament). 

Rupert, Prince, commander of the newt in 
1673, ii. 146 ; joins S. in opposing war 
and French alliance, 149. 

Russell, Earl, his misrepresentation of S. 
in "Life of Lord William Russell," ii. 
290. 

Russell, Lord William, refuses a briba 
from France, ii. 267 ; his cordial action 
with S., 291 ; his statement before ex- 
ecution, 292 ; his communications with 
S. in the Tower, 279 ; moves address to 
remove Duke of York from the Privy 
Council, Duke withdraws, 298; letter 
to him from his wife, 307 ; speech 
against Popish successor to Charles II., 
331 ; resigns as Privy Councillor at 
instigation of S., 357 ; urges severity to 
Duke of York, 371 ; becomes bail for S. 
on his release from the Tower, bail dis- 
charged, 441 ; joins S. and Monmouth 
to raise an insurrection, 445 ; his caution 
opposed to confidence of g. , mind of 
S. probably affected, 449 ; his uniform 
co-operation with S., 291, 477, 478, 480, 
Preface, v. 

Russell, Lady William, her opinion of S., 
ii. 307, 438, App. VIII. cxxvii. 

Rutland, Countess of, letters to Locke 
referring to S., ii. 39. 

Rutland, Earl of, marriage of his daughter 
to Anthony Ashley, son of S., ii. 35. 

Ruvigny, Marquis de, French Ambassador, 
his notices of S., i. 273, 278, 292 ; envoy 



xlvi 



INDEX. 



to negotiate a French alliance, ii. 9 ; 
bribes English statesmen, 11 ; renewed 
negotiations, 13 ; his endeavour to bribe 
S. to return to office, 181, App. III. 
xliv. 

Ruvigny, M. (son of the Marquis), treats 
with Opposition on behalf of Louis XIV. , 
ii. 267 ; treats with Louis and Charles 
for French subsidies, 274. 



S 



St. Giles's, S. lays the first stone of his 
house there, i. 86 (see Wimborne St. 
Giles). 

St. James's Park, wrestling match before 
Charles II., ii. 45. 

St. Martin's Lane, house there occupied 
by S., ii. 223. 

Salisbury, Earl of, supports motion for 
dissolution in consequence of proroga- 
ti on for fifteen months, ii. 230; ordered to 
ask pardon, refuses, sent to the Tower, 
232 ; petitions King for release, 237 ; 
released, 239 ; letter to S. on his peti- 
tion for release, 258 ; record of im- 
prisonment cancelled, 260; resigns as 
Privy Councillor, 3S7. 

Salisbury Plain, S. elected for Wilts on, i. 
112. 

Bancroft, Archbishop, employs an Italian 
spy. who reports to him the death of 
S., ii. 455. 

Sandwich, Montagu, Earl of, letter to S., 
i. .214; made K.G., 227; created Earl 
of Sandwich, 229 ; made President of 
Council for Trade and Plantations, ii. 8 ; 
killed in sea-fight in Southwold Bay, 
84, 96. 

Savile, Lord, his forged letter to the 
Scotch Commissioners i. 35. 

Scandalum Magnatum, actions of, brought 
by S. after his release from the Tower, 
ii. 441 ; not allowed to be tried in Mid- 
dlesex, discontinued, 442. 

Schomberg, M. , appointed Commander-in- 
Chief, ii. 146. 

Scot, Thomas, accuses S. of Royalist 
intrigues, his denial, i. 179 ; executed 
as a regicide, 243. 

Scotch army enters England (1644), i. 57. 

Scotland, its representation in Richard 
Cromwell's Parliament, i. 146, 158 ; 
speech of S. on the state of,, ii. App. VI. 
ci ; speech of S. on Lauderdale's 
government, ii. 321. 

Scroggs, Chief Justice, dismisses grand 
jury from trying indictment against 
Duke of York, ii. 366. 

"'Sell-denying Ordinance," its effect on 
the Civil War, i. 75. 

Sequestration, fine incurred by S. remitted 
by Cromwell on petition, i."l34. 

Seymour, Edward, Speaker of the House 
of Commons, official speeches to him by 
S. , biographical notices of him, ii. App. 
V. Ixix. 



Shaftesbury, Dorsetshire, taken from the 
Royalists by S., i. 67, App. II. xxx. 

Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley, second Earl 
of), his birth, i. 87 ; sent to Oxford, 
visited there by S., 285, 286, 294 ; nego- 
tiations for his marriage, ii. 32 ; letter 
from S. as to proposed marriage with 
niece of the Earl of Warwick, 33 ; with 
niece of John EA'elyn, married to 
Dorothy, daughter of Earl of Rutland, 
letters from S. to Locke on arrange- 
ments for the marriage, 35 37; birth 
of his son (third Earl), letters from Lady 
Dorothy Ashley to Locke referring to 
S., 38, 39; Act of Parliament enabling 
him as a minor to .acknowledge tines, &c. 
of lands, 38 ; notices of, in Stringer's 
correspondence with Locke, 222, 223, 
224 ; satirized by Dryden, his character, 
431. 

Shaftesbury, third Earl, his birth, ii. 38 ; 
his education entrusted to S. who visits 
him at Wimbome St. Giles, 224 ; his 
education by S., 248; letter from Lady 
S. to Locke on his illness, 450. 

Shaftesbury, fourth Earl, employs Martyn 
to write Memoir of S. Preface, xvi. 

"Shastou," the old spelling of Shaftes- 
bury, Dorsetshire, i. 67. 

Sheriffs of London elected by Court in- 
trigues, 443445. 

Shirley, Dr., speech of S. on his appeal 
from Chancery, ii. App. VI. Ixxxiv. 

Shorthand written by Sir W. Morrice, 
Secretary of State, ii. 45. 

Short Parliament (see Parliament). 

Sidney, Algernon, references to S. in his 
correspondence, ii. 328. 

Sidney, Henry (see Romney, Earl. of). 

"Size" of beer at Oxford University, i. 
17, App. I. xii. 

Skinners' Company, S. a member, con- 
gratulatory dinner to him on his acquit- 
tal, ii. 441. 

Soldiers, Parliamentary, reprieved by S.'s 
influence, i. App. II. xxxviii, xliv. 

"Solemn League and Covenant " con- 
cluded (1643), i. 57; signed and ad- 
ministered to others by S., 86. 

Southampton, Earl of, made K.G. by 
Charles II., i. 227, appointed Lord Trea- 
surer, 229; his connexion by. marriage 
with S., 257; acts with S. in opposing 
High-Church measures, 261 ; his death, 
304. 

Southwell, Sir Robert, letter to S. on an 
alleged design upon his life, ii. 305, 
App. VII. cvii. 

Speculations of S. in Africa and West 
Indies, mines in Cardiganshire and 
Somersetshire, and a Derbyshire ' ' dis- 
covery," ii. 226 (see Bahamas and Caro- 
lina). 

Speeches, Charles II. to Parliament, ii. 
113, 154, 274, 292, 298, 331, 372, 382, 
404. 

Speeches of Privy Councillors in Com- 
mittee for Foreign Affairs, and con- 



INDEX, 



xlvii 



ference with Charles II. , ii. App. VII. 
cxviii. 

Speeches of S. on creation by Cromwell 
of a second House of Parliament, i. 
138 ; in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, 
reported by Burton, 148 ; extracts and 
references to them, 148 168: long speech 
against time on the " other House," 160, 
App. IV. Ixiii ; in favour of leniency to' 
the regicides, 241, 242, 243, 247 ; on 
revenue and the Church, 250, 251, 253, 
254 ; against Corporation Act, and Act 
of Uniformity, 260, 261; on " Dispen- 
sing.Bill," 268, 269 ; on swearing in 
Clitford as Lord Treasurer, ii. 97 ; as 
Lord Chancellor, official, 113; Strin- 
ger's account of its preparation, 117 ; 
custom for the Cmcellor to make such 
a speech, 115 ; on swearing in Danby 
as Lord Treasurer, 145 ; on opening 
Parliament, official, 154; on swearing 
in Baron Thurlaud, 169 ; quoted by 
Earl of Essex, App. IV. xlix ; against 
Danby's Test Bill, 205, 206 ; to Court 
of King's Bench on habeas corpus for 
release from the Tower, 238 ; in House 
of Lords, for release, 258 ; on the power 
of France, its mastery of the seas, 278 ; 
on the state of the nation, 321 ; 
against imposing oaths on Dissenters, 
328 ; in favour of bill for exclusion of 
Duke of York, 375 ; on King's divorce, 
and marriage to a Protestant, 377, 378 ; 
again on bill for excluding the Duke of 
York, ordered to be burnt by the hang- 
man, 383, App. VI. cii ; when Chan- 
cellor, App. V. Iviii Ixxvi ; after his 
Lord Chancellorship, App. VI. Ixxvii 
cvi. 

Spain and France, war between, ii. 9 ; 
peace concluded, 12. 

Spencer, Margaret, third wife of S., her 

family and character, i. 121 ; her letter 
to Sunderland, 122 ; letters of S. to her, 
285 ; letters from her to Locke, ii. 40, 
450 ; named by S. as his sole executrix, 
jewels bequeathed to her, 458. 

Stafford, Viscount, found guilty of treason, 
ii. 382. 

Stillingrieet, Bishop, obtains prebend at 
request of S., ii. 193. 

"Stop of the Exchequer" enforced to 
raise money for Dutch war, description 
of the measure, ii. 56 ; blame ascribed 
to S., 56 ; proofs that he opposed it, his 
remonstrance to Charles II., 58, 59 ; his 
letter to Locke, statements of Sir W. 
Temple and Evelyn, of Ormond and 
Lord Mohun, 60, 65, 66 ; assertions to the 
contrary by Lord Keeper Finch, Roger 
North, Bishop. Burnet, and in Life of 
James II., 66 68 ; weakness of these 
statements, errors of Lords Campbell 
and Macaulay, 68, 69 ; Dryden does not 
accuse S. of it, 69 ; Parliament refuses 
to lind means to remove the "Stop," 
interest to bankers reduced, annuities 



granted, final arrangement, 70; ics in- 
fluence on S. in refusing to be Lord 
Treasurer, 92; continued by Charles II. 
in Council, 98 ; official speech of S. as 
Lord Chancellor, 114 ; bankers sued by 
their creditors, S. as Lord Chancellor 
stays proceedings, 164, 165. 

Storming of Abbotsbury by S., i. 6267. 

Strangers in the House of Commons, one 
sent to Newgate, i. 148. 

Strangways, Sir John, his house stormed 
and burnt by S., i. 62, App. I. xix. 

Stringer, Thomas, secretary to S., "Frag- 
ment of a memoir of S." by him, 
Preface, xviii, xix; ii. App. III. xxh; 
errors in his accounts of S., i. 40, 
209, ii. 132; his communications used 
m Martyn's Life of S., ii. 58 ; his 
statement of the discovery by S. of 
Charles II. 's design to establish Popery, 
88 ; refusal by S. to be Lord Treasurer, 
90 ; on official speech of S. as Lord 
Chancellor,. 117; his account of /S.'s 
family and ceremonies as Lord Chan- 
cellor, 169;, of Ruvigny's attempt to 
bribe S. to return to office, 181 ; letter 
to him from Sir William Cooper/ on 
death, will, and funeral of S., ii. 459 ; 
letter of his widow to Lady Elizabeth 
Harris, granddaughter of S., on Burnet's 
misrepresentations, App. VIII. cxxiii ; 
letter from Locke to him, on proceed- 
ings of Parliament at Oxford, App. VII. 
cxii ; his letters to Locke (see Letters). 

Stuart, Miss (afterwards Duchess of Rich- 
mond), dishonourable proposals of 
Charles II. to her, i. 309. 

Sturminster, S. marches against Royalists 
at, i. 67, App. II. xxx. 

Sunderland, Earl of, his relationship to S., 
i. 121 ; appointed Secretary of State, ii. 
307 ; his desire to give office to S., 320 : 
his scheme to introduce the Prince of 
Orange, 339 ; sends for Duke of York on 
Charles II. 's illness, 343; his fear of S. 
and Monmouth, 344 ; applies to S. to be 
First Commissioner of the Treasury, he 
refuses, 352 ; with Laurence Hyde and 
Sidney Godolphin (chief ministers),uick- 
named " the Chits," 353 ; urges Prince 
of Orange to come to England, 360 ; his 
desire to conciliate S., 370 ; urges Charles 
II. to send Duke of York from England, 
371 ; supports bill for his exclusion from 
the succession, 376 ; dismissed from 
Privy Council and as Secretary of State, 
387. 

Sunning Hill, S. there to drink the Astrop 
waters, i. 295. 

Suppressed passages from Ludlow's Me- 
moirs referring to S., i. App. III. Ivi. 

Sycamore, the (see Gardening). 

Sydenham, Colonel, with S. at the taking 
of Wareham, i. 59; at the storming of 
Abbotsbury, 63 ; his opposition to Bare- 
bone's Parliament, 101 ; named on the 
Council of State, 110. 



xlviii 



INDEX. 



T. 

Taunton besieged by the Royalists, re- 
lieved by ., i. 72, App. II. xxx. 

Temple, Sir William, negotiates Triple 
Alliance, ii'. 11 ; sent to the Hague to 
support it, 13; ascribes "Stop of the 
Exchequer" to Clifford, 65; again sent 
to the Hague, peace of Nimeguen con- 
cluded, 276 ; his account of new Privy 
Council, 325 ; promotes design for intro- 
ducing the Prince of Orange, 339 ; dis- 
missed as Privy Councillor, 387. 

" Test Act " (see Religion). 

Tewkesbury, a hunt dinner at, represented 
in Parliament by S., i. 27, 28, 30, App. I. 
xxi; S, again elected for, 112. 

Thanet House, Aldersgate Street, occupied 
by S., ii. 225, 400 ; S. arrested at, 412 ; S. 
absconds from, to avoid arrest, concealed 
in the City and Wapping, his flight to 
Holland, 446, 447. 

Thurland, Baron, speech of S. on swearing 
him in, ii. App. V. lix. 

Thynne, Thomas, presents petition JJpr 
meeting of Parliament, rejected by 
Charles II ii. 355. 

Tillotson, Bishop, his attempt to induce 
Lord William Russell to disavow his" 
opinions, ii. App. VIII. cxxvi. 

Timber, remarks by S. on planting, ii. 50. 

Tongue, a perjured witness with Titus 
Gates, ii. 287, 291. 

Tooker, , guardian of S., i. 13. 

Tower of London, secured for the Parlia- 
ment by S., i. 200, 202; his letter to 
Fleetwood thereon, App. V. Ixxiv ; S. 
committed thei-e for disputing legality 
of long prorogation, ii. 232; his treat- 
ment, 234, 236, 240, 247, 249, 250 ; kept 
in confinement by adjournments of Par- 
liament, petitions the King, 237 ; appears 
in King's Bench on habeas corpus, offers 
bail, judges have no jurisdiction, ^39 ; 
his speech, App. VI. xciv ; petitions 
King and Duke of York, circular letter 
to Peers, 250254 ; petitions House of 
Lords, debate thereon, is heai'd, makes 
submission, and is released, ii. 257200, 
265 ; visitors to him in confinement, 261 ; 
record of imprisonment afterwards can- 
celled, 260 ; five. Roman Catholic Peers 
imprisoned, 297; Lord Howard of Escrick 
committed for treason, 411 ; S. com- 
mitted, 413 ; applies for trial or bail, 
refused, 414; his illness, kindness of Sir 
Thomas Cheke, the Lieutenant, 415; 
further applications for trial or bail 
refused, attempt of ministers to 
strengthen evidence, 416 ; 8. indicts 
magistrate and witnesses, indictment 
rejected, 417 ; applies for leave to retire 
to Carolina, the King refuses, 419 ; tried 
by special commission, 419 ; judge's 
charge, evidence, grand jury ignore the 
bill, 421 425 ; fresh endeavours to 
strengthen evidence, 419, 420, 421 ; S. 
released on bail, his bail discharged, 



441 ; joy at his acquittal, 427, 441 ; 
mysterious death of Lord Essex, App. 
VIII. cxxv. 

Trade and Plantations, Council for, S. 
appointed a member, i. 249 ; his atten- 
tion to these subjects, 277 ; measures 
for improvement of trade, proposed by 
him, ii. 6; new Council, Earl of Sand- 
wich president, 8 ; S. appointed presi- 
dent, Lord Culpeppei' vice-president, 
Waller and Evelyn members of Council, 
Locke secretary, 93 ; Council superseded 
by Charles II., Committee of Privy 
Council appointed, 222 ; Parliamentary 
report on 'decay of, App. I. v ; advice 
Qf S. to Charles II. for its development, 
described by Martyn, App. I. ix. 

Travelling 'in the seventeenth century, 
i. 286, 287. 

Treasury, death of Earl of Southampton, 
Treasury put in Commission, i. 304 ; S. 
appointed a Commissioner, 305 ; Pepys' 
note on management of Commission, 
308 ; Charles li.'s proposal to make S. 
Lord Treasurer, refused ii. 90, App. III. 
xxvi ; Clifford appointed Lord Treasurer, 
97 ; speech of S. on swearing him in, 
App ^. Mi ; Danby succeeds him, 144; 
speech of S. on swearing him in, 145, 
App. V. Ixi ; Dauby disinissed, office put 
in Commission, 320 ; Essex resigns as 
First Commissioner, post refused by S., 
taken by Laurence Hyde, 352. 

Tregonwell, John, account of him by S., 
i. App. I. vii, viii, xviii ; Lord Digby's 
quarrel with S. at his house, ii. 215. 

Trenchard, Sir Thomas, notice of by S., 
App. I. xix. 

Trial and acquittal of S., 421425. 

Trial and execution of Charles I., 85. 

Trial of the regicides (see Regicides). 

Triennial Act repealed, i. 277. 

Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and 
Sweden against France, ii. 9; intrigues 
to break it, 12 ; Dryden accuses S. of 
breaking it, 69. 

"Tucking" freshmen, an old custom at 
Oxford, i. 17, App. I. xii. 

Tunbridge, visit of S. to, i. 75. 

U. 

Uniformity (see Act of Uniformity). 
Uvedall, Sir William, account of him by 
S., i. App. I. xvii. 



Vane executed as a regicide, i. 248. 
Vicars's Parliamentary Chronicle, on the 
storming of Abbotsbury, by S., i. 64. 

W. 

Waller, Edmund, member of Council of 

Trade and Plantations, ii. 93. 
Waller, Sir William, Parliamentary Gene- 

ral, his connexion with S., i. 58, 69. 
Waller, Sir William, takes refuge at Am- 



INDEX. 



xlix 



sterdam, admitted a burgher, ii. 452 ; 
offer of Massal to murder him, 455. 

Walfingford House (site of the present 
Admiralty), the residence of Fleetwood, 
i. 167 ; meetings there to oppose Richard 
Cromwell, 169, 173, 188, App. III. lix, ' 
Ixi, App. V. Ixxv. 

War cup, a magistrate, prepares charge of 
treason against S., ii. 413; indicted by 
S., admission of indictment refused, 417. 

Wardrobe of S. in 1672, ii. 102. 

Wards (see Court of Wards). 

Wareham, garrisoned by the Royalists,, 
taken by S., i. 59, App II. xxix; its 
destruction proposed by S. , 69. 

Warwick, Earl of, proposed marriage of 
his niece to S.'s son, letter from S. to 
the Earl, ii. 32, 33. 

Weymouth, surrendered to the .King's 
army, i. 4^ ; S. appointed governor, 45 ; 
retaken by Essex, 58. 1 

Wharton, Lord, supports motion for dis- 
solution in consequence of prorogation 
for fifteen months, ii. 230 ; ordered to 
ask pardon, refuses, sent to the Tower, 
232 ; petitions King for release, 237 ; 
released, 239 ; record of imprisonment 
cancelled, 260. 

Wheelock, John, servant of S., accom- 
panies him in his flight, ii. 451 ; S. dies 
in his arms, 455 ; legacy left -to him by 
8., 458. ' 

Whitelocke's allusions to S. , i. 76. 

"Whole Duty of Man," its authorship, 
i. 22. 

Wight, Isle of, S. appointed Governor, 
i. 213, 249. 

Wilkins, Dr., appointed Bishop of Chester, 
joins in a scheme of "comprehension" 
of Dissenters, ii. 6. 

Wilkinson, Captain Henry, endeavour to 
suborn him to give evidence against S.. 
ii. 419. 

William III. (see Orange, Prince of). 

Williamson, Sir Joseph, Secretary of State, 
extracts from his correspondence, ii. 136, 
142, 150, 155, 249, 307, App. III. xxxii. 

Willis, Dr., consulted by S. at Oxford, 
i. 294. 

Wilson, Samuel, secretary to S., com- 
mitted for treason, ii. 419 ; removed by 
habeas corpus, 440. 

Wiltshire, S. appointed sheriff (1647), i. 80, 
83 ; represented by S. in Barebone's 
Parliament, 95 ; S. elected member for, 
112 ; again elected, but excluded by the 
Council of State, 124; takes his seat 
under the "Petition and Advice," 136; 
represented by S. in Richard Cromwell's 
Parliament, 147. 

Wimborne St. Giles, Shaftesbury's birth- 
place, i. 1, 4; church rebuilt by his 
father, 4j S. lays first stone of his house 



there, 86; S. created "Baron Ashley' 
of Wimborne St. Giles, extract from his 
patent of peerage, 256 ; S. visited there 
by Charles II., 289 ; Locke resides with 
S. there, ii. 35, 38; described as "sweet 
St. Giles" by Lady Ashley, daughter-in- 
law of S., 39; letter from S. to his 
bailiff, on planting timber, apple trees, 
&c., 49 ; "orders for Lord Shaftesbury's 
house, settled July 1675," 211 ; funeral 
of S. at, 461. 

Worcestershire, when visited by S., i. 27, 
App. I. xxi. 

Wrestling match in St. James's Park, for 
1,000?. before Charles II., ii. 45. 

Wyche, his "Vindication" of S., Preface, 
xx. 



York, Charles I. at, i. 55. 

York, Ann Hyde, Duchess of, anecdote of 
her, ii. 104 ; her death, 141. 

York, Duke of (afterwards James II.), 
opposes High Church measures, i. 263 ; 
attends the cabal, or Cabinet (1667), 
ii. 3 ; supports alliance with France 
against Holland, 13 ; becomes a Roman 
Catholic, meeting at his house to esta- 
blish that religion, 16 ; opposes Lord 
Roos's Remarriage Act, 42 ; quarrels with 
S. about his place in the House of Lords, 
118 ; resigns office on passing of Test Act, 
death of his wife, Ann Hyde, 141 ; com- 
ments on his retirement and avowed 
Popery, 142, 143 ; marriage with Mary 
of Modena, 147 ; addresses against it from 
House of Commons, 152.; letter to him 
from S. when prisoner in the Tower, 253 ; 
promotes alliance against France, 255 ; in- 
trigues with S. ami others for dissolution 
and removal of Dan by, S. 's memorandum, 
the Duke's perversion of the truth, 283 
285 ; letters of Coleman pressing the 
Duke's claims to assistance from France. 
295 ; address proposed for his removal 
from the Privy Council, he withdraws, 
298; new Parliament adverse to him, 
306 ; makes conditions for leaving Eng- 
land, 308 ; departs for Brussels, 309 ; ac- 
count by S. of his character and conduct, 
314 ; resolution of Parliament against 
him, 330 ; bill for kis exclusion from the 
succession, 331 ; proposal to make him 
King of the Romans, 340 ; sent for on 
illness of Charles II., 343; returns to 
Brussels, 344 ; sent for by Charles, 356 ; 
d by S. and others as a recusant, 
.jury dismissed, 360 ; urged by 
7Miuisters to leave England, 370; he 
>t the King's request, 371 ; ex- 
it of Charles II. for his governing 
.vgenoy, 404; rejected, 405; his 
< induct as King, 462, 



A LIFE 

OF 

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPEK, 

FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. 



LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. 



CHAPTEE I. 

16211639. 



EBRATUM. 

Vol. I. page 10, line 22, for "wish" read "wit." 

WAIU. cuoi-Gia-iii-iaw, xjauj oavue, moiiier 01 ijoru namax, ana 
Pakington Sketch of his youth. 

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, the future Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, was bom on July 22, 1621, the nineteenth year 
of the reign of James the First. He has himself been 
careful to note that he was born " early in the 
morn," and that he was "the eldest child then living 
of his father and mother." 1 His father was John 
Cooper, created in the next year a baronet, of Kock- 
borne in Hampshire. 2 His mother was Anne, the only 
child of Sir Anthony Ashley, knight, who was also in 

1 Autobiographical Sketch of 1646 prefixed to Diary, Appendix II. 

2 Kockborne is close to the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, 
" within a few miles of Wimborne St. Giles. 

VOL. L B 



LIFE OF SHAFTESBTJRY. 



CHAPTER I. 

16211639. 

Birth and parentage Baronetcies of father and maternal grand- 
father The Coopers and Ashleys Sir Anthony Ashley Death 
of mother and of father Sir A. A. Cooper a King's ward 
Losses of property by Court of Wards Litigation with Sir Francis 
Ashley and Denzil Holies Sir A. A. Cooper's wealth His 
guardians Goes to Exeter College, Oxford, when sixteen His 
life at Oxford Entered at Lincoln's Inn Marries at eighteen 
daughter of Lord Keeper Coventry Predictions of a German 
astrologer His brothers-in-law, Henry anfl Sir William Ooveirtry, 
and sisters-in-law, Lady Savile, mother of Lord Halifax, and Lady 
Pakington Sketch of his youth. 

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, the future Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, was born on July 22, 1621, the nineteenth year 
of the reign of James the First. He has himself been 
careful to note that he was born " early in the 
morn," and that he was "the eldest child then living 
of his father and mother." 1 His father was John 
Cooper, created in the next year a baronet, of Kock- 
borne in Hampshire. 2 His mother was Anne, the only 
child of Sir Anthony Ashley, knight, who was also in 

1 Autobiographical Sketch of 1646 prefixed to Diary, Appendix 11. 

2 Rockborne is close to the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, 
and within a few miles of Wimborne St. Giles. 

^ I. B 



2 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

the next year made a baronet, of Wimborne St. Giles 
in Dorsetshire. He was born in his grandfather's 
house at Wimborne St. Giles, near Cranborne; "he 
was nursed," he has written himself, " at Cranborne 
by one Persee, a tanner's wife." l 

The date of Sir Anthony Ashley's baronetcy is 
July 3, 1622, and that of Sir John Cooper's the day 
after. The order of baronets had been created by 
James the First ten years before, and in the present 
year he completed the number, two hundred, of which 
it was originally provided that the order should consist, 
and which, it had also been stipulated, was never to be 
exceeded. Every baronet then paid one thousand and 
ninety-five pounds for the honour. No one was admitted 
to it who was not possessed of a thousand pounds a 
year, clear of encumbrances, and who could not prove 
descent from a grandfather on the father's side who had 
borne arms. 2 

" My parents on both sides of a noble stock, being of 
the first rank of gentry in those countries where they 
lived," is Shaftesbury's own account of his ancestry. 3 
The Coopers appear to have been persons of con- 
sideration in the West of England, for at least two 
generations before Sir John Cooper, the father. 4 Henry 
the Eighth granted the manor of Paulet in Somerset- 
shire, taken from the Gaunt's Hospital in Bristol, to 
Kichard Cooper of Eockborne, Sir John Cooper's grand- 

1 Autobiographical Sketch. 

2 By the rules of the order every baronet was also a knight ; so 
Shaftesbury, in the Fragment of Autobiography, describes his father 
as " knight and baronet." (Appendix I.) 

3 Fragment of Autobiography, Appendix I. 

4 Collins's Peerage (Brydges), iii. 545. 



1621. HIS ANCESTRY. 3 

father. 1 Sir John Cooper's father was member of 
Parliament for Whitchurch, in Hampshire, in 1586. 
and received the honour of knighthood from Queen 
Elizabeth. Sir John Cooper himself sat in the House 
of Commons for Poole, in the first and third parlia- 
ments of Charles the First, 1625 and 1628. 2 

Shaftesbury's lineage on the mother's side was more 
ancient and distinguished. The Ashleys, a younger 
branch of an ancient Wiltshire family, 3 had been 
planted at Wimborne St. Giles since the reign of Henry 
the Sixth ; and their ancestors, traced through heirs 
female, had been lords of that manor from before the 
reign of Edward the First. 4 Sir Anthony Ashley in- 
herited the property late in life, on the death of his 
cousin, Sir Henry Ashley, without issue. 5 He had been 
bred to public employment, and had probably already 
enriched himself in the service of the State. He had 
been for many years one of the Clerks of the Privy 
Council. In 1589 he went as Royal Commissioner in 
Norris and Drake's expedition against Portugal, and in 
1596 he was Commissioner for embarking the troops 
and Secretary to the Council of War in the expedition 
of Lords Effingham and Essex against Cadiz. 6 Essex 
knighted him with many others after the capture of 
Cadiz. On his return home he was charged with 

1 Collinson's Hist, of Somersetshire, iii. 100. 

2 Willis's Not. Parl. ii. 411. He was John Pym's colleague. 
Coker's Survey of Dorsetshire, p. 14. 

4 See the Ashley pedigree in Hutchins's Hist, of Dorsetshire, iii. 174. 

5 Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, Ashley of Wimborne St. Giles. 

6 Camden, Ann. Elizabeth (Hearne), p. 720. Strype's Annals of 
Reform, iv. 400. Some of Shaftesbury's biographers have made the 
mistake of calling Sir A. Ashley Secretary at War to Queen Elizabeth. 
There was no such office in those days. 

B2 



4 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

peculation, was imprisoned, and was for some time in 
disgrace. When, late in life, he became the proprietor 
of Wimborne St. Giles, he was a liberal benefactor 
of the parish. He rebuilt the parish church, and built 
and endowed almshouses for the relief of eleven old 
persons. 2 He is said to have introduced the cultivation 
of cabbages from Holland. 3 

Shaftesbury appears to have derived from his mother's 
side the "pigmy body" of Dryden's satire. He describes 
Sir Anthony Ashley as " of a large mind in all his 
actions, his person of the lowest," and he says that 
" his daughter was of the same stature ; " while of Sir 
John Cooper, his father, he says that he was "very 
lovely and graceful both in face and person, of a mode- 
rate stature, neither too high nor too low." 4 

Old Sir Anthony Ashley felt the liveliest interest in 
the grandchild born to inherit the ancient possessions 
of his house. He caused him to be christened, in devia- 
tion from custom, with the double name of Anthony 
Ashley ; " for notwithstanding," says Shaftesbury, " my 
grandfather had articled with my father and his 
guardians that he should change his name to Ashley, 

1 Archoeologia, xxii. 172 ; Birch's Mem. of Q. Eliz. ii. 49, 95, 144, 
171. Several letters preserved in the Cotton and Lansdowne MSS. in 
the British Museum show that Sir A. Ashley's official life was not free 
from suspicion on other occasions. 

2 Hutchins's Hist, of Dorsetshire, iii. 193. 

8 Evelyn's " Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets : " " Tis scarce a. hundred 
years since we first had cabbages out of Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley 
of Wiberg St. Giles in Dorsetshire being, as I am told, the first who 
planted them in England." The "Acetaria" was published in 1699. 
Ben Jonsoii in his " Volpone," first acted in 1605, describes a busy 
newsmonger as receiving weekly intelligence " out of the Low Countries 
in cabbages." 

4 Fragment of Autobiography, Appendix I. 



1628. HIS MOTHER'S DEATH. 5 

yet, to make all sure in the eldest, he resolved to alter 
his name so that it should not be parted with." 1 In the 
same year, 1621, in which Anthony Ashley Cooper was 
born, the old grandfather, then in his seventieth year, 
married a second wife, a very young lady, by name 
Philippa Sheldon, related to the great favourite, the 
Duke of Buckingham. But this second marriage seems 
to have made no ill-will ; a daughter born to Sir 
John and Lady Cooper two years later was christened 
Philippa after Lady Cooper's stepmother. Sir Anthony 
Ashley lived long enough to choose his grandson's first 
tutor, whom he chose because he was a Puritan, and 
he died, at the age of seventy-six, on January 13, 
1628. 2 Anthony Ashley Cooper was then in his 
seventh year. 

Six months after his grandfather's death Anthony 
Ashley Cooper's mother died of small-pox. Her death 
was on the twentieth of July, 1628. She left two chil- 
dren besides Anthony, a daughter Philippa, two years 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. Two Christian names were then 
uncommon. Sir Simonds P'Ewes, having occasion to name Sir A A. 
Cooper in 1641, in his Journal of the Long Parliament, explains, "He 
named Anthony Ashley in his baptism " (Harl. MSS. in British 
Museum, 162, p. 213 a). Cromwell is said to have called him Marcus 
Tullius Cicero, the little man with three names. (Martyn's Life of 
Shaftesbury, i. 168.) Camdcn mentions that there was a provision in 
Sir John Cooper's marriage settlement, that, if he or any of his heirs 
should obtain a peerage, the title was to be Ashley (Britannia, Gibson's 
ed. i. 63) ; and this is confirmed by a note of the fourth Earl of Shaftes- 
bury preserved in the family papers, stating on the authority of 
Mr. Stringer, that Sir A. A. Cooper was ignorant of such a stipulation 
when he chose the title of Baron Ashley after the Restoration, and was 
much rejoiced, on his afterwards becoming acquainted with the settle- 
ment, that he had unwittingly complied with this provision. 

2 Sir A. Ashley's young widow married Carew Raleigh, the son of 
Sir Walter, and survived her second husband, who died in 1667. Sir 
A. Ashley's first wife, Shaftesbury's grandmother, was Jane, daughter 
of Philip Okeover, Esq. , of Okeover in Staffordshire. 



6 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAR I. 

younger than Anthony, and a son George, two years 
younger than Philippa. 1 

Sir John Cooper afterwards made a second marriage 
with Lady Morrison, widow of Sir Charles Morrison, 
knight, of Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, and one of the 
daughters and co-heiresses of the great City mercer, 
Sir Baptist Hicks, created by Charles the First Viscount 
Campden. 2 He died within three years after his first 
wife's death, March 23, 1631. He had no children 
by his second wife. She had had one daughter by Sir 
Charles Morrison, who lived to inherit Cashiobury, and 
who passed it to the family to which it still belongs : 
for she became the wife of the gallant, ill-fated Lord 
Capel, the victim of one of the Commonwealth High 
Courts of Justice, and was the mother of the not less 
ill-fated Earl of Essex, a political associate of Shaftes- 
bury in the reign of Cha,rles the Second, whose myste- 
rious death in the Tower on the morning of Lord 
Eussell's trial is one of the melancholy incidents of 
the Eye House Plot. Cashiobury being the jointure 
house of his second wife, Sir John Cooper lived there 
frequently with his family after his second marriage, 
and Cashiobury was thus the home of Lord Shaftesbury 
during a portion of his boyish years. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper had lost both his parents 
before he completed his tenth year. He inherited, with 
other property, very extensive estates in the four counties 

1 Philippa Cooper married Sir Adam Brown, baronet, of Betchworth 
Castle in Surrey, and died at a very advanced age in 1701. (Aubrey's 
Surrey, ii 307.) George Cooper married, in 1647, one of the daughters 
and co-heiresses of Alderman Oldfield, of London. 

2 Banks's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, iii. 140. 



1631. ENCUMBERED INHERITANCE. 7 

of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somerset- 
shire. 1 But Sir John Cooper had encumbered this 
inheritance by gambling and extravagance, and the 
young baronet's fortune was now further injured by the 
gross injustice of a relative, by maladministration of 
the Court of Wards, and by great litigation. 

Inheriting estates held by tenure of knight-service of 
the Crown, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper became a King's 
ward ; and all his property so held was, during his 
minority, under the control of the Court of Wards. 
Sir John Cooper had left considerable debts, and now, 
by corrupt means and by the active instrumentality of 
Sir Francis Ashley, a brother of old Sir Anthony, an 
order for sale was obtained from the Court of Wards, 
by which the young baronet's interests were greatly 
injured. Sir Francis Ashley was the King's Serjeant, 
and as such had great influence with the Attorney of 
the Court of Wards. Thus he obtained a decree of sale 
in which his own friends were named commissioners to 
the exclusion of the trustees appointed by Sir John 
Cooper, 2 and properties were sold, much below their 

1 See the report of the Inquisition held at Rockborne under the 
Court of Wards after Sir J. Cooper's death, in Collins' s Peerage 
(Brydges), iii. 546. The only property there mentioned, out of the 
four western counties, is "in the county of Middlesex, a messuage in 
Holborn, called the Black Bull, and divers tenements in Muschamps." 
It appears from the Diary, that Ely Rents, Holborn, formed part of 
Sir John Cooper's estate (Append. II., November 29, 1647). Sir A. A. 
Cooper inherited other property, which did not come under the Court 
of Wards. In the Diary are mentioned a plantation in Barbadoes and 
an estate in Derbyshire (March 23, 1646; September 11, 1649). 

2 Sir Francis Ashley does not appear to have been one of the com- 
missioners himself, though Shaftesbury, in the Fragment of Auto- 
biography, says that he was. Many papers relating to these proceedings 
are preserved in the records of the Court of Wards in the Chapter 
House, where I have seen a list of the commissioners, which does not 
contain Sir F. Ashley's name. 



LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

value, to Sir Francis Ashley and some of the commis- 
sioners themselves. The trustees, however, refused to 
convey the lands to these purchasers, and applied to 
the Court of Wards for time to sell to greater advantage, 
and for permission for Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper to 
buy, he having property not in wardship from which he 
could do so. This was refused, unless the purchaser 
should consent. One, the purchaser of Pawlett, con- 
sented; 1 but Sir Francis Ashley and Mr. Tregonwell, 
a Dorsetshire neighbour, who had contracted for Eock- 
borne, were obdurate. The trustees were then ordered 
by the Court to convey the estates to those purchasers 
who insisted ; they refused, and were put in prison and 
not released till they had executed the conveyances. 2 
" Thus," says Shaftesbury, in his Autobiography, " was 
my estate torn and rent from me before niy face by the 
injustice and oppression of that Court, near relations, 
and neighbours, who, I may truly say, have been 
twenty thousand pound damage to me." 

Shaftesbury proceeds to relate how he ultimately 



1 Pawlett was bought for Sir A. A. Cooper for 2,500?. (Diary, Jan. 21, 
1648.) His property of Ely Rents, Holborn, was bought for him for 
1.800Z. (Ibid. Nov. 29, 1647.) 

2 The account in the text is taken from the Fragment of Auto- 
biography. But who were " the trustees " imprisoned is doubtful. 
The three trustees appointed by Sir John Cooper's will were Sir Daniel 
Norton, Mr. Edward Tooker (his brother-in-law), and Mr. Hannam of 
Wimborne ; the last declined to act. It appears by a note among the 
papers at St. Giles's, that Robert "Wallop and Francis Treuchard were 
committed to the Fleet, June 16, 1634, for refusing to assign Darner- 
ham and Loders to Sir F. Ashley. It is therefore probable that sales 
had been actually made by the trustees of Sir John Cooper's will to 
friends in trust for Sir Anthony ; and that "Wallop and Trenchard, the 
friends to whom Damerham and Loders were so sold in trust, were the 
trustees imprisoned. Wallop was in this way trustee for Ely Rents. 
(Diary, November 29, 1648.) 



1631. LITIGATION IN COURT OF WARDS. 

recovered Rockborne, and behaved generously to his 
ungenerous neighbour's descendant : 

"Yet Mr. Tregonwell had not good success in his 
hard dealing, for he was so greedy of a good bargain 
that he looked not into his title, and this manor proved 
entailed on my father's marriage with my mother, my 
father having left this out of the fine he passed on all 
his other lands when he conveyed them for the discharge 
of his debts, not intending to sell the place of his 
father's bones, especially when his other land would 
more than serve to pay all. This blot was soon hit, 
when I came to manage my own matters ; and Mr. 
Tregonwell's grandchild and myself came to an agree- 
ment, I suffering him to enjoy his own and his lady's 
life in the manor, in which I designed to bury all 
animosity or ill-will as well as lawsuits betwixt the 
families." 

With Sir Francis Ashley there was further litigation. 
The trustees, after the forced conveyance, preferred a 
bill against him to enforce execution of a trust to which 
the property was subject, and which he tried to evade. 
Sir Francis, knowing that the trustees derived the means 
of litigation from an estate of Sir Anthony's which was 
not in wardship, then made an endeavour to bring this 
property within the control of the Court of Wards. 
The property thus exempt from wardship had come to 
the young baronet from his grandfather, probably under 
his mother's marriage settlement, and the deed had been 
drawn by the famous Noy, who was at this moment 
Attorney-General. Shaftesbury, describing these pro- 
ceedings when he. was an old man, speaks of this last 



10 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

endeavour of Sir Francis Ashley as a wicked design for 
the total ruin of his fortune. His trustees made him 
go himself to Noy to endeavour to prevail on him to 
be his counsel. The influence of the Attorney- General 
in the Court of Wards would probably be all-availing ; 
but he might, on the other hand, be unwilling to appear 
against the Crown. 

" Mr. Noy was then the King's Attorney, who being 
a very intimate friend of my grandfather's had drawn 
that settlement ; my friends advised that I was in great 
danger if he would not undertake my cause, and yet 
it being against the King, it was neither proper nor 
probable he would meddle in it for me ; but weighing 
the temper of the man, the kindness he had for my 
grandfather, and his honour so concerned if a deed 
of that consequence should fail of his drawing, they 
advised that I must be my own solicitor, and carry 
the deed myself alone to him, which, being but thirteen 
years old, I undertook, and performed with that pert- 
ness that he told me he would defend my cause 
though he lost his place. I was at the Court, and he 
made good his word to the full without taking one 
penny fees." l 

Sir Francis Ashley appeared for himself. 

" My Lord Cottington was then Master of the Wards, 
who, sitting with his hat over his eyes, and having 
heard Sir Francis make a long and elegant speech for 
the overthrowing of my deed, said openly, ' Sir Francis, 
you have spoke like a good uncle.' Mr. Attorney Noy 
argued for me, and my uncle rising up to reply (I 
being then present in Court), before he could speak two 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. 



1634. LITIGATION IN COURT OF WARDS. 11 

words, he was taken with a sudden convulsion fit, his 
mouth drawn to his ear, was carried out of the Court, 
and never spoke more." l 

This was in 1634, and in 1641 there was still liti- 
gation about Sir Francis Ashley's purchases between 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and the heir of Sir Francis, 
the celebrated Denzil Holies, who had married Sir 
Francis Ashley's only child. 2 

The exactions and corruptions of the Court of Wards 
were soon to have an end. The Civil War broke it up, 
and its functions then ceased, never to be revived, for 
one of the first acts of the legislature after the Eestora- 
tion was the abolition of the Court of Wards and the 
military tenures connected with it; and Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper was then able to avenge the losses of his 
youth by giving a helping hand for the abolition. 3 

There is no reliable account of the extent of Shaftes- 
bury's fortune, but with all the losses of his youth he 
undoubtedly remained a wealthy man. The rental 
which he inherited is stated to have been eight thousand 

1 Sir Richard Baker notes Sir F. Ashley's death as, "by the will of 
God," November 20, 1635. (Chronicle, p. 417, ed. 1684.) Noy, who 
was made Attorney-General in January 1634, died August 9, 1635. 
(Howel's Letters, i. 241; Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. i. 211.) There 
must therefore be a mistake in Baker's date of Sir F. Ashley's death. 
Sir F. Ashley was a conspicuous defender of the arbitrary system of 
Charles the First, and was committed to custody by the House of Lords 
in 1628, on account of the violence with which he argued at the bar of 
that House for the Crown, against the Petition of Right. 

2 It appears by a note preserved among the family papers that Sir 
F. Ashley had promised to reconvey Damerham and Loders, two of the 
manors he had become possessed of, to Sir A. A. Cooper, when he became 
of full age, and that there was a suit against Holies to compel execution 
of this promise. On February 13, 1637, the Court declared the promise 
voluntary and not binding, and pronounced Holles's demurrer good in 
bar of Sir A. A. Cooper's suit. 

3 " Sir A. A. Cooper spoke against the Court of "Wards and for the 
Excise." (Parl. Hist. iv. 148, November 21, 1660.) 



12 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

a year, 1 which would be equivalent to more than 
twenty thousand at present. He estimates his losses by 
the Court of Wards at twenty thousand pounds, which 
at the then rate of eight per cent, interest would be 
a loss of 1,600/. a year. He may have made some 
addition to his property by his three marriages with 
daughters of peers, of Lord Coventry, the Earl of 
Exeter, and Lord Spencer of Wormleighton. He was, 
through life, careful of his fortune and eager to improve 
his income by trade and speculation. On the other 
hand it is to be said, both to the honour of his character 
and as a sign of his wealth, that there is no trace of his 
having made any unworthy gains in the confiscations 
of the Commonwealth, or of his having received or 
sought any of the various grants so profusely given by 
Charles the Second among his ministers and courtiers. 

After his father's death Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 
with his brother and sister, lived with one of the trustees 
of his father's appointment, Sir Daniel Norton, at South- 
wick, near Portsmouth. His first tutor, the Puritan 
whom Sir Anthony Ashley had chosen, now left him. 
This tutor, by name Guerden, became afterwards a 
physician, and, Shaftesbury says, had great practice in 
London. Shaftesbury was an acute discerner of cha- 
racter ; and if the following account of his first tutor 
gives the recollections of a boy of ten, his powers of 
discernment must have been developed early : " This 
man was moderately learned, a great lover of money, 
and had neither piety proportionable to the great pro- 
fession he made, nor judgment and parts to support the 

1 Rawleigli Redivivus, p. 6 ; Martyn's Life, i. 36. 



1635. CHANGE OF GUARDIAN. 13 

good opinion he had of himself; but he served well 
enough for what he was designed for, being formal, and 
not vicious." 1 In Sir Daniel Norton's house he had 
for tutor a Mr. Fletcher, of whom all that Shaftesbury 
tells us is, that he was " a very excellent teacher of 
grammar." 

He now went often to London, in term-time, with Sir 
Daniel Norton, who was obliged frequently to go there 
on his ward's business. " He very often took me with 
him," says Shaftesbury, " as thinking my presence, 
though very young, might work some compassion on 
the Court, or those that should have been my friends." 
Sir Daniel Norton died in 1635, and the three young 
Coopers then went to live with another trustee, Mr. 
Tooker, who had married a sister of Sir John Cooper, 
and who lived at Salisbury, and at Madington, eight 
miles from Salisbury. Lady Norton had wished that 
they should continue with her, looking to the young 
baronet as a good match for one of her daughters, and 
Shaftesbury owns that his young heart was a little 
touched. " Truly, if the condition of my litigious 
fortune had not necessitated me to other thoughts for 
support and protection, the sweetness of the disposition 
of that young lady had made me look no further for a 
wife." He chose to go and live with his uncle Tooker, 
and his brother and sister accompanied him : 

" My uncle Tooker and Sir Walter Erie both also 
pretended to take care of me ; Sir Walter Erie's son, 
Mr. Thomas Erie, being of the same age with me, and 
there being the nearest friendship betwixt us was 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. 



14 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

imaginable in our years, which increased as we grew 
older, and never to expire but in both our deaths. But 
my being so very young was assisted with the troubles 
I had already undergone in my own affairs, having now 
for several years been inured to the complaints of 
miseries from near relations and oppressions from men 
in power, being forced to learn the world faster than my 
book, and in that I was no ill proficient : yet I had for 
my diversion both hounds and hawks of my own. I 
chose my uncle Tooker, my surviving trustee, for my 
guardian, he being most versed in my affairs, my nearest 
relation, and had the reputation of a worthy man, as 
indeed he proved. He was a very honest, industrious 
man, an hospitable, prudent person, much valued and 
esteemed, dead and alive, by all that knew him." 1 

Having had for about a year before going to the 
University a third tutor, of whom no more is known 
than that he was a Master of Arts, of Oriel College, 
Oxford, 2 Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was sent to Oxford 
in 1637, at the age of sixteen. 3 He was entered as a 
gentleman -commoner at Exeter College, the college 
chiefly resorted to from the western counties of England, 
which was then flourishing under the mastership of 
Dr. Prideaux, afterwards Bishop of Worcester. Shaftes- 
bury says in his Fragment of Autobiography, that he 
was "under the immediate tuition of Dr. Prideaux," and 
in the short sketch of his early life, written in 1646, he 
calls Dr. Prideaux his tutor, and mentions that Mr. 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 

* His name had been entered, according to Anthony Wood, in Lent 
Term, 1636. (Ath. Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 7.) 



1638. LIFE AT COLLEGE 15 

Hussey, "since minister of Hinton Martin/' 1 was his 
servitor. He stayed at Oxford not much longer than a 
year, and during this time he was entered as a student 
at Lincoln's Inn, and he probably went up to London 
from Oxford to keep law terms. 2 

It is likely that Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper gave 
little attention at Oxford to the studies of the Univer- 
sity, but it cannot be doubted that his brilliant abilities 
and strong will, afterwards so conspicuous on the world's 
stage, were otherwise exhibited. The cares of life had 
come early upon him and disturbed in boyhood the 
regularity of his education ; he had " learnt the world," 
in his own expressive words, " faster than his book ; " 
but the manly business of his boyhood had doubtless 
helped to quicken the development of his understanding 
and mould that character, compounded of grave failings 
and many excellent dispositions, which has made for 
him so chequered a fame. Shaftesbury's speeches and 
writings give ample evidence of early culture. 

His talents and genial character, aided by a liberal 
allowance and his social position, made him a leader 
among his college contemporaries. The following 
account of himself at college is not over-modest, but it 
has all the air of truthfulness : 

" I kept both horses and servants in Oxford, and was 
allowed what expense or recreation I desired, which 
liberty I never much abused ; but it gave me the oppor- 

1 In Dorsetshire ; and Shaftesbury, who was lord of the manor, had 
doubtless given his old servitor the living. 

2 Some of Shaftesbury's biographers have incorrectly made him 
member of Gray's Inn. His name is one of the last entered in the 
Lincoln's Inn register, in 13 Car. I. t 1H37-8. Lord Falkland's name 
is within four or five before it. 



16 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

tunity of obliging by entertainments the better sort, 
and supporting divers of the activest of the lower rank 
with giving them leave to eat, when in distress, upon my 
expense, it being no small honour among those sort of 
men that my name in the buttery-book willingly bore 
twice the expense of any in the University. This expense, 
my quality, proficiency in learning, and natural affability 
easily not only obtained the good- will of the wiser and 
elder sort, but made me the leader even of all the rough 
young men of that college, and did then maintain in the 
schools coursing against Christchurch, the largest and 
most numerous college in the University." 1 

Shaftesbury's account of " coursing " at Oxford, and 
of his own achievements in resisting the " tucking " of 
freshmen and a designed alteration of the "size" of 
college beer, is a most curious contribution to the 
knowledge of Oxford University life in the seventeenth 
century. 

" This coursing was in older times, I believe, intended 
for a fair trial of learning and skill in logic, metaphysics, 
and school divinity, but for some ages that had been 
the least part of it, the dispute quickly ending in affronts, 
confusion, and very often blows, when they went most 
gravely to work. They forbore striking, but making a 
great noise with their feet, they hissed, and shoved with 
their shoulders, and the stronger in that disorderly order 
drove the other out before them; and, if the schools 
were above stairs, with all violence hurrying the contrary 
party down, the proctors were forced either to give way 
to their violence or suffer in the throng. Nay, the Vice- 
Chancellor, though it seldom has begun when he was 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. 






1638. LIFE AT COLLEGE. 17 

present, yet being begun, he has sometimes unfortunately 
been so near as to be called in, and has been overcome 
in their fury once up, in these adventures. I was often 
one of the disputants, and gave the sign and order for 
their beginning; but being not strong of body, was 
always guarded from violence by two or three of the 
sturdiest youths, as their chief, and one who always 
relieved them when in prison, and procured their release; 
and very often was forced to pay the neighbouring 
farmers, when they of our party that wanted money were 
taken in the fact, for more geese, turkeys, and poultry 
than either they had stole or he had lost : it being very 
fair dealing if he made the scholar, when taken, pay no 
more than he had lost since his last reimbursement. 

" Two things I had also a principal hand in when I 
was at the college. The one, I caused that ill custom 
of tucking freshmen to be left off : the other, when the 
senior fellows designed to alter the beer of the college, 
which was stronger than other colleges, I hindered their 
design. This had put all the younger sort into a 
mutiny ; they resorting to me, I advised all those were 
intended by their friends to get their livelihood by their 
studies, to rest quiet and not appear, and that myself 
and all the others that were elder brothers or uncon- 
cerned in their angers, should go in a body and strike 
our names out of the buttery-book, which was accord- 
ingly done, and had the effect that the senior fellows, 
seeing their pupils 'going that yielded them most profit, 
presently struck sail and articled with us never to alter 
the size of our beer, which remains so to this day. 

" The first was a harder work, it having been a foolish 
custom of great antiquity, that one of the seniors in the 
evening called the freshmen (which are such as came 
since that time twelvemonth) to the fire, and made them 
hold out their chin, and they with the nail of their right 

VOL. i. c 



18 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

thumb, left long for that purpose, grate off all the skin 
from the lip to the chin, and then cause them to drink 
a beer-glass of water and salt. The time approaching 
when I should be thus used, I considered that it had 
happened in that year, more and lustier young gentle- 
men had come to the college than had done in several 
years before, so that the freshmen were a very strong 
body. Upon this I consulted my two cousin-germans, 
the Tookers, my aunt's sons, both freshmen, both stout 
and very strong, and several others, and at last the whole 
party were cheerfully engaged to stand stoutly to defence 
of their chins. We all appeared at the fires in the hall, 
and my Lord of Pembroke's son calling me first, as we 
knew by custom it would begin with me, I, according to 
agreement, gave the signal, striking him a box on the 
ear, and immediately the freshmen fell on, and we easily 
cleared the buttery and the hall ; but bachelors and 
young masters coming in to assist the seniors, we were 
compelled to retreat to a ground chamber in the quad- 
rangle. They pressing at the door, some of the stoutest 
and strongest of our freshmen, giant-like boys, opened 
the doors, let in as many as they pleased, and shut the 
door by main strength against the rest; those let in 
they fell upon, and had beaten very severely, but that 
my authority with them stopped them, some of them 
being considerable enough to make terms for us, which 
they did ; for Dr. Prideaux being called out to suppress 
the mutiny, the old Doctor, always favourable to youth 
offending out of courage, wishing with the fears of those 
we had within, gave us articles of pardon for what had 
passed, and an utter abolition in that college of that 
foolish custom." 1 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. Anthony "Wood describes this prac- 
tice of "tucking," as existing in Merton College when he entered in 
1647. 



1639. HIS MARRIAGE. 19 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper left Oxford before the 
usual time, and too soon to take a degree ; and on the 
twenty-fifth of February, 1639, when yet only eighteen, 
he was married to Margaret, a daughter of Lord 
Coventry, the Lord Keeper. His uncle and guardian, 
Tooker, had suggested this marriage, thinking that he 
had need of powerful friends. Sir Anthony, writing in 
1646, when this lady was alive, describes her as " a 
woman of excellent beauty and incomparable in gifts 
of nature and virtue." She died suddenly in 1649 ; and 
on the occasion of her death, Cooper wrote, in what is 
generally the most meagre and prosaic of diaries, this 
touching and exquisite piece of praise : 

" She was a lovely, beautiful, fair woman, a religious, 
devout Christian, of admirable wit and wisdom, beyond 
any I ever knew, yet the most sweet, affectionate, and 
observant wife in the world. Chaste, without a suspicion 
of the most envious, to the highest assurance of her 
husband ; of a most noble and bountiful mind, yet very 
provident in the least things ; exceeding all in anything 
she undertook, housewifery, preserving, works with the 
needle, cookery, so that her WISH and judgment were 
expressed in all things ; free from any pride or froward- 
ness, she was in discourse and counsel far beyond any 
woman." 

A German astrologer, Dr. Olivian, was one of Shaftes- 
bury's friends and companions in boyhood. He had 
been in old Sir Anthony Ashley's house when the 
young heir was born there ; he cast his nativity, and 
predicted for the infant a great career. He imbued the 
boy with a faith in astrology, which, according to Burnet, 

c2 



20 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

Shaftesbury retained in manhood. 1 Relying on his art, 
he had now endeavoured to persuade the young baronet 
to marry the sister of a Dorsetshire neighbour, Mr. 
Rogers. Shaftesbury thus tells the story : 

" This match Dr. Olivian, my great friend, earnestly 
pressed me to, not only as it was every way suitable and 
fit for me, but, as he positively affirmed, he saw by his 
art there would be feuds and great danger to me if it 
was not a match, and, if it were, he could assure me 
she would prove a vast fortune ; professing he had no 
concern in it above mine ; and I did truly believe so, 
but I told him I could not see a possibility of her 
being so great a fortune, or having considerable addition 
to her present portion, since her father had divers sons 
and sons married. He replied he was sure of the thing, 
but could not tell me how it should be ; and this lady, 
after marrying my Lord Maynard, by the death of her 
brothers and strange unequal humour of her father, 
came to be a very great fortune indeed." 

Thus one part of the prediction was verified ; the feuds 
and troubles predicted also arrived. Mr. Rogers became 
a rival for the hand of Margaret Coventry, and Sir 
Anthony never forgave the offence. " For Mr. Rogers, 
hearing where my address was, did, by the favour of 
my Lord Cottington, then a suitor to the elder sister, 
earnestly press to be admitted a servant to my mistress, 
but neither she nor her friends would admit it ; but yet 

1 " He had the dotage of astrology in him," says Burnet, " to a high 
degree ; he told me that a Dutch doctor had from the stars foretold 
him the whole series of his life." (Own Time, i. 96.) Another story is 
told in " Eawleigh Kedivivus," p. 7, of a prediction by the German 
doctor that Sir Anthony would have a narrow escape from drowning on 
a certain day, and the prediction is said to have been verified. 



1639. THE COVENTRY FAMILY. 21 

the offer and attempt was so open and avowed that it 
began a never reconciled feud betwixt us, he having 
offered me the highest injury, and merely out of 
malice." l 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's marriage with a daughter 
of Lord Coventry connected him with three persons who 
bear important parts in the politics of the reign of 
Charles the Second. Henry Coventry, one of his wife's 
brothers, was Secretary of State during seven years of 
that reign ; he had before been employed in diplomacy, 
and was joint plenipotentiary with Holies for the treaties 
of Breda. He was a man of probity, genial character, 
good judgment, and superior though not splendid abilities. 
Sir William Coventry, another brother, was a man of 
greater mental mark ; he was Secretary of the Lord 
High Admiral and the chief administrator of the 
Admiralty in the first seven years of diaries the 
Second's reign, was one of Charles's chief advisers at 
the time of Clarendon's fall, which he much helped to 
bring about, and was at that time, according to Burnet, 
expected to become chief minister; 2 but he suddenly 

1 Fragment of Autobiography. 

2 Burnet's Own Time, i. 265, and Lord Dartmouth's and Speaker 
Onslow's Notes. Sir W. Coventry has been erroneously supposed to 
be the author of the " Character of a Trimmer," which was written by 
his more celebrated nephew, Lord Halifax. Coventry distinctly denies 
the authorship in an interesting letter to his nephew, Thomas Thynne, 
afterwards Lord Weymouth, preserved at Longleat. He follows up the 
denial of the authorship of the tract by avowing himself to be a 
Trimmer. " I have not been ashamed to own myself to be indeed a 
Trimmer, not according as the Observator paints them, but (as I think 
the name was intended to signify) one who would sit upright, and not 
overturn the boat by swaying too much on either side." Sir "W. 
Coventry died in 1686, and left by his will 2,000. to the French 
refugees, and 3,OOOZ. to redeem slaves in Barbary. (Lady Russell's 
Letters, i. 193 ; Savile Correspondence, published by the Camden 
Society, pp. 293-5.) Marvel, in a satirical poem of 1667, introduces 



22 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I. 

lost the fickle King's favour, and was afterwards for 
many years one of the most able and respected members 
of the House of Commons. A sister of Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper's wife married Sir William Savile, baronet, 
of Thornhill in Yorkshire and Kufford in Nottingham- 
shire ; and of this marriage was born the witty, accom- 
plished, and eloquent Lord Halifax, who came to be a 
chief minister towards the end of the reign of Charles 
the Second, and was successively one of Shaftesbury's 
friends and coadjutors, and one of his keenest adver- 
saries in the last troubled years of Shaftesbury's life. 
Talent was largely given to the children of Lord 
Keeper Coventry ; another of his daughters, who 
married Sir John Pakington, a distinguished Cavalier 
baronet, is believed with good reason to have been 
the author, or one of the authors, of the " Whole Duty 
of Man." l 

An orphan at the age of nine ; at war, while a boy, 
with the rapacity and injustice of relatives ; forced, as 
he says of himself, to learn the world faster than his 
book, and called early by business to the thoughts and 
cares of manhood ; having inherited in childhood a title 
which was then a considerable distinction, and growing 
up to be the possessor of a large estate ; with no father's 

Sir William and Henry Coventry as the chosen leaders of the supporters 
of Government in the House of Commons during Charles the Second's 
first Dutch war : 

" All the two Coventries their generals chose, 
For one had much, the other nought to lose. 
Not better choice all accidents could hit, 
While hector Harry steers by Will the wit." 

1 See Ballard's Learned Ladies, p. 320. 



1639. SKETCH OF HIS YOUTH. 23 

authority to control, or mother's love to render gentle 
guidance, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper grew up to 
manhood under circumstances which may serve to 
account for something harsh and jarring in the course 
and character of the Earl of Shaftesbury. 



CHAPTEE II. 

16391644. 

Lives, after marriage, with his father-in-law Hanley bowling-green in 
Dorsetshire Sir A. A. Cooper's neighbours Lord Digby Visit 
to "Worcestershire with Mr. Coventry Elected member for Tewkes- 
bury, at age of eighteen, for the Short Parliament of April 1640 
Termination of Fragment of Autobiography The Parliament 
quickly dissolved Lord Coventry's death in January 1640 Letter 
of John Coventry, February 1640 Lord Savile's forged letter 
Petition of twelve peers to the King for a parliament Returned in 
a double return for Downton to Long Parliament Petitions 
Holies said to have prevented his being seated Came forward for 
the King in Dorsetshire in spring of 1643 Dispute about his being 
made Governor of Weymouth and Portland Ultimately appointed 
Letter from the King to Marquis of Hertford Appointed King's 
Sheriff of Dorsetshire In February 1644 goes over to the Parlia- 
ment His statement of his motives made before the Committee of 
both Kingdoms. 

SIR ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, being still a minor and 
not yet in possession of his property, lived, after his 
marriage, with his father-in-law the Lord Keeper, at 
Durham House in the Strand, and at Canonbury or 
Canbury House in Islington. 1 

He frequently visited Wimborne St. Giles, and im- 
proved his acquaintance with his Dorsetshire neigh- 
bours. Bowls was then a favourite game of the English 
gentry, and the county bowling-green a place of gather- 
ing. Sir Anthony frequented a bowling-green at Hanley, 

1 The Lord Keeper rented these two houses : Durham House from the 
Earl of Pembroke, and Canonbury or, as it was called, Caubury House 
from the Earl of Northampton. 



1639. WESTERN GENTRY. 25 

not far from Wimborne St. Giles, which was the weekly 
resort of the leading gentlemen of the eastern part of 
Dorsetshire. Here he used to meet his enemy, Mr. 
Rogers. 

" The eastern part of Dorsetshire had a bowling-green 
at . Hanley, where gentlemen went constantly once a 
week, though neither the green nor accommodation 
was inviting ; yet it was well placed to continue the 
correspondence of the gentry of those parts. Here I 
omitted no opportunity, and it was often given, to show 
Mr. Rogers, where his coach and six horses did not a 
little contribute to their envy. His garb, his discourse 
all spoke him one that thought himself above them ; 
which, when observed to them, they easily agreed to. 
My family alliances and fortune, being not prejudiced 
either by nature or education, gave me the juster 
grounds to take exceptions ; besides my affable, easy 
temper, now with care improved, rendered the stiffness 
of his demeanour more visible." x 

Shaftesbury has sketched in his Autobiography the 
characters of most of the leading gentry of Dorset- 
shire and Somersetshire at the time of his marriage. 
The longest and most finished of these sketches, that of 
Mr. Hastings of Woodlands, is generally known, having 
a place in the collection of the " British Essayists." 2 
It is a graphic description, written with great humour, 
pungency, and vigour. Most of the persons whom he 

1 Fragment of Autobiography, Appendix I. 

2 It is in the "Connoisseur," No. 81, August 14, 1755. It was firs 4 : 
printed in Dr. Leonard Howard's " Collection of Letters and State 
Papers," published in 1753. Horace Walpole, in his "Koyaland 
Noble Authors," made a mistake, which has been generally copied, in 
saying that it first appeared in Peck's "Desiderata Curiosa," where it 
is not to be found. 



26 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

has sketched are unknown to fame. But one young 
man who appears on this list of Dorsetshire gentry, 
Lord Digby, afterwards the second Earl of Bristol, was 
in four years from this time Secretary of State to 
Charles the First, and had a long political career, in which 
great abilities and great advantages were always preju- 
diced by vanity and indiscretion. " The Earl of Bristol 
was relieved from all business, and lived privately to 
himself ; but his son, the Lord Digby, a very handsome 
young man, of great courage and learning, and of a quick 
wit, began to show himself, he being highly admired by 
all ; and only gave himself disadvantage with a pedantic 
stiffness and affectation he had contracted." 

Shaftesbury's account of himself at the beginning of 
manhood, of his high animal spirits which pain could 
not conquer, of his playfulness in society, and of his 
wit and address which won for him at the age of 
eighteen a seat in the House of Commons, would suffer 
by any abridgment : 

" My wife continuing at her father's house, my Lord 
Keeper's eldest son, Mr. Thomas Coventry, an honest, 
fair, direct man, carried me with him to see his house 
in Worcestershire, where we stayed some time ; and I 
grew in great respect in those parts for a pleasant, easy 
humour, but especially in the town of Tewkesbury by 
an accident. They having invited their neighbour, my 
Lord Keeper's son, to a hunting in the chace near them 
and a dinner at their town after, all the neighbour 
gentry were called in to grace the matter, who failed 
not to appear and pay a respect not only to the town, 
but so powerful a neighbour. At the hunting I was 






1639. VISIT TO WORCESTERSHIRE. 2*7 

taken with one of my usual fits, which for divers years 
had hardly missed me one day, which lasted for an hour, 
betwixt eleven and one, sometimes beginning earlier and 
sometimes later betwixt those times. It was a violent 
pain of my left side, that I was often forced to lie down 
wherever I was ; at last it forced a working in my 
stomach, and I put up some spoonfuls of clear water 
and I was well, if I may call that so, when I was never 
without a dull aching pain of that side. Yet this never 
abated the cheerfulness of my temper ; but, when in the 
greatest fits, I hated pitying and loved merry company, 
and, as they told me, was myself very pleasant when 
the drops fell from my face for pain; but then, my 
servant near me always desired they would not take 
notice of it, but continue their diversions, which was 
more acceptable to me ; and I had always the women 
and young people about me at those times, who thought 
me acceptable to them, and peradventure the more 
admired me because they saw the visible symptoms of 
my pain, which caused in all others so contrary an effect. 
At this hunting the Bailiffs 1 and chief of the town, being 
no hard riders, were easily led by their civility to keep 
me company, and being informed of my humour, we 
were very pleasant together, and they thought themselves 
obliged with my respect, as liking their company and 
being free with them. On the other hand, I was ready 
to make them any return of their kindness, which 
quickly offered itself, for part of our discourse had been 
of an old knight in the field, a crafty perverse rich man 
in power, as being of the Queen's Privy Council, a bitter 
enemy of the town arid Puritans, as rather inclined the 
Popish way. This man's character and all his story I 
had learnt of them. At dinner the Bailiffs sat at the 

i The chief officers of Tewkesbury were two Bailiffs, annually elected 
by the burgesses, twenty-four in number, from their own body. 



28 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

table's end ; Sir Harry Spiller and myself, opposite to 
one another, sat near them, but one betwixt. Sir Harry 
began the dinner with all the affronts and dislikes he 
could put on the Bailiffs or their entertainment, which 
enraged and discountenanced them and the rest of the 
town that stood behind us ; and the more, it being in 
the face of the best gentlemen of the country, and when 
they resolved to appear in their best colours. When the 
first course was near spent, and he continued his rough 
raillery, L thought it my duty, eating their bread, to 
defend their cause the best I could, which I did with so 
good success, not sparing the bitterest retorts I could 
make him, which his way in the world afforded matter. 
for, that I had a perfect victory over him. This gained 
the townsmen's hearts, and their wives' to boot ; I was 
made free of the town, and the next parliament, though 
absent, without a penny charge, was chosen Burgess by 
an unanimous vote. 

" During this time of my youthful days and pleasant 
humour, I had one accommodation which was very 
agreeable, a servant that waited on me in my chamber, 
one Pyne, a younger brother of a good family, every way 
of my shape and limbs and height, only our faces and 
the colour and manner of our hair was not alike ; mine 
was then a flaxen inclined to brown, soft, and turning at 
the ends ; his was dark brown, thick, bushy, hard, curled 
all over. My stockings, shoes, clothes, were all exactly 
fit for him ; my hat, though my head was long and big 
and his round and little, yet he wore his hair so long 
and so thick that it served him reasonably well, that 
being the only part of my clothes that he could not buy 
and fit me by his own trial. His great felicity was to 
wear my clothes the next day after I had left them off, 
so very often appearing in the same suit of clothes I had 
worn the day before. He had a strong mechanic genius ; 



1639. END OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29 

he quickly learnt to trim me, and all the art of any 
tradesman I used, but especially he was an excellent 
sempster; he sewed and cut out any linen for men or 
women, equal if not beyond any of the trade, and he 
never went without patterns of the newest fashions; 
and, as soon as I alighted at any place, I was hardly in 
the parlour before my man had got to the nursery or 
laundry, and, though he was never there before, his con- 
fidence gave him entrance, and his science in that art 
they had most use of gave him welcome, and his readi- 
ness to teach and impart his skill, and to put them and 
their ladies into the newest fashions, gave him an inti- 
macy especially with the most forward and prating 
wenches ; those he expected his best return from, which 
was, besides the usual traffic and commerce of kisses 
(the constant trade betwixt young men and women), the 
intelligence of all the intrigues of the family, which he 
with all haste conveyed to me, and I managed to the 
most mirth and jollity I could. My skill in palmistry 
and telling fortunes, which for ni}' diversion I professed, 
was much assisted by this intelligence, and gave me 
choice of opportunities which some would have made 
worse use of than I did." 

" Thus," adds Shaftesbury, " I have set down my 
youthful time. What follows is a time of business 
which overtook me early, and the rest of my life is not 
without great mixtures of the public concern, and must 
be much intermingled with the history of the times/' 

And here, unfortunately, where the piiblic interest of 
Shaftesbury's life begins, ends the Fragment of the 
Autobiography, in which he has related with so much 
spirit and humour the story of his youthful years, and 



30 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

which he began in old age to compose, in order to 
vindicate his fame for posterity from many calumnies of 
malice and faction. 

In the short autobiographical sketch of 1646, Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper says of the election for Tewkes- 
bury : " In March, 1640 he was by a general and free 
election of the town of Tewkesbury chosen their first 
burgess for the parliament, in which short parliament 
he served them faithfully." There was no contest, and 
by "first burgess" must be meant that he was named 
first in the return of two members. The election for 
Tewkesbury was with the magistrates and all inhabit- 
ants paying scot and lot, and tjie number of electors 
was probably about four hundred. Sir Anthony had 
not yet completed his nineteenth year ; but it was not 
uncommon then, and for long after, for minors to sit in 
parliament, though their doing so was contrary to law. 1 

This parliament, which met on the thirteenth of April, 
1640, was Charles the First's fourth parliament ; and 
eleven years had passed since he had dissolved his third 
parliament in anger. The long interval had been marked 
by many arbitrary acts, by great discontents, by events 
memorable in English history ; by Sir John Eliot's 
death in prison, the imposition of ship-money and 
Hampden's resistance, a multitude of arbitrary procla- 



1 At one time in James I.'s reign, there were counted forty members 
under age, some of them being only sixteen. The poet Waller sat in 
the House of Commons when only sixteen. Monk's son is said to have 
been only fourteen when he took part in a debate on Lord Clarendon's 
impeachment, November 16, 1667 ; but that he was so young is 
doubtful. The practice of minors sitting was put a stop to after the 
Revolution by a clause of the Triennial Act, which makes void the 
election of a person under twenty-one. See Hatsell's " Precedents," ii. 9, 



1640. THE SHOET PARLIAMENT. 31 

mations, many cruel punishments in the Star Chamber 
and Court of High Commission, a large introduction 
under Archbishop Laud's government of Eoniish prac- 
tices into the Church, and lastly an endeavour to force 
a liturgy on the people of Scotland, which raised a 
rebellion in that kingdom. The formidable appearance 
in arms of the Scotch Covenanters obliged Charles at 
last to call a parliament, The Privy Council had unani- 
mously advised it ; yet the King would not adopt their 
advice, until every member of the Council had promised 
to support him in extraordinary ways of raising money, 
if the parliament proved untoward. 1 Charles was very 
soon convinced of the untowardness of this parliament. 
He endeavoured to obtain an immediate supply, pro- 
mising to allow the parliament to continue to sit for 
the discussion of grievances. The House of Commons, 
however, insisted that grievances should first be dis- 
cussed. The parliament was dissolved in three weeks. 

There is no sign of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper in 
the Journals, or in the accounts which we have of the 
debates, of this short-lived parliament, and no informa- 
tion whatever about his proceedings. It has been 
generally assumed that he now voted blindly for the 
King. But it has also been generally assumed that, on 
the first breaking out of the Civil War, he was an 

1 Clarendon State Papers, ii. 81. Secretary "Windebank to Sir A. 
Hoptou, December 13, 1639: "But before his Majesty would declare 
his resolution for this way, he was pleased to put another question to 
the Board, whether, if the parliament should prove as untoward as 
some have lately been, the Lords would not then assist him in such 
extraordinary ways in this extremity as should be thought fit, which 
being put to the vote, the Lords did all unanimously and cheerfully 
promise that in such case they would assist him with their lives and 
fortunes in such extraordinary way as should be advised and found." 



J 



32 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

adherent of the King ; whereas he himself states that, 
as late as September 1642, after the King had set up 
his standard at Nottingham, he had " not as yet adhered 
against the Parliament." It was natural to infer that 
the young son-in-law of the Lord Keeper Coventry would 
vote on the King's side ; and most of his own relatives 
were on that side also. But Cooper, as a young man, 
was very likely to think and act for himself. It is to 
be inferred from his account of his election for Tewkes- 
bury that the feeling of the electors, with whom he had 
ingratiated himself by banter of Sir Harry Spiller, was 
Puritan. 1 

Lord Coventry, Cooper's father-in-law, and the Lord 
Keeper, had died about three months before the meeting of 
this parliament, before Cooper was elected for Tewkes- 
bury, and before the completion of a year after Cooper's 
marriage with his daughter. He died on the fourteenth 
of January, 1640, " to the King's great detriment," says 
Clarendon, " rather than to his own." 2 His young son- 
in-law, who was beginning life as his own master with 
wealth, inherited station, great talents, and eager tem- 
perament, probably lost by his death a wise and useful 
counsellor. Sir Anthony continued to live with his 
mother-in-law at Durham House and Canonbury, till, 
at the end of a twelvemonth after Lord Coventry's death, 
she gave up the two houses ; and then he went to live 

1 Mr. Martyn says that Cooper was very diligent in his attendance 
in this parliament, and "every day wrote an account of their proceed- 
ings." (Life, i. 47.) No authority is given for this statement, and I 
have found no trace among Lord Shaftesbury's papers of such a journal. 
Mr. Martyn does not say that he had seen such a journal : had he seen 
one, he would doubtless have given extracts. 

2 History of the Rebellion, ii. 64. 



1640. LETTER FROM JOHN COVENTRY. 33 

and keep house with his brother-in-law, the second 
Lord Coventry, at Dorchester House in Covent Garden. 1 
A letter to Cooper from another brother-in-law, John 
Coventry, the eldest son of the Lord Keeper by his 
second wife, who was Lady Cooper's mother, is the 
only vestige among the papers at St. Giles's of Cooper's 
private correspondence in early life. This letter was 
written in the short interval between the Lord Keeper's 
death and Cooper's election for Tewkesbury. John 
Coventry is mentioned by Shaftesbury in his Autobio- 
graphy as one of the leading men of Somersetshire at 
this time. 2 The following letter shows him a candidate 
for the county for the parliament called for April. It 
is superscribed, "To my truly honoured brother Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baronet, Durham House, pre- 
sent these." 

" DEAR BROTHER, I hope you all came safe home 
on Tuesday night, as I did in the morning, for my horses 
began to find their legs again. We are here canvassing 
very hard. Mr. Smyth and Mr. Alexander Popham are 
pitched upon by the Eobins ; Sir Ealph Hopton and I 
as yet stand single ; what we shall do I know not 
Here is great exceptions taken, as I am told, at me for 
reporting that Mr. Alexander Pppham was a banquerout, 
and that the Eobins had made choice of Eobin-hood as 

1 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 

2 He was father of Sir John Coventry, who obtained notoriety, in 
Charles the Second's reign, by a speech in the House of Commons 
reflecting on the King's amours, and by the savage assault made on 
him in consequence by a band of courtiers and ruffians instigated 
by Monmouth, which greatly inflamed the House of Commons, and 
led to the passing of an Act "to prevent malicious maiming and 
wounding," which was familiarly known as the Coventry Act (22 & 23 
Car. II. c. i.). 

VOL. I. D 



34 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. If. 

an outlaw and incapable of being chosen. This is said 
to be dispersed here by a letter of Sir Francis Doding- 
ton's from London. I remember at Durham House 
being asked (I think by yourself) whom the Eobins 
would make. I answered, I thought Kobin-hood, naming 
Mr. Kirton or Mr. Stroud, and Mr. Aish the clothier. 
'Tis true, I said, that some of them had a mind to Mr. 
A. Popham, but I knew he had refused to stand, and 
that some men did doubt whether he was eligible in 
respect of his brother's debts, for which I had heard he 
stood outlawed. But sure I think you have not heard 
me press anything with sharpness and barbarism against 
him, as is pretended. This was at the table, and if I 
mistake not, Mr. Ingram was present. I know Sir 
Francis hath acquaintance with him ; possibly he might 
tell him somewhat. Be pleased, I pray you, to speak 
with Mr. Ingram and know whether he told him any- 
thing, or anything more than I admit, and let me hear 
from you by the return of the post what he saith, and 
what your remembrance is. If he divulged not this, 
you have a dangerous pack of servants. Let none see 
this letter or know the contents but Mr. Ingram. Thus 
in haste, with my service to my sister and my lord and 
the rest of your good company, I remain, 

" Your faithful brother and servant, 

" J. COVENTRYE. 

" ORCHARD, February 29, 1639. 1 

" Keep this letter safe till I see you." 

The parliament which met on the thirteenth of April, 
1640, having been abruptly dissolved on the fifth of May, 
Charles the First proceeded again to try his extraordinary 
ways of raising money. But these were soon found 

1 February 1639, is old style for 1640. 



1640. LORD SAVILE'S FORGED LETTER. 35 

unavailing. The Scotch army crossed the Tweed and 
routed the King's forces. As a last hope of avoiding 
a parliament, Charles summoned all the peers of the 
realm to meet him at York. But before the day fixed 
for their assembling, he found himself constrained to 
call a parliament, and he announced to them, when 
they met, his resolution. The parliament which had 
been hastily dissolved in the spring is known as the 
Short Parliament ; that which met in less than six 
months after, on the third of November, 1640, was the 
celebrated Long Parliament. 

Two short notes by Shaftesbury, on occurrences 
between the dissolution of May and the meeting of the 
next parliament, which may have been intended for the 
continuation of his Autobiography, may here be inserted. 1 
The first refers to the letter sent by Lord Savile to the 
Scotch Commissioners, urging an invasion of England, 
with a number of forged signatures of leading noblemen 
added to his own, which led the Scotch army to enter 
England in August. 

i These two passages occur in Locke's " Commonplace Book," under 
date December 1680, and are printed in Lord King's "Life of Locke," 
vol. i. p. 222. The letters A. E. S. being appended to one of the 
passages in Locke's manuscript, Lord King conjectured that these 
initials meant Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury ; and the conjecture has 
been confirmed by two references in Martyn's " Life of Shaftesbury " 
(i. pp. 115, 119) to a manuscript of Shaftesbury 's as authority for the 
same statements. I have not found the passages thus referred to 
among the papers at St. Giles's. Martyn may have seen them, and 
they may have been since lost, or he may have only learnt about them 
from references by Stringer. Reference is made to one of these 
passages in a note of the fourth Earl's, which is preserved. The 
passages may have been fragments to form part of the introductory 
historical sketch in the Autobiography which terminates so abruptly 
at the Reformation, or they may have been detached notes written in 
1680, for Locke's and Stringer's information. Locke sets them down 
in his " Commonplace Book" as notes for Rushworth's "Collections." 

D2 



36 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

" This second coming in of the Scots was occasioned 
and principally encouraged by a letter which the Lord 
Saville, afterwards Earl of Sussex, writ with his own 
hand, and forged the names of a dozen or fourteen of 
the chiefest of the English nobility, together with his 
own, which he sent into Scotland by the hands of 
Mr 5 H. Darley, who remained there as agent from the 
said English lords until he had brought the Scots in. 
At the meeting of the grand Council, when the English 
and Scots lords came together, the letter caused great 
dispute amongst them, till at last my Lord Saville, 
being reconciled to the Court, confessed to the King 
the whole matter." l 

The second note is on the presentation of the petition 
to the King for a parliament, signed by twelve peers, 2 
and contains startling statements, which are, however, 
confirmed by Bishop Burnet's narrative. 

" This petition was presented to the King at York, by 
the hands of the Lord Mandeville 3 and the Lord Edward 
Howard. 4 The King immediately called a Cabinet 

1 A note of the fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, among the papers at 
St. Giles's, points out the importance of Shaftesbury's testimony to 
the story of Lord Savile's forgery. Dr. Lingard expressed a doubt as 
to the truth of the story ; but it is too well attested to admit of reason- 
able doubt. Mr. Sanford has since published a long circumstantial 
account of the transaction, from a MS. in the British Museum, Add. 
MSS. 15,567. See Sanford's " Studies and Illustrations of the Great 
Rebellion," p. 171, and Hallam (Const. Hist. ii. 125, note). 

2 Mr. Hallam has given an incorrect list of the twelve peers who 
signed this famous petition : the names of Lords Paget, Wharton, 
and Savile appear in his list, instead of the Earls of Rutland and 
Exeter, and Lord Howard of Escrick. Compare Hallam, ii. 127, note, 
with the list in Lords' Journals, iv. 188. 

3 Lord Mandeville, eldest son of the Earl of Manchester, had been 
called by writ to the House of Lords, with the title of Baron Kim- 
bolton, by which name he is best known to us. 

4 Edward, younger son of the Earl of Suffolk, created Baron Howard 
of Escrick in 1628. His son, the third baron, obtained an unenviable 
fame in Charles the Second's reign by his evidence against Russell 
aud Sidney. 



Ifi40. DOUBLE RETURN FOR DOWNTON. 37 

Council, wherein it was concluded to cut off both the 
lords' heads the next day ; when the Council was up, 
and the King gone, Duke Hamilton and the Earl of 
Strafford, general of the army, remaining behind, when 
Duke Hamilton, asking the Earl of Strafford whether 
the army would stand to them, the Earl of Strafford 
answered he feared not, and protested he did not think 
of that before then. Hamilton replied, if we are not 
sure of the army, it may be our heads instead of theirs ; 
whereupon they both agreed to go to the King and alter 
the counsel, which accordingly they did." 1 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper *was not again elected 
for Tewkesbury. He was a candidate for Downton in 
Wiltshire, a borough in which he had property, and 
which was near his seat at Wimborne St. Giles ; and 
he was one of two candidates returned on a double 
return. Neither he nor his rival could sit until it 
was decided which had the right. Cooper says, in 
his Autobiographical Sketch written in 1646, that the 
Committee of Privileges decided in his favour, but 
that no report had been made to the House. "For 
this happy parliament," he writes, being in 1646, when 
he wrote, a strong Parliamentarian, " he was chosen 

1 Bishop Burnet tells the same of Lord Wharton and Lord Howard 
of Escrick, presenting other petitions. "The Lord Wharton and the 
Lord Howard of Escrick undertook to deliver some of these, which they 
did, and were clapt up upon it. A council of war was held ; and it 
was resolved on, as the Lord Wharton told me, to shoot them at the 
head of the army, as movers of sedition. This was chiefly pressed by 
the Earl of Stratford. Duke Hamilton spoke nothing till the council 
rose ; and then he asked Stratford, if he was sure of the army, who 
seemed surprised at the question : but he upon inquiry understood 
that very probably a general mutiny, if not a total revolt, would have 
followed, if any such execution had been attempted." (Own Time, 
i. 29.) Lord Wharton was not one of the petitioners. Burnet's 
variances, which are probably mistakes, may enhance his substantial 
confirmation of Shaftesbury's story. 



38 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

a burgess for Downton in Wiltshire, in the place of 
Mr. William Herbert, second son to the Earl of Pem- 
broke, who was chosen knight also of a county in 
Wales ; Mr. Gorge, eldest son to the Lord Gorge, was 
also returned ; but at the Committee for Privileges, it 
was clearly decided for Sir Anthony, yet no report 
made of it." This is probably quite correct. It 
appears by the Journals that the question had been 
referred to the Committee of Privileges, and a day 
fixed for the hearing, in February 1641 ; but the 
Journals then contain no further notice of the matter. 
Thus the question remained in abeyance and the seat 
vacant, and Cooper was kept out of the House. 1 The 
case is not singular. Sir John Bramston gives an 
account of a similar proceeding with his own petition 
for Bodmin, which, he says, was decided in his favour 
in Committee, but that the chairman, Serjeant May- 
nard, would never report. 2 Obstruction may have been 
given to Cooper, as Sir John Bramston thinks that it 
was given in his case, from political motives. But 
Denzil Holies, who was a leader in the party opposed 
to the King, is said to have exerted himself, for private 
reasons, to prevent Cooper from obtaining his seat. 
The authorities for this statement are not unexcep- 
tionable ; 3 but there is a fact which suggests that 

1 Downton returned two members ; the return of one, Sir Edward 
Griffin, was undisputed. Sir E. Griffin adhered to the King, and, his 
seat having been declared vacant, a new writ was issued in September 
1645, and Mr. Thistle waite was then elected in his place. 

2 Sir J. Bramston's Autobiography, published by the Camden Society, 
p. 160. 

3 Locke's Memoir in Works, ix. 271. Martyn's Life, i. 143. The 
identical statement in these two places was doubtless derived from 
Stringer, and is introduced in order to prove Sir A. A. Cooper's magna- 






1641. NOT SEATED FOR DOWNTON. 39 

Holies had an interest in excluding Cooper from the 
House, and which, if Holies has been calumniated, will 
account for the imputation. Holies was at this time 
prosecuting a suit in the Court of Wards against 
Cooper, arising out of his father-in-law Sir Francis 
Ashley's proceedings after the death of Cooper's father ; 
and there is an entry in the Commons' Journals on 
February 10, 1641, a few days before the reference 
of the question of the election to the Committee of 
Privileges, recording a permission given to Holies to 
proceed with the suit. Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his 
Diary gives a fuller explanation of the resolution : " It 
was agreed in the House that Mr. Hollis, a member 
of this House, having a suit against Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper (he named Anthony Ashley in his 
baptism), being an elected member of this House, but 
the election being in controversy, and he not yet 
admitted to sit as a member, was allowed to proceed 
in the suit, being in the Court of Wards, and demand 
publication of witnesses." l 

In 1645, after Cooper had joined the side of the 
Parliament and fought for it, he made an endeavour 
to get seated on the same petition for Downton, but 
still unsuccessfully. There is an entry in the Com- 
mons' Journals, September 1, 1645, that Sir Walter 
Erie was ordered to report on Sir Anthony Ashley 

nimity in not revenging himself on Holies, when called before the 
House of Commons, a few years after, as is alleged, to give evidence 
about transactions of Holies at Oxford. But this story of his being 
called as a witness against Holies is clearly a romance. See note at 
p. 41. 

1 Harl. MSS. in British Museum, 162, p. 213 a. 



40 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

Cooper's election, but again no report was made. At 
last, on the eve of the Eestoration, in the last days 
of the Bump of this parliament, which Cooper had 
then prominently helped to resuscitate, he obtained a 
decision in his favour, and was declared to have been 
duly elected for Downton in 1640. 1 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was therefore excluded 
from taking part in the great parliamentary contests 
of the beginning of the Long Parliament, which ushered 
in the Civil War. He was of age on the twenty-second 
of July, 1642. He had then not yet proclaimed himself 
a partisan. But swords had been then already drawn 
in the great quarrel of King and Parliament. On the 
twenty-fifth of August, the King set up his standard at 
Nottingham ; and Cooper, who was at the time visiting 
in Nottinghamshire, at his brother-in-law Sir William 
Savile's at Eufford, was present at this ceremony, but 
only as a spectator. "He was with the King," he 
says of himself, " at Nottingham and Derby, but only 
as a spectator, having not as yet adhered against the 
Parliament." 2 

In the spring of 1643, after the failure of the nego- 
tiations at Oxford, Cooper came forward in Dorsetshire 
on the King's side. 3 He says of himself that at this 

1 January 7, 1660. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 

3 The following account of Sir A. A. Cooper's proceedings, while he 
supported the King's party, is derived from his own statements in the 
Autobiographical Sketch, written in 1646, and from Clarendon's "His- 
tory of the Rebellion ; " it is in complete contrast with the absurd, 
extravagant statements, to which some have given credence, contained 
in Mr. Martyn's Life, and in the fragment of a Memoir printed among 
Locke's works. The accounts given by Mr. Martyn, and in the Locke 
Memoir, are as follow. Sir A. A. Cooper, being a young man of 
twenty-two, is represented to have proposed to the King, in an inter- 



1643. TAKES THE KING'S SIDE. 41 

time he " was by the gentlemen of the county desired 
to attend the King with their desires and the state of 

view at Oxford, to undertake the general pacification of the kingdom, 
if the King would authorise him to treat with the parliamentary garri- 
sons and promise a new and free parliament. The King is said to have 
observed, "You are a young man, and talk great things;" but to have 
given Sir A. A. Cooper the authority he desired. All Cooper's plans 
are represented to have been spoilt by Prince Maurice, and on Cooper's 
complaining to the King it is said that " the King shook his head with 
some concern, but said little." It is further stated that, after this first 
grand project was broken by Prince Maurice, Cooper started another, 
which was that the counties should all arm and endeavour to suppress 
both the contending armies, that Cooper brought most of the sober 
and well-intentioned gentlemen of both sides throughout England into 
this plan, and that this was the origin of the " clubmen; " that Cooper 
was now so strictly watched by the Court, which had become jealous of 
him, that he could not maintain the necessary correspondence with 
distant counties ; that at this time the King wrote a very complimentary 
letter begging him to come to Oxford, but that his friends dissuaded 
him from going, telling him that danger lurked in the King's civility ; 
that Goring, who commanded a force in those parts, had orders to seize 
Cooper ; that he invited himself one day to dine with Sir Anthony, who 
upon this took fright and fled to the Parliament's quarters. Most of 
this is downright falsehood ; it is in itself sufficiently improbable that 
Sir A. A. Cooper, when so young, should have been encouraged in such 
grand undertakings, and the story abounds in anachronisms. The 
clubmen, whom Cooper is said to have brought forward, did not 
appear on the stage before the spring of 1645, more than a year after 
Cooper had left the King's cause. Mr. Godwin has pointed out this 
anachronism (Hist, of Commonwealth, i. 439, note). Goring had no 
command in the west at the time when Cooper left the King's cause in 
February 1644 ; he had a command there in the following autumn. 
It will be observed that Shaftesbury in his Autobiographical Sketch 
makes no allusion whatever to the clubmen, which is not consistent 
with his having been the originator of so important a movement. 
There appear to be in the whole of this elaborate story, two, and only 
two, facts, on which this superstructure of confused error has been 
raised : 1st, that Cooper attended the King at Oxford in 1643, with 
a deputation from his county ; and 2d, that he received a flattering 
letter from the King shortly before his defection. It is not unlikely 
that Cooper, in supporting the King's cause, assumed a somewhat 
independent tone, and that his own exaggerated accounts in later life 
led a hearer, who had no personal knowledge of the events of this time, 
to misrepresentation. Another gross historical error occurs in a story 
told for the glorification of Cooper in the Locke Memoir, and likewise 
told by Mr. Martyn, of his being called by the Parliament as a witness 
against his old private adversary, Holies. Holies being accused in the 
House of Commons of having transacted separately with the King 
when he was sent with other commissioners to Oxford to treat of peace, 
it is stated that Cooper was called as a witness by Holles's accusers, as 
he was with the King at Oxford at the time, and that Cooper refused 



42 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

the county." Clarendon says that the King resolved 
at this time to send the Marquis of Hertford with 
an army into the western counties, " the rather because 
there were many of the prime gentlemen of Wiltshire, 
Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, who confidently under- 
took, if the Marquis went through these counties with 
such a strength as they supposed the King would spare 
to him, they would in a very short time raise so con- 
siderable a power as to oppose any force the Parliament 
should be able to send ;" and later, after the surrender 
of Bristol, Clarendon gives as one of the reasons why 
the King determined to divide his western army, and 
detach a portion under Prince Maurice and the Earl 
of Carnarvon to Dorsetshire, " some correspondence 
with the chief gentlemen of Dorsetshire, who were 
ready to join with any considerable party for the 
King, and had some probable hopes that the small 
garrisons upon the coast would not make a tedious 
resistance." Dorsetshire was entirely in the hands of 
the Parliament, who held all the ports, and Clarendon 

to give any answer and persisted in his refusal, though threatened to 
he sent to the Tower. Now the separate conversation with the King, 
which was made a charge against Holies, took place in November 1644, 
nine months after Cooper had quitted the King's party. In the Memoir 
in Locke's works, it is mentioned that Holles's separate transaction 
with the King was on the occasion of the treating at Oxbridge, which 
was even later, in the beginning of 1645 ; but this is only one error 
more. The account in this Memoir and that of Mr. Martyn evidently 
proceed from the same source ; and that source is doubtless Mr. 
Stringer. Locke probably took these stories from Stringer, and wrote 
them down, without examination at the time, in a rough draft of a 
biography designed for subsequent correction. It is not impossible 
that Snaftesbury, in old age, may in conversation with his friends have 
given a somewhat false colour to the story of his early life ; and there 
is a remarkable passage in Burnet, accusing him both of boasting and 
of disingenuousness in speaking of his relations with Cromwell. (Own 
Time, i. 96.) 



1643. DISPUTE ABOUT GOVERNMENT OF WEYMOUTH. 43 

speaks of Dorchester as "the most malignant town 
in England." l 

The Marquis of Hertford, as commander-in-chief of 
the western army, had commissioned Cooper, with Sir 
Gerard Napier, Sir John Hele, and Sir William Ogle, to 
treat with Weymoutb and Dorchester for their sur- 
render; and Cooper had raised at his own expense a 
regiment of foot and a troop of horse, and received from 
Hertford commissions as colonel of the regiment and 
captain of the troop. 2 Hertford had given him also a 
commission appointing him governor of Weymouth and 
the island of Portland, when they should be taken for 
the King. In August, Dorchester, Weymouth, and Port- 
land all surrendered to the Earl of Carnarvon, imme- 
diately on his arrival with his army from Bristol. Very 
shortly afterwards, the Marquis of Hertford ceased to be 
commander-in-chief, the King desiring to give the chief 
command to Prince Maurice, who accordingly succeeded 
him. V Cooper, hearing that Prince Maurice was not 
disposed to respect the commission which Hertford had 
given him to be governor of Weymouth and Portland, 
and that he wished to appoint some one else, went off 
immediately to Hertford, who was at Bristol, to press 
his claim., He had indeed already acted on Hertford's 
commission by nominating a commander for Portland. 
Hertford, who had lately, before his removal from his 
command, had a similar question with Prince Eupert 
about the governorship of Bristol, took up Cooper's case 
warmly. Weymouth and Portland had, in truth, been 

1 History of Rebellion, vii. 94, 154, 155. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 



44 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

surrendered before lie had actually ceased to be corn- 
man der-in-chief, and he made it a question of his own 
honour with the King that the commission which he 
had given to Cooper should be confirmed. Clarendon, 
who was at Bristol, being then the King's Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, has given a detailed account of this 
incident, and describes Cooper as " a young gentleman 
of that country, of a fair and plentiful fortune, and one 
who, in the opinion of most men, was like to advance the 
place by being governor of it, and to raise men for the 
defence of it without lessening the army, and had, in 
expectation of it, made some provision of officers and 
soldiers, when it should be time to call them together." 
Hertford spoke with Hyde on the subject, and Cooper 
himself applied to him for his intercession : " And Sir 
Anthony came likewise to him [Clarendon], who was of 
his acquaintance, and desired his assistance, that, after 
so much charge he had been put to in the expectation 
of it, and to prepare for it, he might not be exposed to 
the mirth and contempt of the country." Hyde wrote 
to the King, who was before Gloucester, then besieged 
by the royal forces, and he also "wrote to the Lord 
Falkland, to take Sir John Colepepper with him, if he 
found any aversion in the King, that they might together 
discourse and prevail with him." The King refused. 
Hertford was so much hurt that he talked of retiring to 
his own house to live privately and quietly, seeing that 
he had no more credit with the King. Hyde then went 
to the King ; and, according to his own account, written 
long after, when his feelings towards Shaftesbury were 
soured, " at last, with very great difficulty, he [Hyde] 



1643. CONFIRMED AS GOVERNOR OF WEYMOUTH. 45 

did so far prevail with his Majesty, that he gave a com- 
mission to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper to be Governor 
of Weymouth, which he was the more easily persuaded 
to, out of some prejudice he had to the person who he 
understood was designed to that government." l '""" 

Such is the detailed account given by Clarendon of 
this incident, of which he had excellent opportunities of 
knowledge. Cooper himself makes no allusion to the 
difficulty and dispute, simply saying that, after Hert- 
ford's removal, he " had a continuation of all his com- 
mands under the King's own hand." Clarendon has 
omitted to mention that the King wrote to Hertford, 
signifying his consent to the appointment of Cooper and 
of the person whom he had named to command under 
him at Portland, but at the same time urging him to 
endeavour to persuade Cooper and his nominee to 
resign after a short interval, and then, on their resigna- 
tions, to confer with Prince Maurice about the selection 
of successors of greater experience and military know- 
ledge. The following is the King's letter to Hertford, 
which completes the story : 

"CHARLES R. 

" Right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin and 
councillor, we greet you well. Upon the hearing of some 
difference about the command of our town of Weymouth 
and our castle of Portland, signified to us by our Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, we have written to our nephew 
Prince Maurice, that our pleasure is that Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper and the person appointed by him remain 
in those commands according to the tenor of your com- 

1 History of Rebellion, vii. 199. 






46 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY CHAP. II. 

mission granted to him ; which though out of respect to 
you and your grant we have thought fit to do, and that 
nothing like an affront may fall upon the gentlemen 
entrusted by you, yet being informed of the youth of 
the one and the want in both of experience in martial 
affairs, and of the importance of those places and how 
likely they are, being ports, to be attempted by the Par- 
liament forces by sea, in which case, for want of an able 
and experienced commander, they may run great hazard 
to be lost, to the great prejudice of our affairs, we 
earnestly recommend it to you to prevail with them 
willingly to resign their commands after they have held 
them so long as that they may not appear to be put 
from them, nor your commission to have been disregarded 
by us. And we recommend to you so to advise with our 
nephew about the persons to succeed them therein that 
both these places for the security thereof may be in the 
hands of more able soldiers, and that (if such persons 
be there to be found) these soldiers may likewise be 
persons of some fortune and interest in those parts for 
the better satisfaction of the gentry of that country. 
And so not doubting of your ready compliance herein, 
we bid you heartily farewell. Given at our camp before 
Gloucester, the 10th day of August, 1643. 

" To our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin 
and councillor, William Marquis of Hertford." l 

After this, Cooper was made sheriff of Dorsetshire for 
the King, and he says that he was appointed president 
of the King's council of war in the county. 2 

But in a few months a great change took place. In 
the beginning of January 1644, Cooper resigned the 

1 From a copy among Lord Shaftesbury's papers at St. Giles's. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 






1644. GOES OVER TO THE PARLIAMENT. 47 

government of Weymouth and all his commissions 
under the King, and a few weeks after he went over to 
the Parliament. He presented himself in the Parlia- 
ment's quarters at Hurst Castle, on the Hampshire coast, 
on the twenty-fourth of February, and thence proceeded 
to London, where his wife joined him, after a year's 
separation. She had remained in Shropshire with her 
sister, Lady Thynne, while Cooper had been doing 
military service for the King in Dorsetshire. 1 

While Cooper represents his resignation of his com- 
missions as voluntary, and his change as purely the 
result of conviction, Clarendon has stated that he was 
removed from the government of Weymouth, and that 
he abandoned the King's cause from pique ; 2 and this 
explanation of Cooper's change has been generally 
accepted without inquiry. There is no doubt that 
Cooper was not ostensibly removed, and so far Claren- 
don's statement is unquestionably inaccurate. Claren- 
don's accuracy in details can never be relied on, and 
when he wrote his History, in exile, thirty years 

1 Autobiographical Sketch prefixed to Diary. 

3 Hist, of Rebellion, viii 60. Colonel Ashburnham succeeded Cooper 
as governor of Weymouth, and Clarendon says that Cooper was removed 
to make way for him. He goes on to say that Cooper " was thereby so 
much disobliged that he quitted the King's party and gave himself up, 
body and soul, to the service of the Parliament, with an implacable 
animosity against the royal interest." It is stated in " Rawleigh 
Redivivus" that Cooper was affronted by Ashburnham's being sent 
into Dorsetshire with a commission as governor of the county which 
overrode his own authority as sheriff; but this little biography is a 
catchpenny publication of no authority, and the object of the writer 
was to prove Shaftesbury an injured man. Bishop Burnet ascribes 
Cooper's desertion of the King's cause to an incident which would 
have occurred, and which is related in the Locke memoir as occurring, 
before he became governor of Weymouth, viz. Prince Maurice's break- 
ing an engagement which he had made with one of the Dorsetshire 
towns, on its surrendering to him for the King. (Own Time, i. 96.) 



48 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

after these incidents, he was angry with Shaftesbury. 
It is even probable that Cooper's own account of his 
conduct is entirely correct, and that he had no cause 
for resentment. Certainly, if Cooper had been pressed 
to resign the government of Weymouth in compliance 
with the King's wish as it had been conveyed to the 
Marquis of Hertford, his resignation might have been a 
virtual removal. But there is no trace of evidence of 
any endeavour made by Hertford or any one else to 
persuade Cooper to resign, and it is quite likely that 
the King's suggestion of his resignation, made at the 
time by way of compromise between Hertford's and 
Prince Maurice's pretensions, was not afterwards thought 
of. It is beyond dispute that Cooper was appointed 
sheriff of Dorsetshire for the King after the decision of 
the question about the government of Weymouth. And 
there is no reason to doubt Cooper's own statements, 
written in 1646, that he was courted and treated with 
honour b}^ the King to the last days of his remaining on 
the King's side, and that he had a promise of a peerage 
and received a complimentary letter from the King only 
a few days before he went over to the Parliament. 

" He now plainly seeing the King's aim destructive 
to religion and the state, and though he had an assurance 
of the barony of Ashley Castle, 1 which had formerly 
belonged to that family, and that but two days before 
he received a letter from the King's own hand of large 
promises and thanks for his service, yet in February he 
delivered up all his commissions to Ashburnham, and 

1 In "Wiltshire, whence the Ashleys of Wimborne St. Giles came. 
See Coker's " Survey of Dorsetshire," p. 14. 






1644. HIS OWN STATEMENT OF MOTIVES. 49 

privately came away to the Parliament, leaving all his 
estate in the King's quarters, 5001. a year full-stocked, 
two houses well furnished, to the mercy of the enemy, 
resolving to cast himself on God and to follow the 
dictates of a good conscience. Yet he never in the 
least betrayed the King's service, but while he was with 
him was always faithful." 

On his arrival in London, Cooper appeared, on the 
sixth of March, 1644, before the standing Committee of 
the two Houses, now called Committee of both Kingdoms, 
and made a statement explanatory of his coming over 
to the Parliament, of which notes have been preserved. 
As these notes come from the Committee, and not from 
Cooper, they may be relied on as a report of what he 
said of himself ; and this is Cooper's account, publicly 
given, of his actions and motives, when he was exposed 
to easy detection of any inaccurate or disingenuous 
statement. There would have been enough distrust 
among those to whom he went, and enough anger among 
those whom he left, to ensure his being exposed, if he 
had acted from resentment at a marked affront. 

" Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, bart., saith that he 
was Sheriff of Dorcester this year, and late Governor 
of Weymouth, but he hath delivered up his commissions 
of Governor and Colonel the first week of January 
1643. 1 

" He came into the Parliament quarters at Hurst 
Castle, in Hampshire, upon the 24th of February. 

" He brought in a certificate under my general's hand, 
certifying his coming into the Parliament quarters before 
the 1st day of March. 

i January 1644, according to the present mode of reckoning. 
VOL. I. E 



50 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. II. 

" He saith he came there being fully satisfied that 
there was 110 intention of that side for the promoting or 
preserving of the Protestant religion and the liberties 
of the kingdom, and that he left 60 01. per annum well 
stocked there ; and is fully satisfied of the justness of 
the Parliament proceedings : 800Z. near Oxford, under 
their power : 2,000/. per annum in the King's quarters 
in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. 1 

" He saith he had not made known his intentions 
to any. 

" That those that should come in before the 1st of 
March, the Parliament would give them their lives and 
liberties, but for their estates that was wholly to be 
disposed of to the use of the public ; only if they took 
the Covenant and behaved themselves likely to deserve 
well of the Parliament, they should be allowed forty or 
fifty pound per annum. Mr. Kirby's letters certified 
so much. 

" He saith above a month before he heard of the 
Parliament declarations he delivered up his commissions 
and was resolved to return to the Parliament ; being fully 
satisfied of the injustice of that cause, and of the justice 
of the Parliament, he was resolved to come into them 
without looking to any conditions whatsoever. 

" He saith he hath seen the Covenant, and desires to 
take the Covenant when this Committee shall tender it 
unto him. 

"A better testimonial of his purposes of coming in, 
and intentions to leave them, and that he is very cordial 
for the Parliament, being able to do you good service, 
and discovery of their designs and of their strength, and 

1 From the Royalist Composition Papers in the State Paper Office, 
First Series, 16,561, It is evident that these are very rough notes 
made at the time Some part of the notes is in cypher ; the rest very 
badly written. 






1644. REASONS OF CHANGE. 51 

wherein they might prepare against your enemy both 
upon Poole and Wareham, by Mr. Hildeley, one of the 
Committee there." 

This document renders it impossible to believe that 
Cooper was superseded or slighted. He probably acted, 
according to his nature, impetuously. But there is 
much reason to think that he acted conscientiously. 
The time of his change was a time when any man 
doubting or wavering would be strongly moved to decide 
himself. The King had summoned his friends of both 
Houses to assemble as a parliament at Oxford in 
January 1644 ; the Parliament had lately concluded 
the " Solemn League and Covenant " with Scotland. 
Other persons of importance left the King's party at 
this very time, alleging disgust at the treaty made by 
Ormond for the King with the Irish rebels, and the 
favour shown to Roman Catholics. Among these were 
the Earl of Westmorland and Sir Edward Bering, who 
gave their reasons in language very similar to that of 
Cooper, that "there was no intention of that side for 
the promoting or preserving of the Protestant religion 
and the liberties of the kingdom." l Sir Gerard Napier, 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's neighbour and friend, 
went over with him to the Parliament. A royalist 
gentleman writes from Oxford, in March 1644 : " Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Gerard Napier are both 
run away to the Parliament from their brethren the 

i Ludlow, i. 106 ; Whitelocke, pp. 81, 82. Holland is by mistake 
named instead of Westmorland by Mr. Hallam (Constitutional His- 
tory, ii. 233, note). Lord Inchiquin was another convert at this time 
on account of Ormond's treaty of cessation with the Irish rebels. 

E2 



52 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. II. 

Commons here." 1 This is a royalist who writes, and, 
writing when Cooper's desertion was fresh, he imputes 
no bad motive. It is right also to remember that in 
the beginning of 1^4, when Cooper left the King's 
party, the King's friends were hopeful, and the King's 
fortunes by no means low. The result of the campaign 
of 1643 had been on the whole favourable to the King's 
arms. In Dorsetshire and the western counties espe- 
cially, where the Parliament had had a decided ascen- 
dency in the spring of 1643, the ascendency of the King 
was as decided at the close of the campaign. 2 A year 
earlier or a year later, Cooper might have been described 
as going over to the more powerful party. Another 
proof of disinterestedness is furnished by the fact that, 
leaving the King's side when he did, he left much of his 
property at the King's mercy ; for most of his posses- 

1 Carte's Life of Ormond, iii. 254. Mr. Arthur Trevor to Ormond, 
March 9, 1644. Mr. Trevor's words do not necessarily mean that 
Cooper went from Oxford : Charles's parliament was then sitting 
there, and Cooper, if he had remained among the royalists, would have 
been probably recognised there without difficulty as member for Down- 
ton. It is said in "Rawleigh Redivivus" (p. 17) that he went from 
Dorsetshire, taking his brother's house, which would be near Salisbury, 
on the way. 

2 Clare adon writes of the condition of the west in the spring of 
1643 : " Dorsetshire and Devonshire were entirely possessed by the 
enemy, and all the ports upon the western coasts were garrisoned by 
them. The Cornish army [for the King] was greater in reputation 
than numbers." (Hist, of Rebellion, vi. 151.) Contrast this with his 
account of the state of things in October. " He [the King] was now 
master of the whole west ; Cornwall was his own without a rival ; 
Plymouth was the only place in all Devonshire unreduced, and those 
forces shut within their own walls ; the large rich county of Somerset, 
with Bristol, the second city of the kingdom, entirely his ; in 
Dorsetshire, the enemy had only two little fisher-towns, Poole and 
Lyme ; all the rest was declared for the King. And in every of these 
counties he had plenty of harbours and ports to supply him with 
ammunition, and the country with trade. In Wiltshire the enemy had 
not the least footing, and rather a town or two in Hampshire than any 
possession of the county." (vii. 298.) 






1644. RECEPTION BY PARLIAMENT. 53 

sions lay in the western counties, where the King then 
was uppermost. 

Mr. Martyn, and Lord Campbell who has followed 
him, have given an exaggerated impression of the 
warmth- of Cooper's reception by the Parliament, and 
the importance attached to his joining them. They 
state that the Parliament specially appointed a Com- 
mittee to receive and examine him, 1 and Lord Campbell 
says, that " the Parliament was contented to receive him 
on his own terms." He was examined, like any one 
else, by the standing Committee of both Kingdoms ; 
and it will be seen in the next chapter that it was not 
until after five months, and after some military service, 
that he was permitted to compound for his estates by 
a fine of five hundred pounds; that, eighteen months 
later, when he had performed much military service, he 
could not gain admission into the House of Commons, 
although a Committee had previously decided that he 
was duly elected in 1640 ; and that he was not entirely 
cleared of delinquency until the beginning of 1652, 
eight years later. The importance likely to attach to 
him as a Parliamentary convert is also a material 
point for consideration in the question of Cooper's 
motives. 

1 Martyu's Life, i. 141. 






CHAPTER III. 

16441653. 

Retrospect of public affairs The war in the West Sir A. A. Cooper 
goes into Dorsetshire for the Parliament, July 1644 Appointed to 
act with the army as Field Marshal General Taking of Wareham 
Made one of the Dorsetshire Committee for the army Allowed to 
compound for his estates with a fine of 500^. Appointed Commander- 
in-chief of th,e Parliament's forces in Dorsetshire, October 1644 
Takes Abbotsbury by storm Narratives by himself and by one of his 
officers of storming of Abbotsbury Takes Sturminster and Shaftes- 
bury Instructions of Dorsetshire Committee Cooper's notes on 
the military condition in Dorsetshire, Wiltshire and Somersetshire, 
November 1644 Letter from Colonel Butler Want of money 
Cooper relieves Blake besieged at Taunton, December Cooper's 
letter to Essex on relief of Taunton Siege of Corfe Castle, 1645 
Endeavours unsuccessfully to gain admission into the House of 
Commons on his former petition, September 1645 Self-denying 
Ordinance Termination of Cooper's military service High Sheriff 
of Wiltshire for the Parliament, 1647 Cooper's Diary, 1646-50 
Story of his advice to Holies to be forbearing with Cromwell 
Selections from Diary Execution of Charles the First Death of 
Cooper's wife His second marriage with daughter of Earl of Exeter 
Subscribes the engagement and is a commissioner for administering 
it Appointed member of the Commission for reforming the 1 laws, 
January 1652 House of Commons absolve him from all delin- 
quency, March 1653. 

SIR ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER was far advanced in his 
twenty-third yeax when, after some ten months' service 
on the King's side, he went over to that of the Parlia- 
ment. Here, as in other parts of Dryden's sketch of his 
history in "The Medal," the satirist's animosity has 
outrun accuracy : 

" A martial hero first with early care, 
Blown, like a pigmy, by the winds to war ; 
A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man, 
So young his hatred to his prince began." 



1644. RETROSPECT OF AFFAIRS. DO 

It may be convenient here to take a short retrospect, 
and briefly define the present position of affairs between 
the King and the Parliament. The body now exercising 
power and directing war at Westminster, was very 
different from the parliament which had assembled 
there in November 1640. This parliament had, in 
May 1641, legally framed an act to prevent dissolution 
without its own consent. The Bishops were excluded 
from the House of Lords by another act, legally passed 
in February 1642. In the same month, an ordinance 
for regulating the militia, agreed to by both Houses, was 
presented to the King, which nominated a lord lieu- 
tenant for every county, to obey the orders of the two 
Houses, and to be irremoveable by the King for two 
years. To this ordinance, transferring for two years the 
government of the military force of the nation from the 
King to the two Houses of Parliament, Charles refused 
his assent. The King's rash attempt to arrest Hampden, 
Pym, Holies, Haslerig, and Strode in the House of 
Commons, had hurried Parliament to this militia ordi- 
nance ; and on the King's refusal, the two Houses took 
the matter into their own hands, passed the ordinance 
without the King's consent, and resolved to place the 
kingdom in a posture of defence. Here, then, was one 
definite issue between the King and the two Houses, 
which should have the control of the military force of 
the nation ? Other demands were made by the Parlia- 
ment before the Civil War actually began. In the 
meantime, the King had established himself at York, 
and the Lord Keeper Littleton had joined him there, 
carrying with him the Great Seal from Westminster. At 



56 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

York, in June, nineteen propositions were presented to 
the King from the two Houses, containing, among 
others, the following demands : That the appointments 
of all privy councillors and officers of state should be 
subject to approval by the two Houses ; that the 
education and marriages of the King's children should 
be under the control of Parliament; that Eoman Catholic 
peers should be excluded from the House of Lords; that 
the government and liturgy of the Church should be 
reformed as the two Houses might determine ; that the 
militia and all fortified places should be confided to 
persons approved by the two Houses ; and that no 
peers hereafter to be made should sit in parliament 
without the consent of both Houses. To these proposi- 
tions the King's assent could not have been expected. 
Military preparations had already been made on both 
sides, and civil war was inevitable. It began in August. 
Now, the House of Commons sitting at Westminster 
was reduced by the secession of nearly a hundred 
members who adhered to the King, and of the House of 
Lords about forty, only a third of the whole number, 
remained at Westminster. 1 In 1642 and 1643, fortune 
favoured the King's arms. The Parliament now, in 
1643, urged the Scotch to come to their aid, declaring 
their eagerness to reform the Church of England on 
Presbyterian principles, and their fear of the King's 
bringing against them an army of papists and foreigners. 
The articles of cessation made by Ormond in Ireland 
with the Eoman Catholic rebels, and the bringing over 

1 Hallam, Const. Hist. ii. 203, note ; Sanford's Studies and Illustra- 
tions of the Great Rebellion, p. 498. 






1644. RETROSPECT OF AFFAIRS. 57 

of Irish troops to reinforce the King's armies, added 
fuel to the flames, and angered many of the King's 
friends. The famous treaty known as " The Solemn 
League and Covenant" was concluded between the 
English and Scotch Parliaments : the Covenant, which 
was to be a test of fidelity to the parliamentary cause, 
bound its subscribers to endeavour to preserve the 
Scotch Church as it was, and bring those of England 
and Ireland into conformity with it in government, 
doctrine, and practice ; to labour for the extirpation of 
popery and prelacy ; and to preserve the rights and 
privileges of the parliaments, and the liberties of the 
kingdoms, and the King's person and authority in aid 
of the true religion and liberties of the nation. A Scotch 
army of twenty-one thousand men now crossed the 
border, in January 1644. The Scotch Commissioners 
at Westminster were joined with a Committee of both 
Houses for direction of affairs ; and to this joint Com- 
mittee was given the name of the Committee of both 
Kingdoms. The King had summoned all his adherents 
of both Houses to assemble as a parliament at Oxford, 
on the twenty-second of January, 1644. There was a 
call of the two Houses on the same day at Westminster; 
thirty-five peers acknowledged this call, and two hun- 
dred and eighty members of the House of Commons 
are said to have attended at Westminster, about a 
hundred more being absent on parliamentary service. 1 

1 This statement is in Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 80. Mr. Hallam 
thinks that there is a mistake in the statement, and that the number 
of adherents of the Parliament was not so great. Mr. Sanford, who 
has examined this portion of English history very laboriously, supports 
Whitelocke's statement. (Studies and Illustrations, p. 498.) The two 



58 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

In the middle of May 1644, two parliamentary 
armies left London, under the Earl of Essex and 
Waller, with ulterior destination for the West, but to 
be guided by the movements of the King, who was at 
Oxford. Abingdon and Eeading quickly falling into 
their hands, the King, with a small body of attendants, 
leaving his army, suddenly quitted Oxford, where he 
found himself in imminent danger of being besieged. 
He was followed by Waller into Worcestershire, 
managed with great skill and energy to elude Waller's 
pursuit, and within three weeks after his escape from 
Oxford he was again there at the head of his army, 
relieved of the presence of Essex's forces, which had 
gone into Dorsetshire, and thinking himself strong 
enough to cope with Waller's, which would probably 
return in pursuit of him. The King shortly after 
marched out of Oxford to meet Waller. The two armies 
met, at the end of June, at Cropredy Bridge, where the 
advantage of the fight was with the King. 

In the meantime, Essex had entered Dorsetshire with 
his army ; he quickly retook Weymouth for the Parlia- 
ment, the King's governor, Colonel Ashburnham, who 
had succeeded Cooper, abandoning it immediately on 
Essex's approach, and retiring into Portland Castle ; and 
he then marched to Lyme, which Prince Maurice, who 
had been long besieging it, quitted as soon as he heard 
of the taking of Weymouth, " with some loss of reputa- 
tion," says Clarendon, " for having lain so long with such 

hundred and twenty-eight members of the House of Commons, whose 
signatures to the League and Covenant in September 1643 are printed 
in a tract in vol. iv. of the Somers Tracts, are clearly not all the 
parliamentary adherents. 



1644. TAKING OF WAREHAM. 59 

a strength before so vile and untenable place without 
reducing it." The defence had been conducted by the 
indomitable Blake, who next maintained an equally 
surprising defence against the royalist besiegers of 
Taunton. Prince Maurice, on abandoning the siege of 
Lyme, put a garrison of five hundred men into Ware- 
ham, and went off to Exeter with the main body of his 
forces. Essex followed him, and Prince Maurice retired 
into Cornwall. The King, no longer troubled by Waller, 
marched into the West after Essex, and ultimately 
discomfited Essex's army in Cornwall. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, in July, was permitted 
by the Parliament to go down into Dorsetshire for mili- 
tary service. He says himself: "After Weymouth was 
taken in 1 by the Lord General Essex, the Committee 
for Dorset going into the country, desired Sir Anthony's 
company with them, which he did." 2 

On the third of August he received a commission to 
command a brigade of horse and foot, with the title of 
Field Marshal General. 3 Cooper's first military service 
was in the taking of Wareham. Together with Colonels 
Sydenham and Jephson, he proceeded to besiege that 
town with twelve hundred horse and foot; and they 
were afterwards joined by Lieutenant-General Middleton, 
with a thousand horse. They began to storm the out- 

1 " Taken in ;" the usual phrase of the time when speaking of 
taking a town : it occurs also in Clarendon. 

" You durst not think of taking in a heart 
As soon as you set down before it. " 

SUCKLING, Brennoralt. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch. There is an entry in the Commons' 
Journals, July 10, 1644, of permission given to Sir A. A. Cooper 
to go into Dorsetshire. 

3 A copy of the commission is among the papers at St. Giles's. 



60 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

works on the tenth of August, when the garrison im- 
mediately capitulated, three hundred undertaking to 
serve the Parliament against the rebels in Ireland. 1 The 
governor of Wareham for the King was Colonel O'Brien, 
a brother of Lord Inchiquin, who had lately left the 
King's service for the Parliament in disgust at 
Ormond's cessation with the. Irish rebels ; and it is 
supposed that O'Brien had not been hearty to defend 
Wareham. 

Cooper says that he attended, by order of the Dorset- 
shire Committee and Council of war, at the bar of the 
House of Commons, to relate the taking of Wareham, 
but there is no entry to this effect in the Journals. His 
statement, however, is doubtless correct. Four days 
after the taking of Wareham, he was added by a vote 
of both Houses to the Committee for governing the 
army in Dorsetshire; and on the same day, his case 
was referred to the Committee for Sequestrations sitting 
at Goldsmiths' Hall, to consider on what terms his 
estates should be restored to him. 2 The Committee 
made a report in a few days, recommending that he 
should be permitted to compound by a payment of five 
hundred pounds, and the House immediately adopted 

1 Autobiographical Sketch of 1646 ; Rushworth's Collections, pt. 3, 
vol. ii. p. 697 ; Vicars's Parl. Chron. iv. 5 ; Whitelocke's Memorials, 
p. 98 ; Comm. Journ. Aug. 14, 1644. These different accounts vary in 
details, and it is difficult to reconcile them entirely. From the ac- 
counts in Kushworth and Vicars, it would appear that Colonel Syden- 
ham and Sir A. A. Cooper bore the chief part in this action. The 
Commons' Journals record, August 14, that letters of thanks were sent 
by the Parliament to Middleton and Jephson. Cooper was probably 
thanked in person, as he attended at the bar of the House of Commons 
to relate what had been done. 

2 Comm. Journ. August 14. Lord Campbell erroneously places the 
taking of Wareham after these votes of August 14, which were the 
reward of his service. 



1644. COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN DORSET. 61 

the report. 1 The five hundred pounds were never paid, 
and it appears from a note preserved in the family 
papers, that the fine was discharged by Cromwell, 
thirteen years later, in 1657. 

On October 25, Cooper was appointed Commander-in- 
chief of the Parliament's forces in Dorsetshire, 2 and he 
took the field with ten regiments of horse and foot, 
fifteen hundred men in all, to encounter Sir Lewis 
Dives of Sherbovne Castle, who was about the same 
time appointed the King's commander-in-chief in 
Dorsetshire. 3 

In the meantime the King had followed Essex into 
Cornwall, and there completely defeated him. The 
King then returned to Exeter, and in the beginning of 
October passed into Dorsetshire, and stayed a few days 
at Sherborne. 4 The Parliament, on receiving the news 
of Essex's disaster, had successively despatched two 
armies under Waller and Manchester, to check the 
King, who now hurried on from Sherborne to attack 
Waller near Andover. Here he gained an advantage 
over Waller : at Newbury, where he fought Waller's 
forces joined with Manchester's, and contended against 
an army double of his own, he neither conquered nor 
was defeated ; and he then carried off his army to 
Oxford, arriving there himself on the twenty-third of 
November. 5 

1 Comm. Journ. Aug. 22. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch. The original commission is at St. Giles's. 

3 "Sir A. A. Cooper, with fifteen hundred horse and foot from 
several garrisons, took the field to encounter Sir Lewis Dives." (White- 
locke's Memorials, p. 109, October 1644.) See also Vicars's Parl. 
Chron. iv. 62. 

4 Clarendon, Hist, of Rebellion, viii. 148. 6 Ibid. viii. 164. 



62 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

In the beginning of November, Cooper took by storm 
a Cavalier garrison at Abbotsbury, the house of Sir 
John Strangways. A minute and graphic account of 
this action is in existence, written by Cooper himself. 
The following draft of his report to the Committee for 
the Parliament for Dorsetshire, in his own handwriting, 
is among the papers in Lord Shaftesbury's possession. 

"HONOURABLE, Yesterday we advanced with your 
brigade to Abbotsbury as a place of great concern, and 
which by the whole council of war was held feasible. 
We came thither just at night, and sent them a summons 
by a trumpeter, to which they returned a slighting 
answer and hung out their bloody flag. Immediately 
we drew out a party of musketeers, with which Major 
Baintun in person stormed the church, into which they 
had put thirteen men, because it flanked the house. 
This after a hot bickering we carried, and took all the 
men prisoners. After this we sent them a second 
summons under our hands that they might have fair 
quarter if they would accept it, otherwise they must 
expect none if they forced us to a storm. But they 
were so gallant that they would admit of no treaty, so 
that we prepared ourselves for to force it, and accord- 
ingly fell on. The business was extreme hot for above 
six hours ; we were forced to burn down an outgate 
to a court before we could get to the house, and then 
our men rushed in through the fire and got into the hall 
porch, where with -furse fagots they set fire on it, and 
plied the windows so hard with small shot that the 
enemy durst not appear in the low rooms : in the mean- 
time one of our guns played on the other side of the 
house, and the gunners with fire balls and granadoes 
with scaling ladders endeavoured to fire the second 






1644. STORMING OF ABBOTSBURY. 63 

story, but, that not taking effect, our soldiers were 
forced to wrench open the windows with iron bars, and, 
pouring in fagots of furse fired, set the whole house in a 
naming fire, so that it was not possible to be quenched, 
and then they cried for quarter ; but we having bet l 
divers men before it, and considering how many garrisons 
of the same nature we were to deal with, I gave com- 
mand there should be none given, but they should be 
kept into the house, that they and their garrison might 
fall together, which the soldiers with a great deal of 
alacrity would have performed, but that Colonel and 
Major Sidenham, riding to the other side of the house, 
gave them quarter ; upon which our men fell into the 
house to plunder and could not be by any of their com- 
manders drawn out, though they were told the enemy's 
magazine was near the fire and, if they stayed, would 
prove their ruin, which accordingly fell out, for the 
powder taking fire blew up all that were in the house, 
and blew four score that were in the court a yard from 
the ground, but hurt only two of them. Mr. Darby was 
of the number, but not hurt. We had hurt and killed 
by the enemy not fifteen, but I fear four times that 
number will not satisfy for the last mischance. Captain 
Heathcock and Mr. Cooper (who did extreme bravely) 
were both slain by the blow of the powder. Captain 
Gorge, a very gallant young gentleman, is hurt in the 
head with a freestone from the church tower and shot 
through the ankle, but we hope will live. Lieutenant 
Kennett to Major Peutt, who behaved himself very 
well, was blown up with the powder and slain ; and 
Lieutenant Hill, who went a volunteer and was sent in 
to get out the soldiers, was blown up with the rest, yet 
since we have taken him strongly 2 out of the rubbish 

1 So in the manuscript, apparently ; the meaning must be "lost." 

2 So in the manuscript. 



64 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

and hope to preserve him. The house is burnt down to 
the ground, and could not be saved. We have prisoners 
Colonel James Strangways, Major Coles, and three 
captains, besides a hundred foot soldiers and thirty 
horse, all Strangways his whole regiment. Sir William 
Waller's officers all of them have behaved themselves 
extreme gallantly, and more than could be expected in 
their readiness and observance for your commands ; we 
cannot say to whom you owe the most thanks, only 
Lieutenant-Colonel Oxford we are extremely obliged to 
for his nobleness in joining in this expedition, though 
without command, only on our entreaty. Captain Starr 
and Captain Woodward behaved themselves extremely 
well. Our men are so worn out with duty and this mis- 
chance that we are necessitated to retire to Dorchester 
to refresh them. If you have anything in particular to 
command us, we shall most readily obey you. To- 
morrow we have a council of war of all the officers, and 
then we shall conclude of what may be of most advan- 
tage to your service, and by God's blessing will faith- 
fully prosecute it. Colonel Sidenham has yet afforded 
us no ammunition; all his men are supplied from us 
hitherto besides. He makes not up his regiment either 
of horse or foot ; he has withdrawn one more company 
this day. We have given him orders that all the 
prisoners that are officers should be sent to you. We 
humbly desire you will be pleased to consent to no 
exchange for any of them until Haynes be exchanged. 

"A. A. COOPER." 

Another account of the storming of Abbotsbury has 
been preserved in Vicars's Parliamentary Chronicle, 
written by an officer who was under Cooper in the 
engagement, and who speaks with the highest admira- 



1644. STORMING OF ABBOTSBURY. 65 

tion of Cooper's gallantry. " About the eighth of this 
instant November," sa) T s Vicars, " we received credible 
information out of the West by a letter from a com- 
mander of note and quality, of the storming and taking 
of a strong garrison of the enemy's, which was Sir John 
Strangwaies his house in Dorsetshire, and had been a very 
ill neighbour to our renowned garrison of Lime, which 
service was most bravely performed by that valiant and 
loyal patriot, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Commander- 
in-chief for the Parliament in that county." The letter 
is as follows ; it confirms Cooper's account in all 
material particulars ; the name of the officer who wrote 
it I have not discovered : 

" SIR, We marched from Dorchester to Abbotsbury, 
where Colonel James Strangewayes and all his regiment 
were in garrison; they held both the house and the 
church which joined to the house : it was night before 
we summoned it, and they in a scorn refused the 
summons of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, a very active 
and noble gentleman, and Commander-in-chief, where- 
upon he sent his Major-General with a considerable 
party against the church, who presently assaulting it 
took it and all the men in it prisoners, without the loss 
of one man of our own. After this we summoned them 
in writing, the second time, to yield on fair quarter or 
else to expect no mercy, if they forced us to storm 
them. To this also they disdained to return an answer; 
upon which denial we fell on, and after as hot a storm 
as ever I heard of, for six hours together, it pleased God 
at last to give us the place. When by no other means 
we could get it, we found a way by desperately flinging 
in fired turf-fagots into the windows. And the fight 

VOL. i. F 



66 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

then grew so hot that our said Commander-in-chief (who 
to his perpetual renown behaved most gallantly in this 
service) was forced to bring up his men within pistol- 
shot of the house, and could hardly then get them to 
stay and stand the brunt, yet in all this time (God be 
praised) we had but three men killed and some few 
wounded. Now when as by the foresaid hot assault 
half of the house was on a light fire, 1 and not to be 
quenched, then at length Colonel James Strangways 
called out for quarter, which our Commander-in-chief 
was resolved no man in the house should have, in 
regard they had so desperately and disdainfully scorned 
his summons, and also in regard that the Cavaliers' 
custom was observed to be to keep such paltry houses 
and pilfering garrisons against any of our armies, that 
they might thereby be sure to do us mischief, and (by 
reason of our observed clemency) to have their lives at 
last granted to them ; but some of our commanders 
upon one side of the house, contrary to the mind of 
our said Commander-in-chief, and against the opinion of 
all the officers, in his absence had given them quarter, 
which being granted them, we instantly rushed into the 
house, which being on a light fire and their magazine in 
it (I believe rather accidentally than, as some reported, 
purposely and treacherously), to set on fire four or five 
barrels of gunpowder, and blew up between thirty and 
forty of our men ; yet, the Lord be blessed, myself and 
the rest were even miraculously preserved. 

" We took prisoners Colonel James Strangewayes, Sir 
John Strangewayes his son, governour of this garrison, 
his Major and three Captains : and not three of his 
whole regiment but were either killed or taken, and the 
house was wholly burnt down to the ground, and we 
thereby freed of a pestilent and pernicious neighbour. 

1 "A light fire," an old expression for "a bright fire." 






i 



1644. INSTRUCTIONS OF DOESET COMMITTEE. 67 

Colonel Bruen and Mr. Crompton behaved themselves 
very worthily in this action, and Captain Starre incom- 
parably bravely. 

" Yours, 

"C. A." 1 

Soon after the taking of Abbotsbury, Cooper marched 
to Sturminster, and the royalists evacuated the castle 
on his approach : thence he marched to Shaftesbury, 
and forced the royalist garrison of that town to quit. 2 
The following instructions to Cooper from the Com- 
mittee for Dorsetshire, without other date than " Poole, 
eight at night, 1644," were probably written in November, 
between the taking of Abbotsbury and the expedition to 
Shaftesbury : 

" NOBLE SIK, We have received your letter and have 
considered the particulars. In that which concerns the 
altering your quarters, we hold it most fit to be resolved 
on by the council of war upon the place, according as 
you have intelligence of the motions of the enemy. 
Only we shall intimate that, before Shaston 3 be resolved 
on, it may be considered how safe a retreat may be 
made, if a body of the enemy's horse advances to 

Blandford We are very sensible of the necessity 

of supplying the soldiers with some money, and have 
sent you twenty pound, whereof we are fain to borrow 
ten. If we had more, you may be assured those should 
not want that deserve so well and are so modest in their 
demands. You are now in a convenient quarter to raise 
money on malignants, therefore we desire you to make 

1 Vicars's Parl. Chron. iv. 67. This work is so scarce that I may be 
excused for extracting the whole of a letter so closely connected with 
Shaftesbury 's history. 

2 Autobiographical Sketch of 1646. 3 Shaftesbury. 

F2 



68 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

use of the opportunity to the best advantage, and you 
shall be confident of our approbation. We have nothing 
else at present but that we are, 

" Your very loving Friends, 

THO. ERLE, ELIAS BOND, 
Ri. BRODRIPP, THO. HENLEY, 
Ki. BURIE, Ei. Row. 

"Poole, eight at night, 1644." 1 

These instructions show great straits for money. The 
following memoranda were probably written about the 
same time by Cooper for the Governor of Poole : 2 

" 1. That if they cannot immediately send us a supply 
of horse, that orders be forthwith sent for the with- 
drawing the Sussex foot, and that the rest be disposed 
into their several garrisons. The keeping them together 
in a body does devour that provision should be sent into 
the garrisons and destroys the county, besides these few 
horse we have (being not above a hundred) are wholly 
taken up with providing for them. 

" 2. That if a considerable party of horse, sufficient to 
relieve Taunton, cannot be sent us presently, we desire 
that some few may be spared, with which added to 
those we have already we shall be able to victual our 
garrisons and subsist in the county. However, we 
shall be better able to subsist without than with the 
Sussex foot. 

" 3. Under a thousand horse it will be now difficult to 
relieve Taunton, the enemy having received the addition 

1 From Lord Shaftesbury's papers at St. Giles's. 

2 They are among the family papers at St. Giles's, in Shaftesbury's 
handwriting, without any date, and with the heading, "Memo- 
randums for the Governor of Poole." They must have been written ia 
November 1644. 



1644. MEMORANDA ON MILITARY AFFAIRS. 69 

of a hundred horse lately from the King's army, under 
Colonel Cooke, so that with those horse that lie near 
Salisbury they are able to march fifteen hundred horse 
and dragoons. 

"4. The enemy being resolved to fortify round the 
skirts of Somerset, as Sherborn, Sturten Candell, Shafton, 
to make it a safe quarter for his retreat and to drive all 
the parts of the counties of Dorset and Wilts unto their 
quarters, being resolved both their horse and foot shall, 
if they be forced to retire, live on the skirts of these 
two counties, quaere, whether it will not be necessary 
for us to garrison Hooke House, 1 and, if we cannot force 
them from Shafton or Sherborn, to garrison in some 
other strong houses near those places by which their 
incursions may be restrained. 

" 5. The enemy being possessed of Ivychurch and 
Langford Houses, from which they make perpetual 
inroads into the eastern part of our country, and bring 
the northern part of Wiltshire into contribution to them, 
quaere, whether we should not garrison Falston House, 2 
by which we are sure to cut them off from troubling 
this county, besides we shall gain the contribution of a 
considerable part of Wiltshire. 

" 6. Quaere, whether it be not absolutely necessary to 
pluck down the town of Wareham, it being impossible 
for us to victual ; if Sir W. Waller ever draw away his 
foot, the town is left naked and exposed to the pleasure 
of the enemy, who will certainly possess it unless it can 

1 Hooke House, near Beaminster, the property of the Marquis of 
Winchester, the celebrated defender of his house in Hampshire, Basing. 
Hooke House was burnt down in 1647. (Hutchins's Hist, of Dorset, 
i. 494.) 

2 Ludlow mentions Falston House as garrisoned for the Parliament 
in 1645, with one of his relatives, Major William Ludlow, as governor. 
(Memoirs, i. pp. 148, 158.) Falston, Ivychurch, and Langford Houses 
were all near Salisbury. Langford belonged to Lord Gorges ; it is 
now called Longford, and belongs to the Earl of Radnor. 



70 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

be made no town. And there can be no argument 
against the demolishing it, being extremely mean-built, 
and the inhabitants almost all dreadful malignants, be- 
sides the keeping it will certainly starve more honest 
men than the destroying it will undo knaves. 

" 7. A few foot in Lulworth with a troop of horse will 
keep Corfe far better than Wareham. And the lesser 
number of foot we keep, the more horse and dragoons 
we shall be able to maintain, with which the business 
of this county must be done. 

" 8. If they are unwilling to destroy the town of 
Wareham, it may be left for a horse quarter ; and 
they have direction, when they are forced to quit it, 
to set it on fire. 

" 9. That the horse of the county be all reduced into 
a regiment, and there may be two troops allowed the 
governors of Poole and Weymouth, Weymouth troop to 
be commanded by Major Sydenham, otherwise it will be 
impossible to keep them together or in any command. 

" 10. That the Committee name whom they will have 
to be colonel of their horse, and that they will assign 
how many troops he will allow in the regiment and 
whose troops these shall be, and that they will send to 
my Lord General for a commission for the colonel. 

"11. That there be twenty musketeers in every troop 
and a full troop of dragoons at least in the regiment." 

A letter to Sir Anthony from London, November 5, 
1644, from Mr. John Collins, who appears to have 
had the charge of his private affairs, mentions that 
no step is being taken at Goldsmiths' Hall for the 
recovery of his composition-fine of five hundred pounds, 
and speaks of law- business still pending in the Court of 
Wards : 



1644. LETTER FKOM COLONEL BUTLER. 71 

" Upon my late speech with Mr. Allen, 1 I find no 
other but that your business at their Hall rests in peace. 
In the Court of Wards business nothing stirs as yet. 
In the matter of indictment of your tenants the City 
solicitor is someway calling upon it, but I have used 
some means lately to allay him, and, if that hold not, I 
must get the Court moved for a further postponement 
until the next term." 

The following letter to Cooper from Colonel Butler, 
who commanded at Wareham, and was directing the 
siege of Corfe, again shows the great want of money 
with the Parliament's forces in Dorsetshire. 

" SIR, I have written in a former letter the three foot 
of Colonel Raynesborough's are immediately to be drawn 
off for Abingdon ; the men are loth to leave the siege if 
they may have money and provision. To-morrow they 
expect pay, for they buy all by the penny. I beseech 
you do what may be done to send money with all speed, 
for it is a business of great concernment, and I likewise 
beseech you to do what you may for Mrs. Squib. We 
have sent to Poole and Weymouth for men and ammu- 
nition. I pray you do your utmost to second our 
desires, and in sending to London, but especially send 
money, and now be doing for your country and for 
God's cause. A little now will be worth a great deal here- 
after. I pray send money, money ; and that will take 
Corfe Castle, which is in no strong condition. 
" Sir, I am, 

" Your faithful servant, 
" Warham, Dec. 18, 1644. ROBT. BUTLEK. 

" To my honoured friend Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 
at Wimborne, these present." 

1 Doubtless Alderman Allen, an active Parliamentarian. 



72 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

In December, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper received 
orders from the Parliament to proceed with all his 
Dorsetshire forces to the relief of Taunton, where Blake, 
who had before so gallantly defended Lyme, was main- 
taining another equally gallant defence against the 
royalists under great disadvantages. Cooper, who had 
the chief command, was joined in this expedition by a 
force under Major-General Holborn, and Edmund 
Ludlow also joined with two hundred horse from Wilt- 
shire. 1 The besiegers immediately retired on the arrival 
of this relieving force. Cooper wrote to the Earl of 
Essex from Taunton, announcing the easy success of 
the expedition : 

" MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY, The last night 
we brought all our carriages safe to Taunton with our 
horse. We find the castle in no great want of victual, 
only of powder and salt. The town began to be in great 
distress, and it almost a miracle to us that they should 
adventure to keep the town, their works being for the 
most part but pales and hedges, and no line about the 
town. The enemy endeavoured twice to force it, but 
were repulsed ; and since they have only kept them in 
by a quartering round about the town at a mile or two 
distance. Notwithstanding, the townsmen made daily 
sallies and got in store of victuals, without which it had 
been impossible for them to maintain such numbers of 
unnecessary people. The enemy on Friday last have 

1 Autobiog. Sketch. Ludlow, i. 135 ; Vicars's Parl. Chron. iv. 77. It 
would appear from the accounts in Ludlow and Vicars, that Holborn 
had the chief command, but Cooper distinctly states in his thoroughly 
reliable Autobiographical Sketch of 1646, that he had a commission 
from Essex to command in chief. Holborn made various marauding 
excursions against garrisoned houses about Taunton. See the passage 
in Vicars referred to. 






1644. RELIEF OF TAUNTON. 73 

quitted their garrisons in Wellington, Wyrwail, 1 and 
Cokam Houses ; the two last they have burnt, and as I 
saw him they have quitted Chidock House, whether it 
be out of fear or to make a body able to encounter with 
us, we cannot yet understand ; but Sir Lewis Dives his 
running up with his horse to the Bridgewater forces 
argues the latter ; however, we are in a very good condi- 
tion, if they receive no assistance from the King's army, 
which we most fear ; this country being of so great im- 
port to the enemy that it will be worth their engaging 
their whole army, which may prove a successful design 
to them, if we have not a considerable strength ready on 
all motions of the enemy to advance to our assistance. 
I shall only humbly offer this to your Excellency's con- 
sideration, to whose commands I shall always render 
myself faithful and obedient, as becometh your Excel- 
lency's most devoted, most humble servant, 

"ANTHONY ASHLEY CoopEK." 2 

This letter was read in the House of Commons on 
December 24, and was copied by Sir Simonds D'Ewes 

1 So in the manuscript ; Wyrwail may be Worthele near Plymouth. 
Cokam House is Colcombe near Colyton in Devonshire, and belonged 
to Sir John Pole. Chidock or < 'hideock House belonged to Mr. Arundel, 
a Roman Catholic. "Wellington House was burnt down by the royalists 
in the next year. 

2 This letter is in Sir S. D'Ewes's Diary, preserved in the British 
Museum, Harl. MSS.166, p. 1696. It was first printed by the author in 
the "Memoirs, Letters and Speeches, &c. of Earl of Shaftesbury, " 1659. 
There is an entry In the Commons' Journals, December 24, 1644 : "A 
letter from Orchard from Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper directed to my 
Lord General, concerning the relief of Taunton, was this day read. 
Ordered, that it be referred and earnestly recommended from this 
House to the Committee of both Kingdoms, to send a new, speedy, 
and considerable supply of forces into the West." It is also stated in 
Whitelocke's Memorials, Dec. 23, 1644, p, 121 : " Letters from Sir 
A. A. Cooper informed of the relief of Taunton town and castle, held 
out to admiration by Colonel Blake, notwithstanding his great want of 
ammunition and provisions, and that the works there were incon- 
siderable." 



74 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. 1IT. 

into his Diary. The letter was not entered in the 
Journals.' It is a striking and amusing specimen of the 
way in which Shaftesbury's character has been prejudiced 
by biographers, that Lord Campbell, who had never 
seen the letter, and knew no more than was to be learnt 
from the simple notices in the Journals of the House 
of Commons and in Whitelocke's Memorials, that Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper had written a letter concerning 
the relief of Taunton, has said, imaginatively, that " he 
wrote a flaming account of the exploit to the Parlia- 
ment, taking greater credit to himself than Cromwell in 
his despatch announcing his victory at D unbar." A 
more modest and plain statement than that of Cooper's 
letter on this occasion can hardly be conceived. The 
House of Commons resolved, after the reading of 
Cooper's letter to Essex, that the Committee of both 
Kingdoms should be urged to send speedily a strong 
reinforcement to Taunton ; and Waller and Oliver 
Cromwell were ordered into the West in the end of 
February for the relief of Taunton. 

Thus ended the year 1644, a year of great military 
activity for Cooper. The next year was passed more 
tranquilly. The following is his own account in his 
Autobiographical Sketch, written in January 1646, of 
his proceedings during 1645 : 

"In May he received divers commissions from the 
Committee of the West, the chief of which was to 
command in chief the forces they designed to beleaguer 
Corfe Castle, which forces he was to receive from 
Colonel Weldon, who then commanded in the West; 
but when Sir Anthony came into the country, he found 



1645. CLOSE OF MILITARY SERVICE. 75 

Weldon blocked up by Goring, so that being not sup- 
plied with men, he was forced to return. In June he 
went with his lady to Tunbridge, where he for six 
weeks drank the waters. In September his lady went 
to Oxted, in Surrey, to her aunt Capel's, 1 where her 
mother also was, and they both sojourned there. In 
October he went down into the country, and sat with 
the Committee constantly, most commonly as chair- 
man. In December he was employed by the Committee, 
with Colonel Bingham, to the General, who lay then at 
Autree, 2 in Devon, to obtain an assistance of force 
towards the besieging Corfe Castle, which they ob- 
tained. 3 In the end of this month he returned to 
Oxted in Surrey." 

This is the concluding passage of the Autobiogra- 
phical Sketch prefixed to tjie Diary, which begins on 
January 1, 1646. Cooper's military service had come 
to an end. It was, doubtless, terminated by that new- 
modelling of the army in 1645 which was attended by the 
Self-denying Ordinance, and which substituted Fairfax 
for Essex as Commander-in-chief, gave Cromwell great 
advancement, and removed most of the Presbyterian 
leaders from commands in the army, replacing them 
by Independents. As Cooper had not been admitted a 
member of the House of Commons on his petition, the 
Self-denying Ordinance probably did not apply to him ; 

1 Lady Capel, sister of Lord Keeper Coventry's second wife : she 
was wife of Sir Henry Capel, knight, of Hadham, Herts, and had been 
previously married to Sir Thomas Hoskins of Oxted. 

2 Ottery St. Maiy ; the General was Fairfax, who had now suc- 
ceeded Essex. 

3 Corfe Castle surrendered after a long siege, in April of next year, 
to Colonel Bingham. Mr. Marty n and Lord Campbell erroneously 
state that Sir A. A. Cooper took Corfe in 1644. 



76 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

but he had connected himself with the Presbyterians 
on his coming over to the Parliament, and he was 
precisely one of the class of officers whom the promoters 
of the " New Model " of the army did not desire to 
include in the new arrangements. It is certain that he 
had no quarrel with the Parliament, or with its officers 
in the West. This is sufficiently proved by his own 
account of his proceedings during the year 1645, which 
has been quoted, and by his subsequent unintermitted 
attention to various local duties in the service of the 
Parliament. 1 

In the autumn of 1645, after he had ceased to serve 
as an officer of the army, Sir Anthony made an attempt 
to obtain admission as a member of the parliament 
through his original petition for Downton. An entry 
in the Journals informs us that, on September 1, Sir 
Walter Erie was ordered by the House to report on 
a future day concerning Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's 
election. But there is no subsequent entry of a report. 
Cooper was not admitted. 2 The explanation of his 
failure is, doubtless, to be found in the ordinance, 
which had been passed in the previous year, that no 
peer or commoner who had been in the King's quarters 
should be admitted again to sit in either House. 
Whitelocke records, on September 18 of this year, 



1 Lord Campbell, whose biography was written on the plan of 
imagining a bad motive for every action, says : " He was suddenly 
satiated with military glory, and after this brilliant campaign never 
again appeared in the field : whether he retired from some affront, or 
mere caprice, is not certainly known." 

2 The other seat for Downton, held by Sir Edward Griffin, who 
adhered to the King, was at this time declared vacant, and a new writ 
was issued, September 1645. 



1646-50. MEAGRENESS OF DIARY. 77 

that " Sir A. A. Cooper professed his great affection to 
the Parliament, and his enmity to the King's party 
from whom he had revolted, and was now in great 
favour and trust with the Parliament." This probably 
refers to some declaration of political faith made in 
support of his endeavour to gain admission to sit for 
Downton. 

The seven or eight years which followed were passed 
in comparative tranquillity, and were chiefly occupied 
with the business of private life and performance of 
local duties. Excluded from Parliament, Cooper ac- 
cepted all the events and changes which these years 
witnessed, and submitted to the mutilated and reduced 
Parliament as the existing authority, and acted under 
its orders. It is much to be regretted that his Diary, 
which extends from the beginning of 1646 to the 
middle of 1650, is little more than a meagre chronicle 
of visits, journeys, domestic incidents, and pecuniary 
transactions, and does not contain one single comment 
on any of the great political events which are crowded 
into this period: for these years witnessed the entire 
defeat of the royal cause and the disruption of the 
victorious parliamentary party, the humiliation of the 
Presbyterians by the Independents and of the Parlia- 
ment by the army, the consolidation of Oliver Crom- 
well's power, the trial and execution of the King, and 
the establishment of a Commonwealth, without King 
or House of Lords, under the supremacy of the small 
remnant to which military violence had reduced the 
House of Commons, and which history has. branded 
with the nickname of the Eump. 



78 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

Though Cooper conformed always to the authority 
of the actual sovereign power, it is certain that his pre- 
dilections and chief personal relations were with the 
members of the Presbyterian party. At the time of the 
Restoration he was regarded one of this party. A story 
is told, which may have some truth in it, of his having 
endeavoured at the beginning of the contest between 
the Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons 
and the army, which ended in the forced exclusion of 
the Presbyterian members, to moderate the zeal of 
Holies against Cromwell. The incident referred to in 
the following story, which is related by Locke, was in 
the spring of 1647; it is told by him, however, with 
that tone of evident exaggeration of Cooper's im- 
portance which characterises the whole of Locke's frag- 
ment of a memoir. The King was now vanquished, and 
a prisoner in the care of the Scotch Commissioners and 
army. The House of Commons wished to reduce their 
army, and to despatch a portion for service in Ireland. 
The army, assembled near Saffron Walden, clamoured 
for payment of arrears, and an imperious petition was 
presented from the army by three emissaries at the bar 
of the House. The House passed a resolution in dis- 
approval of the petition. Another was set on foot in 
the army, when a motion was made in the House of 
Commons by Holies to declare the petition seditious, 
and its promoters traitors ; and there was private talk 
of calling Cromwell to account. Cromwell left the 
House while the discussion was proceeding, and went 
straight to the army. Locke's story is as follows : 

"It happened one morning that Sir A. A. Cooper, 



1647. ALLEGED ADVICE TO HOLLES. 79 

calling on Mr. Holies on his way to the House, as he 
often did, he found him in a great heat against Crom- 
well, who had then the command of the army, and a 
great interest in it. The provocation may be read at 
large in the pamphlets of that time, for which Mr. Holies 
was resolved, he said, to bring him to punishment. 
Sir A. A. Cooper dissuaded him all he could from any 
such attempt, showing him the danger of it, and told 
him it would be sufficient to remove him out of the 
way by sending him with a command into Ireland. 
This Cromwell, as things stood, would be glad to 
accept ; but this would not satisfy Mr. Holies. When 
he came to the House the matter was brought into 
debate, and it was moved that Cromwell and those 
guilty with him should be punished. Cromwell, who 
was in the House, no sooner heard this, but he stole 
out, took horse, and rode immediately to the army, 
which, as I remember, was at Triplow Heath ; there he 
acquainted them what the Presbyterian party was a 
doing in the House, and made such use of it to them 
that they, who were before in the power of the Parlia- 
ment, now united together under Cromwell, who imme- 
diately led them away to London, giving out menaces 
against Holies and his party as they march, who with 
Stapleton and some others were fain to fly ; and thereby 
the Independent party becoming the stronger, they, as 
they called it, purged the House, and turned out all the 
Presbyterian party. Cromwell, some time after, meet- 
ing Sir A. A. Cooper, told him, I am beholden to you 
for your kindness to me; for you, I hear, were for 
letting me go without punishment, but your friend, 
God be thanked, was not wise enough to take your 
advice." l 

1 Locke's Works, ix. 278. See for an account of what passed in the 
House, April 30, 1647, Ludlow, i. 190, and Holles's Memoirs, p. 89. 



80 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

This story, as told, contains several historical in- 
accuracies, such as occur in other parts of Locke's 
memoir. 1 Fairfax was at the time General-in-chief, not 
Cromwell; and no motion appears to have been made 
in the House against Cromwell. There is apparent 
confusion between the proceedings against Holies, 
Stapleton, and other Presbyterian members in 1647 and 
the violent general " purge " by the army in December 
1648. But it is quite probable that Cooper tried to 
temper Holles's zeal, and that Cromwell afterwards 
spoke of the matter to Cooper. 

Cooper was high sheriff of Wiltshire for the Parlia- 
ment during the year 1647, and leave was given him 
to reside out of the county during the year of his 
shrievalty. 2 

Some passages of his Diary extending from January 
1, 1646, to July 10, 1650, are here selected, which have 
interest in connexion with his life and character, or 
with the habits of the time. 

On February 5, 1646, Cooper records a surgical ope- 
ration : " I had a nerve and vein cut by Gell and 
two more, for which I was forced to keep my chamber 
twelve days." On February 12, " I had another nerve 
and vein cut." 

On April 1, 1646, he mentions that two Dorsetshire 
boys of his neighbourhood, fifteen years old each, 
bound themselves to him for seven years for his plan- 
tation in Barbadoes, to receive 5Z. each at the end of 
the time. 

i See note, pp. 40-42. 

Comm. Journ. Dec. 1, 1646, Jan. 6, 1647; and see further on, p. 82. 



164S. SELECTIONS FROM DIARY. 81 

The Dorsetshire quarter sessions were held on the 
seventh and eighth of April, u this time kept at 
Dorchester, and not at Sherborne, for security." The 
magistrates did bloody work : " Mne hanged ; only 
three burnt in the hand/' is Cooper's summary of their 
deeds. 

A few days after, the Dorsetshire Committee, of 
which Cooper was one, "sat in the Shire Hall, at 
Dorchester, by the ordinance for punishing pressed 
soldiers that ran away on the 15th of January last, 
when three were condemned to die, two to run the 
gantelope, 1 two to be tied neck and heels and one to 
stand with a rope about his neck." 

On July 27, there is an entry of a domestic incident : 
" My wife miscarried of a boy ; she had gone twenty 
weeks. Her brother John 2 in jest threw her against 
a bedstaff, which hurt her so that it caused this." 

In August he attended the assizes at Salisbury and 
Dorchester, being, he says, in the commission of oyer 
and terminer for the whole circuit. The judges were 
Mr. Justice Kolle and Serjeant Godbolt. On August 
10, the assizes began at Salisbury, and Cooper took the 
oaths as a justice of the peace for Wiltshire. 

" August 11 : Sir John Danvers came and sat with us. 
Seven condemned to die; four for horse-stealing, two 
for robbery, one for killing his wife, he broke her neck 
with his hands; it was proved that, he touching her 
body the day after, her nose bled fresh ; four burnt in 

1 Old spelling of gauntlet or gantlet. The word is said to be of 
Dutch origin ; yant, all, and lopen, to run. 

2 John Coventry, the eldest of the Lord Keeper's sons by his 
second wife ; see p. 33. 

VOL. I. G 



82 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. III. 

the hand, one for felony, three for manslaughter; the 
same sign followed one of them of the corpse bleeding. 
"August 12. I and the Sheriff of Wilts begged the 
life of one Prichett, one of those seven condemned, 
because he had been a Parliament soldier. I waited on 
the judges to Dorchester." 

At Dorchester the assizes terminated on the four- 
teenth : 

" Five condemned to die, two women for murdering 
their children, one of them a married woman ; one for 
murder, one for robbery, one for horse-stealing : three 
burnt in the hand, one for manslaughter, two for felony. 
Chibbett condemned for horse-stealing. The Justices 
begged his reprieve, he having been a faithful soldier to 
the State." 

A few days after, on the seventeenth, he went 
Bryanston bowling-green, where he " bowled all day." 

On October 1 he mentions : " I went to Shaftesbury 
to the council of war for Massey's brigade, and got them 
removed out of Dorset." The Parliament had ordered 
that this brigade should be disbanded. 1 

In December, he enters : 

" I was by both Houses of Parliament made High 
Sheriff of the county of Wilts. I was by ordinance of 
Parliament made one of the committee for Dorset and 
Wilts, for Sir Thomas Fairfax his army's contribution." 

In March of next year, 1647, he attended the judges 
as sheriff, at the Wiltshire assizes : 

"March 13 : The judges came into Salisbury, Justice 

1 Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 181. 



1647. SELECTIONS FEOM DIAKY. 83 

Eoles 1 and Serjeant Godbolt. They went hence the 17th 
day. I had sixty men in liveries, and kept an ordinary 
for all gentlemen at Lawes his, 2 four shillings and two 
shillings for blew men. I paid for all. There were 
sixteen condemned to die, whereof fourteen suffered. 
George Philips condemned for stealing a horse ; I got 
his reprieve, and another for the like offence was re- 
prieved by the judge. Three more were burnt in the 
hand, then condemned." 

On March 29, he and his wife had another disap- 
pointment "My wife miscarried of a child she was 
eleven weeks gone with." 

During this month of March, Cooper adds, " I raised 
the country twice, and beat out the soldiers designed 
for Ireland who quartered on the county without order, 
and committed many robberies." These were very likely 
soldiers of the disbanded Massey's brigade, of whom 
Ludlow says that many gave trouble in Wiltshire, and 
ultimately enlisted themselves to serve against the rebels 
in Ireland, the Parliament having sent instructions and 
officers for that purpose. 3 

In June he took his wife to Bath, where she stayed 
five weeks. "June 15 : We came to Bath, where my 
wife made use of the Cross bath, for to strengthen her 
against miscarriage." 

The August Wiltshire assizes began at Salisbury on 
the fourteenth and ended on the eighteenth. The 
judges this time were Godbolt, now a Judge of the 

1 Mr. Justice Rolle, afterwards made Chief Justice of the King's 
Bench, in 1648. He was one of the two judges seized in. their beds at 
Salisbury, in Penruddocke's royalist rising in 1655, and had then a 
narrow escape of his life. 

2 Lawes' s. 3 Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 181. 

G 2 



84 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. III. 

Common Pleas, 1 and Serjeant Wild, afterwards Chief 
Baron. " Four condemned to die : one for a robbery, 
two for horse-stealing, one for murder. Luke, that was 
for the robbery, I got his reprieve." Cooper adds, "I 
kept my ordinary at the Angel, four shillings for the 
gentlemen, two for their men, and a cellar." 

On November 12, there is a curious entry of a spe- 
culation : " The little ship called the ' Eose/ wherein 
I have a quarter part, which went to Guinea, came to 
town this term (blessed be God !). She has been out 
about a year, and we shall but make our money." 

On the twenty-ninth: "My wife was delivered at 
seven o'clock in the evening of a dead maid child ; she 
was within a fortnight of her time." 

For the first half of the year 1648, Cooper had 
attacks of ague. On February 14 he enters in his 
Diary, " I fell sick of a tertian ague, whereof I had but 
five fits, through the mercy of the Lord." This ague 
prevented his sitting with the judges at the assizes in 
March. He had ceased to be Sheriff of Wiltshire, 
having received his writ of discharge on February 11 
from his uncle Tooker, who succeeded him. Again, on 
April 29, there is an entry : " I fell sick of a tertian 
ague, whereof I had but two fits, through the mercy of 
the Lord." 

In July he was made a commissioner of the ordinance 
of Parliament for a rate for Ireland for Dorsetshire, and 
also, by ordinance of Parliament, was made one of the 
commissioners for the militia in Dorsetshire. 

1 He had been made a Judge, April 30, 1647: he died in the next 
year. (Foss's Judges, vi. 318.) 



1649. DEATH OF FIRST WIFE. 85 

The ordinance for the trial of Charles the First was 
passed by the House of Commons on the sixth of 
January, 1649. The trial began on .the twentieth; on 
the twenty-seventh sentence was passed, and on the 
thirtieth the King was executed. Even this great event 
elicits no mention in Cooper's Diary. He was travelling 
at the time, and he merely notes his movements. On 
the twenty-ninth, the day before the execution, he left 
his house at Wimborne St. Giles to go to London, and 
on the thirtieth he travelled from Andover to Bagshot. 
The entries in the Diary are these: "January 29 : I 
began my journey to London, and went to Andover, 
30 : I went to Bagshot. 31 : I came to London, and 
lodged at Mr. Guidott's, in Lincoln's Inn Fields." This 
is all. 

In the next month he records: " I 7 was made by the 
States a justice of peace of quorum for the counties of 
Wilts and Dorset, and of oyer and terminer for the 
western circuit." 

In July 1649, a heavy domestic calamity befell him,, 
the sudden death of his wife : 

" July 10 : My wife, just as she was sitting down to 
supper, fell suddenly into an apoplectical convulsion fit. 
She recovered that fit after some time, and spoke and 
kissed me, and complained only in the head, but fell 
again in a quarter of an hour, and then never came to 
speak again, but continued in fits and slumbers until 
next day. At noon she died ; she was with child the 
fourth time, and within six weeks of her time." 

She had had no child born alive. They had been 
married nine years and a half. Cooper's glowing and 



86 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

touching eulogium of his wife, which here follows in 
the Diary, has been already quoted. 1 

In little more than nine months Cooper was again 
married. One of the last entries in his Diary records 
his marriage, on April 25, 1650, with the Lady Frances 
Cecil, sister of the Earl of Exeter, a royalist nobleman. 

A few days before this marriage, on April 19, Cooper 
entered in his Diary : "I laid the first stone of my house 
at St. Giles's/' 2 

After the execution of Charles the First, Cooper con- 
tinued obedient to the existing supreme authority, acted 
as a magistrate, took the engagement to be faithful to 
the new Commonwealth without King or House of 
Lords, and acted as a commissioner to administer the 
engagement in Dorsetshire. He mentions in the Diary 
that he was sworn as a magistrate for the counties of 
Wilts and Dorset, and acted for the first time since the 
King's death, on August 16, 1649, about a month after 
the loss of his first wife. He subscribed the engage- 
ment, with a number of his brother magistrates, at 
Salisbury quarter sessions, on January 17, 1650. On 
January 29 he sat at Blandford, on a commission from 
the Council of State, to give the engagement. On the 
thirty-first he started for London, where he arrived on 
the second of February, and he there received a new 
commission to himself and others for giving the engage- 
ment in Dorsetshire. 

The Diary ends abruptly on July 10, 1650. In the 



1 See p. 19. 

2 The right wing of the present house was built in 1651. (Hutchins's 
Hist, of Dorset, iii. 186.) 



1652. COMMISSION FOR REFORM OF LAWS. 87 

following year Cooper's wife bore him a son, who was 
christened Cecil, and who died in childhood. On the 
sixteenth of January, 1652, was born another son, 
Anthony Ashley, who lived to inherit his father's 
possessions and titles, and transmitted them to a son 
of his own, the distinguished author of the "Charac- 
teristics." fa^- 

From the termination of the Diary in July 1650 to 
the beginning of 1652, there is no information as to 
Sir A. A. Cooper's proceedings. But it is certain that 
he remained constant in allegiance to the Eump Par- 
liament. On the seventeenth of January, 1652, he was 
named by this Parliament one of a Commission for the 
reform of the laws. A Committee of the Parliament 
had been named for the same purpose some time before, 
but the slowness of its proceedings caused great dissatis- 
faction. It was now resolved to appoint a Commission 
of twenty-one members, none of whom should be mem- 
bers of the Parliament, to assist the Committee. Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper was the last-named of the 
twenty-one Commissioners. The first -named, and pro- 
bably the leading member of the Commission, was 
Matthew Hale, the future celebrated Chief Justice. 
These were associated with a motley group, in which 
were a few lawyers, three officers of the army, Des- 
borough, Tomlinson, and Packer, and the notorious 
preacher, Hugh Peters, who, after the Eestoration, was 
one of the victims selected to expiate the execution of 
Charles the First, and was tried and sentenced to death 
by a body of judges of whom one was Cooper. 

This Commission, guided chiefly by Hale, drew up a 



88 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. III. 

digest of the laws, and prepared various excellent drafts 
of measures, some of which, designed to simplify and 
cheapen legal proceedings and facilitate conveyances, 
Cooper afterwards procured to be passed by the Bare- 
bone's Parliament. The celebrated Marriage Act of the 
Barebone's Parliament, prescribing the celebration of 
marriages before magistrates, was one of the measures 
prepared by this Commission. 1 

On the seventeenth of March, 1653, it is entered in 
the Journals : " Resolved by the Parliament that Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, baronet, be, and is hereby, 

1 See the collection of Acts prepared by this Commission in Somers' 
Tracts, vol. vi. They were printed by order of the Barebone's Parlia- 
ment, immediately after its assembling. Several of these measures had 
been reported to the Eump, but none appear to have been passed by 
that parliament. It appears from two entries in the Journals (January 
20, 21, 1653) that the Commission prepared a digest of the laws, 
of which the Parliament ordered three hundred copies to be printed. 
Various measures were referred by the House to this Commission for 
their advice, among others a bill for a general register of lands (Journ. 
Feb. 2, 1653). This bill had not come back from the Commission 
when the Rump was dissolved, April 20, 1653. The registry bill 
appears to have been strongly pressed on the Rump by petitions from 
without (Journ. July 22, 1652), and the long time spent in discussing 
it by the law reform Commission caused great complaints. Ludlow 
complains of the lawyers spending three months on the word "incum- 
brance" in this bill (i. 430), and see Cromwell's speech to the 
Barebone's parliament (Carlyle, ii. 198). Whitelocke, who was a 
member of the Committee of the Rump which this Commission was 
appointed to assist, complains of the impracticability of Hugh Peters 
in this Commission. " I was often advised with by some of this 
committee, and none of them was more active in this business than 
Mr. Hugh Peters the minister, who understood little of the law, but 
was very opinionative and would frequently mention some of the pro- 
ceedings of the law in Holland wherein he was altogether mistaken. " 
(Memorials, p. 521.) Peters says of himself, "I rather was there to 
pray than to mend laws, but I might as well have been spared. " Hale, 
writing on the amendment of the laws after the Restoration, speaks of 
the impracticability of the law reformers of the Commonwealth, and 
admits the unwillingness of the lawyers to aid them, saying that they 
feared to increase the difficulties of a general settlement of property if 
the King should be restored, and feared also to increase the difficulties 
of a restoration. (Hargreave's Law Tracts, p. 274.) 



1653. ABSOLVED FROM DELINQUENCY. 89 

pardoned of all delinquency, and be, and is hereby, made 
capable of all other privileges as any other of the people 
of this nation are." Now, therefore, very shortly before 
Cromwell's ejection of the Rump of the Long Parliament, 
Cooper was at last admitted to all privileges, and made 
capable of sitting in Parliament. There is not the 
slightest reason for supposing, as some biographers have 
imagined, that Cooper had recently given offence to the 
Parliament, or that he had ever acted against it since he 
quitted the King's party. 1 

1 Mr. Martyn, to explain this entry in the Journals, has invented 
that the Parliament, after the battle of Worcester, had some suspicions 
of Cooper and arrested him as a delinquent, and afterwards pardoned 
him in order to secure his friendship as against Cromwell (Life, i. 163). 
Lord Campbell has improved on Mr. Martyn's statement. "In the 
beginning of 1652, he became a member of the famous Commission for 
the reform of the law ; but he soon found this very dull work, and 
being shut out from all civil and military distinction, he became highly 
discontented, and muttered so loud against the reigning authorities 
that he was actually taken up as a delinquent ; but nothing could be 
proved against him except some intemperate speeches, and it was 
resolved by the House, 'that Sir A. A. Cooper be pardoned of all 
delinquency. ' " The dislike of the Law-reform Commission, in which 
Cooper took great interest, the discontent, the loud inutterings, the 
arrest, and the proved intemperate speeches, are all imagination. 



CHAPTER IV. 

16531656. 

Cromwell's ejection of the Bump Reasons for the act Temporary 
Council of State A Convention summoned Meets, July 4, 
1653 Sir A. A. Cooper a member Proceedings of Barebone's 
Parliament Parties in that assembly Questions of Church and 
Law Eeform Cromwell allied with the moderate party The 
Parliament resigns its powers to Cromwell, December 12, 1653 
Cooper had acted with the moderate party and Cromwell, and had 
promoted the resignation Idle rumour that Cromwell meant to 
make Cooper Lord Chancellor Cromwell refuses to be King, and is 
made Protector Cooper said to have pressed him to be King 
Cooper one of the new Council of State The Instrument of 
Government Milton serves under the Council Cooper elected 
to the new parliament for Wiltshire, Poole, and Tewkesbury Sits 
for Wiltshire Ludlow's account of the Wiltshire election Parlia- 
ment meets, September 3, 1654 Cromwell's difficulties with the 
Parliament He dissolves it Cooper ceases to attend the Privy 
Council His estrangement from Cromwell Ludlow's mistakes 
about this estrangement Death of Cooper's second wife in 1654 
Story of Cooper wishing to marry Cromwell's daughter Mary He 
marries, in 1656, a daughter of Lord Spencer of Wormleighton 
Her character She survives Shaftesbury. 

FOUR years of the government of the Rump Parliament 
had prostrated the forces of the enemies of the Common- 
wealth in the three countries, and had also divided 
that body within itself, and made it obnoxious, for 
various reasons, to large portions of the republican 
party. These four years had likewise consolidated the 
power of the army, and established the ascendency and 
fixed the ambition of Cromwell, its victorious general. 
Those who interpret a great career by a single motive, 



1653. EJECTION OF THE RUMP. 91 

and do not allow the possibility either of generous 
desires to the objects of their antipathy or of human 
weaknesses to their idols, will ascribe Cromwell's sup- 
pression of the Kump, according as they may be his 
admirers or his depreciators, to pure patriotism or un- 
scrupulous ambition. It is more probable that ambition 
and a persuasion of public advantage combined to move 
Cromwell to this act. The force of circumstances and 
his own superiority of character had made him master 
of the destinies of the country, and he would have been 
more than human if he had been unwilling to grasp 
supreme power when it was within easy reach. The 
Kump had committed many errors, which Cromwell 
probably exaggerated, and, as is inevitable even for 
the wisest holders of power, had made many enemies, 
whom Cromwell probably encouraged and deluded. But 
a numerous executive is especially unsuited to a time- 
when the ravages of revolutions are to be repaired, and 
the discord of civil wars to be laid to rest, and a nation 
placed again in the way of tranquil progress after 
storms ; and Cromwell might not unreasonably or un- 
justly persuade himself that his own clear head and 
strong hand could better provide for the interests of 
the Commonwealth than a distracted and damaged 
assembly, in which some able and upright men were 
swamped by pedants, adventurers, and fanatics. 1 

1 There is no information as to the exact number of members of the 
Rump Parliament, i. e. the remnant of the Long Parliament recognised 
as members after the execution of Charles I. It was probably about 
180. The largest number ever recorded as voting is 122, at the election 
of the Council of State, November 24, 1652. The ordinary attendance 
of members was about fifty. Ludlovv counted 160 who had sat in the 
House since 1648 as alive in April 1659. (Mem. ii. 645). 



92 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

The immediate cause of Cromwell's violent dissolu- 
tion of the Eump was a dispute as to when their power 
should terminate, and how their successors should be 
appointed. A bill for regulating the election of future 
Parliaments had long been before them, and the slow- 
ness with which they proceeded in it had occasioned 
many reproaches. With great difficulty they had been 
prevailed on, in November 1651, to fix a day for the 
termination of their own power ; and the day fixed was 
three years distant, the third of November, 1654. The 
bill for the election of future Parliaments provided a 
much more popular scheme of representation than that of 
the ancient constitution ; it was the same as that which 
Cromwell afterwards adopted in the mixed constitution 
known by the name of the " Instrument of Govern- 
ment," though now he was vehemently opposed to it, 
arguing that for the election of a sovereign assembly it 
was a dangerous experiment in the distracted condition 
of the country. Cromwell urged that the Presbyterians 
could not be kept out of an assembly popularly elected. 
This party had fought with the heir of the late King 
against the Eurap ; they had been vanquished in the 
field, and Prince Charles was an exile. " Let them 
not," said Cromwell, " peril the republic, and revive 
prostrate pretensions by a popular election which must 
introduce many Presbyterians into power." He called 
upon the Rump to name an early day for the termina- 
tion of their own power, and to nominate a sovereign 
body of moderate number as their immediate successors. 
Both these demands were refused. The Rump were 
now as impatient to pass their bill as before they had 



1653. EJECTION OF THE RUMP. 93 

been dilatory ; and at last, on the twentieth of April, 
1653, as they were hurrying the bill through its last 
stage, in spite of an understanding with Cromwell that 
on that day no progress should be made with it, Crom- 
well brought a handful of soldiers into the House and 
violently broke up the assembly. 1 

1 See Cromwell's account of his reasons for taking this step in his 
speech at the opening of the Barebone's Parliament, which may be 
read in the " Parliamentary History," or in Mr. Carlyle's work. I find 
it difficult to reconcile Cromwell's objections to the popular character 
of the scheme of representation proposed in the bill with another 
charge which he distinctly makes against the Rump, that they designed 
by this bill to continue their own power. I cannot suppose, with Mr. 
Carlyle, that the bill contained a clause providing that every member 
of the Rump should be a member of the new parliament without 
election. (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, ii. 177.) Perhaps Cromwell 
meant to say that the bill either would lead to a virtual reproduction 
of the Rump, or must let in a number of Presbyterians : excluding 
clauses sufficiently stringent to keep out Presbyterians might have 
produced the former result. Or perhaps Cromwell, whose object was 
to justify himself and abuse the Rump, did not consider very nicely 
all that he said against them. The election of the Parliament of 1654, 
under the same plan of representation, verified Cromwell's expectations 
as to the Presbyterian party. There are two well-known graphic 
descriptions of Cromwell's ejection of the Rump, Ludlow's (ii. 455) 
and the Earl of Leicester's (Blencowe's Sydney Papers, p. 139) ; but 
though their descriptions are graphic, neither was an eye-witness. 
Whitelocke, who was present, gives a very tame account of the scene. 
Two interesting notices of this event, which will be new to most 
readers, by members who were ejected, occur in the debates in Burton's 
Parliamentary Diary. Sir Arthur Haselrig : " We were labouring here 
in the House on the act to put an end to that parliament, and to call 
another. I desired the passing of it with all my soul. The ques- 
tion was putting for it, when our General stood up and called in his 
lieutenant with two files of musqueteers, with their hats on their heads, 
and their guns loaden with bullets. Our General told us we should sit 
no longer to cheat the people. The Speaker, a stout man, was not 
willing to go. He was so noble that he frowned, and said he would 
not out of the chair, till he was plucked out ; which was quickly done, 
without much compliment, by two soldiers, and the mace taken." 
(iii. 98.) Mr. Reynolds, who is evidently badly reported says: "I 
never desired any earthly thing with more earnestness, to see that 
parliament fairly dissolved, and another provided to build up. The 
question being put to dissolve with a very loud Yea. This done, 
persons came to the door. One came in, and sweetly and kindly took 
your predecessor by the hand, and led him out of the chair. I say 
sweetly and gently. This was never known abroad, how near the 






94 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

The Rump sat no more, and the sovereign power of 
the Commonwealth was now in the hands of Cromwell, 
the commander-in-chief of an obedient army of eighty 
thousand men. 

In a few days Cromwell appointed a Council of 
State to transact the ordinary duties of executive 
government. It consisted of thirteen members, in- 
cluding himself. He continued to exercise the sove- 
reign power with the advice of his Council of officers, 1 
and he proceeded, in accordance with the recommenda- 
tion which he had made to the Rump, to arrange for 
the nomination of a temporary sovereign assembly. 

parliament that conquered others was to conquering themselves." 
(iii. 209.) It appears, from these two statements of persons present, 
that the question, that the bill do pass, Avas actually put. M. Guizot 
has published an interesting letter of M. de Bordeaux, the French 
Minister in London, giving an account of this ?dissolution. (Hist, de 
Cromwell, vol. i. App. No. 23.) M. de Bordeaux' account of Harrison's 
taking the Speaker from the chair curiously agrees with Reynolds's : 
"Le dit major (Harrison), le chapeau a la' main avec tout respect, 
s'en alia a la chaire du Speaker, et lui baisant la main le prit par la 
sienne et la conduisit hors du parlement comme un gentilhomme ferait 
une demoiselle." M. de Bordeaux also puts into Cromwell's mouth a 
short speech accusing the Parliament of tyranny and corruption, and 
declaring his resolve to place the government in the hands of a few 
respectable men, " entre les mains de pen de gens, mais gens de bien." 
1 The continued exercise of the sovereign power by Cromwell and 
the Council of officers after the establishment of the Council of State 
puzzled contemporaries (Blencowe's Sydney Papers, p. 142), and has 
puzzled Mr. Godwin, who describes the Council of officers and the 
Council of State as two co-ordinate powers. (Hist, of Commonwealth, 
iii. 528.) I think there is no doubt that Cromwell appointed the 
Council of State for ordinary purposes of administration, retaining in 
his own hands the sovereign power, which he continued to exercise 
with the advice of the Council of officers. The Council of State con- 
sisted of Cromwell, General Lambert (his son-in-law), General Harrison, 
General Desborough (Cromwell's brother-in-law), Colonels Stapeley, 
Sydenham, Philip Jones, Tomlinson, and Bennet, Sir Gilbert Picker- 
ing, "Walter Strickland, John Carew, and Samuel Moyer. It exem- 
plifies the inaccuracies of contemporary writers, that Lord Leicester 
calls the Council of State a council of ten (Blencowe's Sydney Papers, 
p. 1 41) ; and Heath names Fairfax and Deane as members of it. 
(Chronicle, p. 343.) 



1653. BAKEBONE'S PARLIAMENT. 95 

Six weeks were spent in deliberating on the composition 
of this body. At last, early in June, summonses were 
issued to a hundred and forty-two persons, of whom 
a hundred and twenty-four were nominated for the 
counties of England, six for Wales, six for Ireland, 
and six for Scotland. 1 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was nominated, with 
nine other members, for Wiltshire. He accepted this 
nomination, and was one of the leading members of 
this assembly, and a zealous supporter of Cromwell's 
views. 

This is the body known by the name of the Bare- 
bone's Parliament, so nicknamed from one of its 
members, a notorious fanatic, who bore the singular 
name of Praisegod Barebone or Barbone. A large pro- 
portion of its members were religious enthusiasts, Ana- 
baptists, Fifth Monarchy men, and followers of other 
sects into which the Independents were subdivided, and 
tradesmen and men of small means and humble position. 
Cromwell, having determined to call together such a 
body, was compelled to consult those on whom his 
power depended, and who had supported him in his 
measures against the Eump. The ministers of the 

1 Hobbes mentions one hundred and forty-two as the number of 
summonses issued (Behemoth, Fart iv. ) Cromwell in his address to 
the assembly on its meeting says that they were "above a hundred 
and forty." A member of the assembly to whom we owe the fullest 
account of its proceedings, says that two, and two only, refused their 
nominations. (Somers Tracts, vi. 269.) One of those who refused 
was probably Fairfax. See Godwin, iii. 524. The list of the members 
printed in the Somers Tracts (vi. 246) contains only 139 names. Mr. 
Hallam incorrectly states 120 as the number of the assembly (Constit. 
Hist. ii. 329) ; this is the number said to have attended on the first 
day. Dr. Lingard incorrectly makes the number of members for Eng- 
land 139, and the total 156. (Hist, of England, xi. 4.) 



96 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

Independent congregations throughout the country were 
chiefly advised with as to the persons to be nominated. 1 
On the other hand, Cromwell's means of choice among 
the gentry were necessarily limited. It may be inferred 
from what followed that, if he had been free to pursue 
his own inclinations, he would have appointed fewer 
fanatics and tradesmen, and more country gentlemen 
and lawyers. As it was, it excited astonishment that 
he should have succeeded in obtaining the services^of so 
many gentlemen of birth and fortune as did take their 
places in this assembly. 2 Among these were Lord Eure, 
who sat a solitary peer in this assembly, Lord Lisle, the 
eldest son of the Earl of Leicester, Sir Charles Wolseley, 
Sir Gilbert Pickering, Cooper himself, Edward Montagu 
and Charles Howard, who were afterwards Earls of 
Sandwich and Carlisle. Other names occur in the 
list of members, which are at this day leading names 
in the counties which their bearers were called to repre- 
sent. Very few officers of the army were nominated ; 
and Cromwell abstained from nominating himself or 
any of his principal officers. One of the first pro- 
ceedings of this body, after it was constituted, was to 
add Cromwell, Generals Lambert, Harrison, and Des- 
borough, and Colonel Tomlinson, to their number; 
and Cooper was appointed to go at the head of a de- 
putation to Cromwell, "to desire him to afford his 

1 Tlmrloe's State Papers, i. 395 ; Somers Tracts, vi. 269. 

2 Compare Whitelocke, who expresses such astonishment (Memorials, 
p. 559) with Clarendon, who admits, reluctantly, that " there were 
amongst them some few of the quality and degree of gentlemen, and 
who had estates, and such a proportion of credit and reputation as 
could consist with the guilt they had contracted." (Hist, of Eebellion, 
xiv. 15.) 



1653. OPENING OF BAREBONE'S PARLIAMENT. 97 

presence and assistance in the House as a member 
thereof." l 

This assembly met on the fourth of July, 1653. 
Cromwell addressed them on their first coming together 
in a long speech, full of religious phraseology, in which 
he justified his dissolution of the Eump, laid before 
them the great task which they were called to perform 
of settling the Commonwealth on firm foundations, and 
urged them to proceed in a spirit of forbearance and 
conciliation towards the numerous Presbyterian portion 
of the nation. At the conclusion of his speech, Crom- 
well delivered to the assembly a written instrument, by 
which he formally devolved on them the sovereign 
power, to hold it for a period of sixteen months, until 
the third of November, 1654. Three months before that 
day they were to nominate a body of equal number as 
their successors, who again were to sit for a twelve- 
month, and to make permanent provision for the future 
government of the Commonwealth. 

The first business of the assembly was prayer. The 
commencement of their proceedings is thus described by 
one of themselves: "The fourth of July, 1653, those 
thus assembled and empowered did adjourn themselves 
from Whitehall to the Parliament-house, to meet the 
next morning at eight of the clock, and then to begin 



1 Comm. Journ. July 5, 1653. Cromwell was invited to sit as 
member of the Council of State. A difficulty seems to have been 
started as to whether members could be added to those named in the 
original instrument, without a new instrument ; and they probably 
thought to get over the difficulty in this way. See Blencowe's Sydney 
Papers, p. 149. After the addition of these members, all the members 
of the Council of State which Cromwell had appointed were members 
of the assembly. 

VOL. I. H 



98 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

with seeking God by prayer; which accordingly they 
did, and the service was performed by the members 
amongst themselves, eight or ten speaking in prayer to 
God, and some briefly from the Word, much of the pre- 
sence of Christ and of His Spirit appearing that day, to 
the great gladding of the hearts of many; some affirming 
they never enjoyed so much of the Spirit and presence 
of Christ in any of the meetings and exercises of religion 
in all their lives as they did that day. In the evening 
of that day, Mr. Francis Eouse was called to the chair, 
and chosen Speaker; and then the House was adjourned 
to the next day, when the House appointed to pray 
again three or four days after, which accordingly was 
done by the members, principally by such as had not 
done service before, when also the Lord General was 
present, and it was a very comfortable day." l No words 
can describe more vividly the prevailing character of 
this assembly. Cooper, Howard, Montagu, and others 
who had joined this assembly as politicians, must have 
been far from feeling comfortable in witnessing these 
proceedings. 2 

1 Somers Tracts, vi. 270. Compare Thurloe, i. 338, and Blencowe's 
Sydney Papers, p. 148. 

3 There is no evidence, and it is not at all probable, that Cooper, 
any more than Montagu or Howard, led in these prayers : they were all 
members of a moderate party in this assembly, which steadily opposed 
the fanatics, and ultimately broke it up. Dryden's fierce lines in 
" The Medal " are satirical exaggeration, and, so far as concerns the 
charge against Cooper of selling himself to Cromwell, downright mis- 
representation : 

" Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 
He cast himself into the saint-like mould : 
Groaned, sighed, and prayed while godliness was gain, 

of "" 



The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train." 

Lord Campbell, improving on tradition, and without any evidence, 
says that Cooper "pretended to have received the new light, after 



1653. FANATIC AND MODERATE PARTIES. 99 

The assembly adopted the name of the Parliament of 
the Commonwealth of England. They enlarged the 
council which Cromwell had appointed to the number 
of thirty, and among the additional members now 
appointed was Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. 

It soon became apparent that from this assembly a 
healing of divisions was not to be expected ; and if 
Cromwell had bestowed on it the sovereign power in 
the hope that it might become the instrument of his 
own elevation, any such hope must soon have been 
abandoned. Two parties, very nearly equal in numbers, 
appeared in the assembly. One party acted with Crom- 
well, and endeavoured to temper the violent counsels of 
the other, more especially in the questions of tithes, pre- 
sentations to livings, the maintenance of a clergy in 
connexion with the Government, and the reform of the 
laws and of the Court of Chancery. The violent party 
of root and branch reformers wished to abolish tithes 
and rights of presentation, and to leave the clergy 
entirely to the choice and control, as well as to the 
contributions, of their congregations. Cromwell's party 
were ready to give up tithes, but wished to retain them 
until some less irritating mode of payment of clergy 
were provided ; they urged that rights of presentation 
were property, and desired to preserve them, subject to 
the check of a body of commissioners empowered to 
eject unworthy clergymen, and having a veto on nomi- 
nations. As regards the law, the violent party were for 



tJie fashion of the Independents," and that, "on the meeting of the 
House, he joined zealously in 'seeking the Lord,' along with the 
great body of fanatics of which it was composed." 

H2 



100 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

constructing a complete code of new laws on principles 
from which all the lawyers recoiled as fanatical : Crom- 
well's party opposed this proposal, and thought it suffi- 
cient to reform the laws according to the recommendation 
of the Commission appointed by the Kump, over which 
Hale had presided, and of which Cooper had been a 
member. Almost immediately after the meeting of the 
assembly, a committee for the reform of the law was 
appointed, of which Cooper, being the first named, was 
probably chairman ; they applied themselves to consider 
the various projects of measures which the Commission 
had prepared ; and Cooper from time to time introduced 
bills to the House, some of which were passed. A vote 
for the abolition of the Court of Chancery was passed 
without a division, but disputes afterwards arose between 
the two parties as to the provision to be made for the 
future administration of equity and the decision of pend- 
ing suits ; and the violent party, getting impatient, were 
prevented only by the casting vote of the Speaker from 
carrying a motion for the immediate abolition of the 
Court of Chancery, without any provision being made 
for these purposes. 1 On other occasions the violent 
party succeeded in obtaining small majorities. It was 
clear that Cromwell was not strong enough in the 
assembly to master its fanatical elements, and keep it 
in the ways of prudence and conciliation. The Presby- 
terian clergy who had been planted through the country 
while their party was predominant in the Long Parlia- 

1 " It wanted not much lout that all the caterpillars of the land had 
been all banished the town, as formerly the poor cavaliers were, one 
voice only reserving them for a time, which will not be long." 
(Letter in Thurloe's State Papers, i. 577.) 



1653. END OF BAREBONE'S PARLIAMENT. 101 

ment, the Universities, and the Inns of Court, were all 
struck with terror at the designs of the violent party. 
Some of their proceedings gave offence to the army. 1 
Cromwell made up his mind to put an end to this 
Parliament. 

In the first days of its sitting, a committee had been 
appointed to consider the question of tithes. The 
appointment of this committee, carried by a majority of 
seven, had been a victory gained by the moderate party, 
who had thereby parried a motion for the abolition of 
tithes. It was afterwards referred to this committee on 
tithes to propose a plan for rejecting unworthy clergy- 
men. The moderate, party prevailed in the committee, 
and on the third of December they presented a report, 
recommending the continuance of tithes, and the ap- 
pointment of commissioners, to be divided into circuits, 
and joined with four or five residents in each county, 
for the ejection of ungodly ministers and induction of 
godly successors. The violent party opposed the adop- 
tion of this report ; a debate arose on the first paragraph, 
which lasted for five days, and which ended by a vote, 
carried by a majority of two, against agreeing with it. 

This vote determined the existence of the assembly. 
It was passed on Saturday, the tenth of December. 
During the next day Cromwell arranged his plans. On 
the morning of Monday his friends mustered early, and 
one of them, Colonel Sydenham, 2 moved that "the 
sitting of this Parliament any longer as now constituted 
will not be for the good of the Commonwealth, and that 

1 Thurloe, i. 368; Somers Tracts, vi. 274. 

2 The same who had acted with Cooper in his first military service 
for the Parliament, the taking of "Wareham, in 1644, and afterwards at 
the storming of Abbotsbury. See pp. 59, 63.. 



102 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

therefore it was requisite to deliver up unto the Lord 
General Cromwell the powers which they received from 
him." This motion was seconded by Sir Charles Wolseley. 
After some debate, the Speaker, who was one of Crom- 
well's partisans, rose without putting the question, and, 
followed by about forty members, and preceded by the 
Serjeant bearing the mace, proceeded to Cromwell at 
Whitehall. A resignation of the powers of the assembly 
was then written out, signed by the members present, 
and given to Cromwell. He accepted the resignation 
with professions of astonishment and sorrow. About 
seven-and-tweiity members had remained in the House, 
and were consulting what they should do, when two 
officers entered and requested them to withdraw. They 
refused, and the officers brought in soldiers, forced them 
out, and locked the doors. The paper of resignation lay 
at Whitehall, to be signed by any other members who 
might choose to add their signatures ; and ultimately it 
had eighty signatures, which enabled Cromwell to say 
that the sovereign power had been returned into his 
hands by a majority of this Parliament. 

Cooper's name is not mentioned in the accounts which 
we have of the termination of the Barebone's Parliament ; 
but there is no doubt that he acted with those who 
brought about the resignation of its powers. He had 
been constantly a teller for the moderate party in divi- 
sions in this Parliament. He was appointed one of 
Cromwell's Council of State immediately after the ter- 
mination of the Barebone's Parliament. 1 

1 Mr. Martyn, in a series of extraordinary misstatements, represents 
Cooper as systematically opposing Cromwell in the Barebone's Parlia- 
ment, and describes Colonel Sydenham's motion for the resignation of 
its powers as a step hostile to Cromwell, (i. 164.) 



1653. ZEALOUS SUPPORTER OF CROMWELL. 103 

Two incidents recorded in the Journals show how 
much Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was devoted for the 
present to Cromwell and his policy. He reported from 
the Council of State to the Parliament on the case of 
the republican agitator, John Lilburne, who had been 
banished by the Eump 011 pain of death if he returned 
to England ; who, after Cromwell broke up the Bump, 
had returned and had been arrested by order of Crom- 
well's Council, and sent to trial; who had been tried 
and acquitted by a jury amid threatening demonstrations 
in his favour of large masses of the lower orders, and 
whom the Council, through the medium of Cooper, now 
recommended the House to retain in custody, notwith- 
standing his acquittal, for the peace of the nation. 1 On 
another occasion, he was deputed by the House to convey 
to Cromwell an offer to place Hampton Court at his 
disposal, in exchange for New Hall in Essex, which he 
then occupied, and he reported to the House Cromwell's 
grateful refusal. 2 

There was an idle rumour during the few days which 
intervened before the new government was settled, that if 
Cromwell had appointed Cooper Lord Chancellor ; but f 
there is no reason to believe that Cromwell had thought I 
of such an appointment. 3 



1 Coram. Journ. Aug. 27, 1653. 

2 Ibid. Sept. 20, 26 ; Thurloe, i. 477. 

It is said in an intercepted letter from Thomas Crocker to Francis 
Edward, printed in Thurloe's State Papers (i. 645) : " I hear the coun- 
cillors are all named last night, the oilicers chosen, and several 
honours to be conferred : amongst others, Lambert, who is now, as I 
conceive, general of the three nations, to be made a duke ; my Lord 
Say to be chamberlain of the household ; which is yet in doubt, whether 
he will accept or refuse ; my Lord Chief Justice St. John to be lord 
treasurer ; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, chancellor ; both which have 



104 LIFE OF SHA.FTESBUKY. CHAP. IV. 

At a council of officers assembled by Cromwell on the 
day on which the Barebone's Parliament was broken up, 
an elaborate scheme of a constitution was resolved upon, 
which placed the government of the Commonwealth in 
a single person, styled Protector, assisted by a Council 
of State, and a Parliament popularly elected, according 
to a reformed scheme of representation, similar to that 
which had been projected by the Bump. The elaborate- 
ness of this scheme shows that it must have been 
already for some time under consideration ; and Crom- 
well may have designed to submit it to the Barebone's 
Parliament, before he gave up hopes of managing that 
assembly. Lambert, who proposed the scheme to the 
Council of officers, said that it had been two months in 
preparation. There were those who had proposed that 
Cromwell should now be made King. Indeed the scheme 
was originally drawn up, with the title of King for the 
chief magistrate. Cromwell refused this title, 1 and it 

accepted." This is the only allusion which exists to a design of 
appointing Cooper chancellor, and it is easy to see that these are idle 
stories. Yet Lord Campbell has built upon this valueless statement a 
singular superstructure of error. He first represents Cromwell as 
having offered the great seal to Cooper before the calling of the Bare- 
bone's Parliament : " After the expulsion of the Long Parliament he 
intrigued with Cromwell, who was anxious to secure him, and held out 
to him the prospect of being appointed Lord Keeper of the Great 
Seal." Then Lord Campbell supposes that, in the Barebone's Parlia- 
ment, Cooper's " views on the Great Seal were considerably dashed by 
the bill for ' the immediate and total abolition of the Court of Chancery,' " 
and thinks that his opposition to this bill may have led to the statement 
that he opposed Cromwell in the Barebone's Parliament, whereas it is 
known that Cromwell also disapproved of that bill. Lastly, Lord 
Campbell thinks that the ultimate estrangement between Cooper and 
Cromwell probably arose " from the promise about the Great Seal not 
being fulfilled." 

1 A speech of Cromwell in 1657 to a large number of officers who 
then opposed his taking the title of King, which was printed for the 
first time by the editor of Burton's Diary from a MS. in the British 
Museum, is the authority for this statement. "He [Cromwell] said 



1653. CROMWELL MADE PROTECTOR. 105 

was settled that the " single person " of the new consti- 
tution should be styled Protector, and hold his power 
for life. Cromwell was to be the first Protector, and 
his successors were to be elected by the Council. The 
constitution now promulgated by Cromwell and the 
Council of officers is known by the name of " The 
Instrument of Government." 

Bishop Burnet has said of Cooper that he was one 
of those who most pressed Cromwell to accept the 
kingship. An attempt has been made by Mr. Martyn 
to discredit this statement, but there is no improba- 
bility in the statement, which doubtless refers to this 
period, when Cooper was a zealous and leading supporter 
of Cromwell. 1 

There was only an interval of four days between the 
end of the Barebone's Parliament and the installation 
of the new Constitution and of Cromwell as Protector. 

that the time was when they boggled not at the word king, for the 
instrument by which the government now stands was presented to his 
Highness with the title King in it, as some then present could witness, 
pointing at a principal officer then in his eye, and he refused to accept 
of the title." (Burton, L 382.) Lambert is probably the officer here 
referred to. Ludlow says, " Some were said to have moved that the 
title might be king." (ii. 477.) 

1 Hist, of Own Time, i. 97. The whole passage is as follows : " He 
[Shaftesbury] pretended that Cromwell offered to make him king. He 
was indeed of great use to him in withstanding the enthusiasts of that 
time. He was one of those who pressed him most to accept of the king- 
ship, because, as he said afterwards, he was sure it would ruin him." 
There is no doubt that Cooper aided Cromwell against the enthusiasts, 
and nothing is more probable than that he was one of those who urged 
Cromwell to take the title of King. But that Cromwell should have 
offered to make Cooper king is not quite so likely; and if Cooper after- 
wards gave the reason which Burnet imputes to him for his advice to 
Cromwell, he was guilty of a ridiculous untruth. Shaftesbury may 
have boasted in his later years, and may have endeavoured dis- 
ingenuously to excuse some of his earlier actions ; but, on the other 
hand, Shaftesbury may have bantered Burnet, and certainly Burnet is 
spiteful to Shaftesbury. 



106 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

Cooper was one of fifteen members of the Council of 
State named in the Instrument of Government. A 
salary of a thousand pounds a year was assigned to 
each councillor, but Cooper, who did not remain a 
member of the Council much longer than a year, never 
received any salary. 1 

It is desirable to give an account of the leading 
provisions of this constitution at the birth -of which 
Cooper assisted. 

It has been already said that the Protector was 
appointed for life, and that, after Cromwell, future 
Protectors were to be elected by the Council. There 
was no restriction on their choice, except that none 
of the late King's children, line, or family, could be 
elected. The Council was to consist of not more than 
twenty-one nor less than thirteen members. Fifteen 
were named in the Instrument of Government, and 
Cromwell and a majority of the Council were em- 
powered to nil up the number twenty-one before the 
meeting of the first parliament. After that time a scheme 
of election, jointly by the Council, the Parliament, and 
the Protector, was provided. A member of Council could 
only be removed by the judgment of a tribunal jointly 
appointed by the Council and the Parliament. 

- 1 This is accidentally proved by a paper printed in Thurloe's State 
Papers (iii. 581), giving an account of payments to members of the 
Council from its first appointment to the end of 1655. In the debates 
on the Indemnity Bill in the Convention Parliament after the Restora- 
tion, Cooper is reported to have said, in opposing a proposal that all 
officers of the Protectorate should refund their salaries, "He might 
freely speak, because he never received any salary." (Parl. Hist. iv. 
73.) Some letters published by M. Guizot (Hist, de Cromwell, vol. ii. 
Appendix, No. 3) mention Cooper as taking a prominent part, as 
member of the Privy Council, in Cromwell's reception of the French 
ambassador, April 1654. 



1653. INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT. 107 

In the constitution of the Parliament there was a 
great and a wise change from the mode of election of 
the old English House of Commons. It was to consist 
of 460 members; 400 for England and Wales, 30 for 
Scotland, and 30 for Ireland. In the distribution of 
the numbers for England, there was a great increase in 
the number of county members, many small boroughs 
were disfranchised, and members were given for the 
first time to several large towns. Few towns returned 
more than one member, and the number of members 
for each county and for the boroughs included in it 
was made as nearly proportional as possible to the 
contribution of the county towards the public expendi- 
ture. It was left to the Protector and Council to settle 
the distribution of the sixty members for Scotland and 
Ireland. The qualification for an elector was the 
possession of two hundred pounds of real or personal 
property. The elected were to be twenty-one years of 
age, and " such, and no other than such, as are persons 
of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conver- 
sation." Those who had taken part against the Parlia- 
ment since the first of January, 1641, unless they had 
afterwards given " signal testimony of their affections 
thereunto," were to be incapable of electing or of being 
elected to the first four parliaments ; Eoman Catholics, 
and those who had been in the Irish rebellion, were 
disqualified for ever. For the first three parliaments 
the members elected were to have a certificate of appro- 
bation from the Council, without which they were not 
to be allowed to sit ; and there was to be a clause in 
every indenture of return prohibiting the members from 



108 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. IV. 

altering the government as settled in a single person 
and in a parliament by the present Instrument of 
Government. 

The first parliament was to meet on the third of Sep- 
tember, 1654, about eight months after the promulga- 
tion of the Constitution. A parliament was to be called 
once in three years, and was not to be adjourned, 
prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent, for 
five months after its meeting. 

Where the command of the forces of the common- 
wealth was to be placed, and whether any, and what, 
checks were to be placed on the Parliament in legisla- 
tion, the two great questions which had been battled 
with the late King, and which had brought him to the 
block, were difficult' problems to be solved by the 
framers of this constitution, who desired to restrain the 
power of the Parliament, and yet to avoid all appear- 
ance of a monarchical element. It was provided that 
the disposal of the militia was to be vested in the 
Protector and the Parliament jointly, and, when Parlia- 
ment was not sitting, in the Protector and Council. 
The Protector and Council were to have the power of 
peace and war, but a parliament was to be summoned 
immediately after entering upon a war, and any par- 
liament so specially called could not be adjourned, 
prorogued, or dissolved, without its own consent, for 
five months after it had assembled. All legislation 
and taxation were to be by common consent of Parlia- 
ment. P>ills passed by the Parliament were to be 
presented to the Protector for his consent ; but if that 
consent were not given in twenty days, the Parliament 



INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT. 109 

might then declare a bill law, unless it contained any- 
thing contrary to the provision of the Instrument of 
Government. 1 

In a speech addressed to the first parliament called 
under this constitution, Cromwell explained that the 
fundamental principles of the Instrument of Govern- 
ment, which the Parliament by itself could not infringe 
upon, were four : government by a single person and a 
parliament jointly, a limited duration of the Parliament, 
liberty of conscience in religion, and the check of either 
the Parliament or the Council on the Protector as regards 
the militia. But the liberty of conscience in religion, 
thus proclaimed by Cromwell as one of the fundamental 
principles of the new government, was not extended to 
the Eoman Catholic or the Episcopalian; these were 
specially excepted from protection in the profession of 
their religion and exercise of their worship, together 
with " such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth 
and practise licentiousness." 

The Instrument of Government declared that the 
Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures, was to 
be the public profession of the three nations, and that 
provision was to be made as soon as possible for a more 
equal and less irritating mode of payment of clergy than 
by tithes, but that in the meantime tithes were to be 

i "Provided such bills contain nothing in them contrary to the 
matters contained in these presents." When Cromwell found the first 
parliament called under this new constitution refractory, he laid down, 
as is stated in the text, four fundamental principles not to he infringed 
without his consent ; and the Parliament afterwards expressly assigned 
a negative to the Protector for all hills touching these four questions. 
Mr. Hallam's statement, therefore, that the Protector had no nega- 
tive voice on the Parliament, requires qualification. (Constit. Hist, 
ii. 332.) 



110 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

continued. A standing army of 10,000 horse and 20,000 
foot was prescribed, and a constant yearly revenue was 
to be provided for maintaining these forces and a suf- 
ficient navy ; and 200,000/. a year was assigned to the 
civil government. Till the first Parliament met, the 
Protector and Council were empowered to raise what 
money might be necessary for the support of the existing 
forces. Power was given them also to make laws and 
ordinances, till the meeting of the first Parliament ; but 
these laws and ordinances were to be binding only until 
Parliament should make order concerning them. 

Such were the principal provisions of this elaborate 
paper-constitution, which was destined soon to meet 
with difficulties too strong for it in practice, and which, 
having been violated in one essential point by Cromwell 
in little more than a twelvemonth after its establish- 
ment, was at the end of three years formally superseded 
by another. Doubtless, Cromwell hoped that he had 
now devised a constitution under which he might 
obtain the co-operation of the Presbyterians whom the 
Barebone's Parliament had scared, and which provided 
sufficient securities against the restoration of the royal 
family. 

The fourteen members of the Council named, together 
with Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, in the Instrument of 
Government, were Lord Lisle, Generals Fleetwood and 
Lambert, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Sir Charles Wolseley, 
Montagu, General Desborough, Walter Strickland, 
Henry Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Philip 
Jones, Richard Major, Francis Eouse (the late Speaker 
of the Barebone's Parliament), and General Skippon. 



1653. JOHN MILTON. Ill 

Three more members were added before trie meeting 
of the Parliament, Humphry Mackworth, Nathaniel 
Fiennes, and the Earl of Mulgrave. 1 

A name more celebrated than that of any of Cooper's 
colleagues in the Council occurs in the list of assistants 
of the Secretary, Thurloe. John Milton was an assistant 
in the department of Latin correspondence in the 
Secretary's office, and gave the adhesion of his great 
intellect and pure conscience to Cromwell's Protectorate. 
The civil commotions and religious controversies of the 
time had long since drawn him from the Muses ; he 
had been Secretary for foreign languages under the 
Council of State of the Eump Parliament, and had been 
employed by that Council to answer the Latin treatise 
in which Salmasius had arraigned before the civilized 
world the execution of Charles the First ; and his Latin 
answer to that great scholar had made his name widely 
known, both for admiration and for obloquy. Shortly 
after the installation of Cromwell as Protector, Milton 
published, also in Latin, a second defence of the English 
nation, in which he declared his approval of Cromwell's 
recent acts, and counselled the Protector on the dangers 
and the duties of his position. In this work he praises 
several members of the new Council by name; but 
Cooper is not among those whom Milton mentions. 
There is no trace of personal intercourse between Cooper 
and Milton either now or after the Bestoration, when 
the poet's fame had made him an object of curiosity 
among foreigners, and gained for him, in spite of 

1 The father of the poet, author of the " Essay on Satire " and the 
" Essay on Poetry," who was ultimately created Duke of Buckingham- 
shire. 



112 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

political passions, the notice of accomplished men even 
of the Court of Charles the Second. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was elected to the first 
Parliament assembled under the Instrument of Govern- 
ment by no less than three constituencies, Wiltshire, 
Poole, and Tewkesbury. He afterwards elected to sit 
for Wiltshire. 

The election for Wiltshire on this occasion has been 
described by Edmund Ludlow, in a passage of his 
Memoirs, which was suppressed. Ludlow at this time 
held a military command in Ireland ; but the republican 
party, acting in opposition to Cromwell, proposed him 
as a candidate for Wiltshire, with which he was con- 
nected by ancient lineage and property. The new 
scheme of representation gave ten members to Wiltshire. 
According to Ludlow's account, which perhaps ought 
not to be taken implicitly, Cavaliers united with the 
Presbyterian clergy and Cromwell's partisans in pro- 
posing a list of ten candidates, with Cooper at the head, 
and Ludlow's republican friends proposed him and nine 
others. The gathering for the election was so numerous, 
that it became necessary to adjourn from Salisbury 
Town-hall to the plain of Stonehenge. There Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, and a Presbyterian clergyman 
named Adoniram Byfield, addressed the people on the 
necessity of electing members who would endeavour to 
reconcile conflicting interests and heal the divisions of 
the State. On a show of hands, the numbers appeared 
so nearly equal that a poll was necessary ; and by the 
union, according to Ludlow, of Cavaliers, Presbyterians, 
and Cromwellites, and by the use of force and of all the 



1654. ORDINANCES OF CROMWELL AND COUNCIL. 113 

influence which, the Government could exert, Cooper 
was placed at the head of the poll, and all the ten anti- 
republican candidates were elected. 1 

The interval of eight months between the inaugura- 
tion of the constitution and the meeting of the new 
Parliament was well employed by Cromwell and his 
Council. They availed themselves largely of their power 
of making provisional ordinances to do many things 
which the Barebone's Parliament had either refused to 
do or had left unfinished. They repealed the engage- 
ment : a bill for that purpose introduced by Cooper in 
the Barebone's Parliament had been rejected. They 
issued an ordinance settling the terms of union of 
Scotland with the Commonwealth, which the sudden 
termination of the Barebone's Parliament had alone pre- 
vented that assembly from passing, as it had already 
passed an act for the union of Ireland. An ordinance 
was issued for the reform of the Court of Chancery, and 
two others for the appointment of a body of commis- 
sioners for the approval of clergymen presented to 
livings, and of commissioners in the several counties for 
the ejection of unworthy ministers. Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper was appointed one of the latter commissioners 
for Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. 2 Peace was now made 
with Holland, and beneficial treaties were concluded 

1 This account is given in the first of a series of suppressed passages 
of Ludlow's Memoirs, which I found, in Locke's handwriting, among 
the Locke papers in the Earl of Lovelace's possession. See Appendix 111. 
Mr. Martyn, in unaccountable departure from facts, states that Sir 
A. A. Cooper's election for Wiltshire was opposed by Cromwell (i. 165); 
and Lord Campbell has incorrectly followed Mr. Martyn in placii)g 
Cooper's estrangement from Cromwell before the election of this 
parliament. 

2 Wood, Ath. Oxon. (Bliss) iv. 71. 

VOL. I. I 



114 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

with Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden. The failure of a 
royalist conspiracy for assassinating Cromwell had rallied 
sympathy around him, and depressed the hopes of the 
friends of the royal family ; and when Cromwell met 
the Parliament which assembled on the third of Sep- 
tember, 1654, under the provisions of the Instrument of 
Government, he might have fairly hoped that the recol- 
lections of the Eump and Barebone's Parliaments, the 
proofs which he and his Council had already given of 
energy and wisdom, and the natural desire for an end 
of change would ensure for the new constitution its 
sanction and co-operation. 

Any such hopes, however, were doomed to speedy 
disappointment. Notwithstanding all the efforts which 
Cromwell and his Council had made to secure a majority, 
and notwithstanding many advantages which they pos- 
sessed for procuring favourable returns, a large majority 
of the Parliament showed themselves immediately de- 
termined to dispute Cromwell's authority and the new 
constitution, instead of acknowledging the Instrument of 
Government as the foundation of their own legislative 
powers. The largest party in the Parliament were 
Presbyterians. A considerable number of Eepublicans 
also were returned. The Eepublicans, headed by Sir 
Arthur Haselrig, Scot, and Bradshaw, the celebrated 
president of the court which had condemned the late 
King to death, immediately offered an opposition ; and, 
to perplex Cromwell and promote their own aims, the 
Presbyterians aided the Eepublicans. 

Cromwell having opened the Parliament with a speech, 
his friends proposed the day after that this speech should 



1654. PARLIAMENT OPPOSES CROMWELL. 115 

be taken into consideration, with a view to an address 
thanking him for the new government. But the Kepub- 
licaus and their Presbyterian allies would not admit 
this new government to be an accomplished fact. They 
claimed the right to discuss every provision of the 
Instrument of Government, and contended that it was 
for them, elected by the people, now to proceed to settle 
the constitution as they pleased. Instead of adopting 
the proposal to thank Cromwell, they resolved by a 
small majority to discuss the Instrument of Government 
in Grand Committee, or, in modern parliamentary 
phrase, in a Committee of the whole House, with a 
view to its being altered as they might think proper, 
and then passed into an act. The first clause, which 
declared the government to be in " one person and the 
people assembled in Parliament," was warmly debated 
in committee for four days ; and when the committee 
broke up on the fourth day, it was expected that a pro- 
posal which had been made by Hale, now a judge, and 
which he intended as a compromise, would be carried 
by a large majority, to declare the government to be in 
"the Parliament and a single person, limited and re- 
strained as the Parliament should think fit." Cromwell 
determined to make an attempt by force to prevent 
further discussion of the Instrument of Government. 

As the members came to the House on the morning 
of the twelfth of September, they found the doors locked 
and guarded by soldiers, and were told that the Pro- 
tector was coming to the Painted Chamber and com- 
manded their attendance there. Cromwell arrived in 
state about ten o'clock, by which time there was a full 

I 2 



116 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

attendance of members. He made a long speech, re- 
minding them with many reproaches that they were all 
bound by the indentures of their returns not to alter the 
government as settled in a single person and the Parlia- 
ment, and ended by announcing that he should exact a 
pledge not to interfere with the government as so settled 
from every member before he re-entered the House. 
When the members left the Painted Chamber, they 
found the doors of their House still locked and guarded, 
and an officer in the lobby with a paper containing the 
following declaration, which each member was required 
to sign : " I do hereby freely promise and engage to be 
true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Common- 
wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and shall not, 
according to the tenour of the indenture whereby I am 
returned to sit in this present Parliament, propose or 
give my consent to alter the government as settled in 
one person and a parliament." Within an hour about a 
hundred members had signed the paper. The Speaker 
was then sent for ; he came and signed it, and then 
went into the House and took the chair. About forty 
more members signed during the day. It was then 
voted that by signing this declaration a member was 
not bound to all the forty-two clauses of the Instrument 
of Government, but only to the first clause, which vested 
the government in a single person and a parliament. 
This vote brought in more signatures ; and, in the end, 
about three hundred of the four hundred and sixty 
members signed the paper, and returned to the House. 1 

1 Mr. Martyn continues his extraordinary misrepresentations of Sir 
A. A. Cooper's course at this period by stating that he took a leading 



1654. INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT DISCUSSED. 117 

The House now returned to the discussion of the 
Instrument of Government, admitting only that the 
government should be composed of a single person and 
a parliament; and though all the leading members of 
the Eepublican party were excluded by their refusal to 
sign the declaration which had been imposed, Cromwell 
found the Parliament hardly more manageable than 
before. They continued to discuss the Instrument of 
Government, clause by clause, in Grand Committee, for 
nearly three months. Several changes were made in it, 
unpalatable to Cromwell; the power to declare war was 
placed in the Protector and Parliament, instead of the 
Protector and Council, as had been provided by the 
original Instrument, and the election of future Protectors 
was also given to the Parliament instead of the Council. 
One change which was proposed by Cromwell's friends, 
and which Cromwell himself is said to have greatly 
desired, to make the Protectorship hereditary in his 
family, was rejected by the largest majority which 
occurred in the course of these discussions. 

When the battle was concluded in the Grand Com- 



part in the opposition, refused to sign the declaration, and was ex- 
cluded from the parliament (i. 167). Lord Campbell follows Mr. 
Martyn, and, as usual, states the case strongly. " When the Parlia- 
ment met, he strongly co-operated with the party who were beginning 
to inquire into the validity of the 'Instrument of Government.'. . . . 
This made the Protector resolve by a strong hand to exclude all such 
refractory spirits as Sir A. A. Cooper . . . Shaftesbury absolutely refused 
to sign the declaration. Thus excluded, he intrigued against Cromwell." 
Lord Campbell proceeds to say: " The Protector, rinding his opponent 
so troublesome, soon after made a bold attempt to gain him over by 
appointing him a member of the Council of State, with promises of 
further advancement." Very little inquiry would have shown that 
Sir A. A. Cooper was made a member of the Council of State eight 
months before this parliament met, and that he was not excluded from 
the parliament, the Journals making frequent mention of his name. 



118 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

mittee, it was fought over again in the House, which 
went through all the clauses as reported from the Grand 
Committee. At last the Instrument of Government, as 
altered by the Parliament, was embodied in a bill ; and 
then it was resolved that, if the Protector did not agree 
to every clause, the whole should be void and of no 
effect. The object of this was, of course, to force Crom- 
well into accepting all the alterations. Five days after 
this resolution was passed, the House had sat five lunar 
months ; and Cromwell, interpreting as lunar months of 
twenty-eight days the five months during which the 
original Instrument of Government had provided that a 
parliament should not be dissolved without its own 
consent, dissolved this Parliament on the very day on 
which five lunar months of its existence were completed. 
All its discussions and alterations of the Instrument of 
Government now went for nothing, for the bill had not 
been passed, and the original Instrument continued to 
be the constitution of the Commonwealth. 

No provision had been made for revenue when the 
Parliament was dissolved ; and the Instrument of 
Government had empowered the Protector and Council 
to issue ordinances for raising money only until the 
meeting of the first Parliament. In this respect Crom- 
well set his constitution at nought, and an ordinance was 
issued shortly after the dissolution of the Parliament for 
raising money monthly by assessment. 

The dissolution took place on the twenty-second of 
January, 1655. On the twenty-eighth of 'December, 1654, 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had hitherto regularly 
attended the meetings of the Privy Council, attended 



1G55. SEPARATES FROM CROMWELL. 119 

for the last time. What led to his retirement from the 
Council, and his separation from Cromwell, ending in 
decided opposition to him, there are no means of deter- 
mining. It is probable that differences of opinion arose 
between Cooper and Cromwell in the course of the dis-^. 
cussions on the Instrument of Government ; and Cooper 
probably found it difficult to maintain his position as a 
supporter of Cromwell in face of the decided opposition 
of his Presbyterian friends. It does not appear probable, 
however, that there was an open rupture, or that Cooper 
made overt opposition to Cromwell during the sitting of 
this Parliament. On the twenty-seventh of November, 
he was a teller, with Richard Cromwell, in a division on 
one of the clauses of the Instrument of Government. It 
is true that Ludlow states that Cooper opposed Cromwell 
during this Parliament, but the same passage of Ludlow's 
Memoirs contains other obvious inaccuracies, and this 
statement, if not entirely inaccurate also, is probably an 
exaggeration. Until Cooper had ceased to attend the 
Privy Council, he could not have opposed Cromwell in 
Parliament, even though dissatisfied with his proceed- 
ings ; and there was only a short interval of three weeks 
between his last attendance in Council and the dissolu- 
tion of the Parliament. 1 

1 Ludlow's statement occurs in the second of the suppressed passages 
in Appendix III. Ludiow says that Cooper was turned out of the 
Council because he opposed Cromwell in this parliament, and that 
Colonel Mackworth was appointed member of the Council in his place. 
There is no entry in the Council book, which I have inspected in the 
State Paper Office, of Cooper's dismissal ; and according to the Instru- 
ment of Government, a dismissal could only have taken place on a 
specific charge of misconduct, after inquiry by a committee jointly 
appointed by the Council and the Parliament. He was not succeeded 
by Colonel Mackworth, who was appointed a member of the Council 



120 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. IY. 

One reason which has been assigned for his estrange- 
ment from Cromwell is that he wished to marry Crom- 
well's daughter Mary (who was shortly afterwards 
married to Lord Falconbridge), and was refused. This 
story is perhaps no more than a piece of idle gossip. 
It is however so far possible, that Cooper was now a 
second time a widower. If Cooper quarrelled with 
Cromwell before the end of 1654, the quarrel was very 
soon after Cooper became a widower, and so soon as 
to render this explanation of the cause of quarrel 
improbable. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's second wife, the 
daughter of the Earl of Exeter, to whom he was married 

April 27, 1654, six months before Cooper ceased to sit. This passage 
in Ludlow is, therefore, very inaccurate. There is no evidence even of 
Cooper having resigned his seat in the Council; and* I should infer 
from a list, already referred to, of payments to members of the 
Council up to the end of 1655, that Cooper, though he had ceased to 
attend, was then still a member of the Council. Ludlow mentions in 
the same passage Sir A. A. Cooper's unsuccessful love of Mary Cromwell 
as the reason for his quarrelling with the Protector. This story is also 
mentioned by A. Wood (Ath. Oxon. iv. 71, Bliss's edition), and in 
Oldmixon's "Lives of the Chancellors." (i. 148.) The authority for 
the story is weak. Lord Campbell has adopted the gossip as true, 
and amplified it considerably ; and, forgetting that he had previously 
explained the quarrel with Cromwell by Cooper's disappointment 
at not receiving the Great Seal, now ascribes it, without a word of 
doubt, to disappointed love. " This gracious demeanour roused in 
the bosom of Sir Anthony the ambitious project of forming an alliance 
with the Protectoral house, and, having been some time a widower, 
he actually demanded in marriage the musical, glib-tongued Lady 
Mary, afterwards united to Lord Fauconberg. Probably on account 
of his dissolute morals, he met with a flat refusal. Thereupon he 
finally broke with Oliver, and became a partisan of the banished royal 
family. When he had only twice or thrice sat in the Council of State, 
he sent in his resignation ; alleging that ' the government by one 
person was against his conscience. ' " Cooper had been a regular 
attendant at the Privy Council from his appointment in December 
1653 to December 28, 1654, more than a year. He did not become 
a partisan of the banished royal family for nearly five years after this 
date. I do not know what is Lord Campbell's authority for the fact of 
Cooper's resignation, with the reason alleged under marks of quotation. 



1656. MARRIES THIRD TIME. 121 

in 1650, died some time in the year 1654. There were 
no more children by this marriage than the two sons who 
have been mentioned, one of whom died in childhood, 
and the other, Anthony Ashley, lived to succeed his 
father. 

In the course of the year 1656, Cooper married a 
third wife, Margaret, daughter of the second Lord 
Spencer of Wormleighton, and sister of the third lord, 
who was created Earl of Sunderland by Charles the 
First, and had fallen fighting for the Eoyal cause at 
Newbury. 

The son of this Earl of Sunderland, a boy at the time 
of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's marriage with his aunt, 
rose to be the chief Minister of Charles the Second 
before the close of Shaftesbury's career. It has been 
already mentioned that Halifax was the nephew of 
Shaftesbury's first wife. Shaftesbury's connexion with 
both Halifax and Sunderland was rendered closer by 
the marriage of Halifax with Sunderland's sister. In 
the last years of Shaftesbury's career, Halifax and Sun- 
derland divided political ascendency; and, seven-and- 
twenty years later, Shaftesbury fled for his life, to die in 
a foreign land, from a government of which his two 
nephews were the chiefs. 

The third wife of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper lived to 
share all the honours and troubles of his future career. 
She had no children, but she reared with a mother's 
care her husband's son by his second wife, and after- 
wards with the same care watched over the delicate 
boyhood of that son's son, the future author of the 
" Characteristics." She was a woman of strong religious 



122 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IV. 

feelings. It was her habit to rise at five in the morning 
and spend two or three hours in private devotions. 1 
Though Shaftesbury's character did not agree with hers 
in this respect, they lived on terms of the warmest 
affection. A letter written by Lady Shaftesbury to her 
nephew Sunderland two years after her husband's 
death, shows how deeply she still mourned his loss. 2 
There must have been virtues and amiable qualities in 
one so loved by such a wife. 

1 Kawleigh Eedivivus, p. 13. Locke dedicated to Lady Shaftesbury 
a translation which he made of three religious Essays of Nicole. 
Locke's translation of these Essays was published for the first time in 
1828 by Dr. Hancock. As this small volume is not generally known, 
1 extract a passage of Locke's dedication to Lady Shaftesbury : " I 
thought I could not find in all France anything fitter to be put into 
your hands, than what would make you see so rare and extraordinary 
a sight as a draught of some of your own virtues. For if to be con- 
stantly humble in a high station, if to appear little to yourself in the 
midst of greatness, is a mark of the sense of one's own weakness ; if to 
be beloved of all that come near you be a demonstration that you 
know how to live at peace with others; if to be constant and frequent 
in acts of devotion be the best way of acknowledging a Deity : it is 
certain your ladyship is in reality what the author has here given us 
an idea of." 

2 This letter is among the Domestic Papers of 1685 in the State 
Paper Office. Lady Shaftesbury writes to the Earl of Sunderland to 
beg him to make her excuses for not attending the coronation of 
James the Second: 

" 31st March, 1685. 

"Because I think the shortest troubles are the best, I will, my 
Lord, only just tell you why you read this note from your disconsolate 
aunt, not make it longer by apologies for doing it. It seems, my 
Lord, that in observance to forms I was to have a letter concerning 
the coronation as well as those that are fit to observe the orders they 
bring with them, which I am so utterly incapacitated for, that I con- 
cluded at first, and indeed do think still, that it so answers itself, I 
needed to take no notice of it ; but, if I am mistaken, I ask so much 
friendliness from your Lordship as to do for me what is proper in this 
case to be done by, my Lord, your afflicted, most faithful, affectionate, 
humble servant, 

" M. SHAFTESBURY." 



CHAPTER V. 

i 16561658. 

Cooper now in opposition to Cromwell He falls back on the Presby- 
terian party Elected for Wiltshire to new Parliament Prevented 
by the Council from taking his seat Is one of the sixty-five who 
sign a letter to the Speaker protesting Afterwards signs Remon- 
strance The Humble Petition and Advice Cromwell refuses to be 
King House adjourned from June 26, 1657, to January 20, 1658 
Cromwell's Peers or " Other House " Cooper not one The 500 
fine for composition, imposed by Long Parliament in 1644, remitted 
by Cromwell Cooper's friendship with Henry Cromwell, and letter 
to him Cooper and the other excluded members take their seats 
on meeting of Parliament, January 1658 Formidable opposition to 
Cromwell and the new Constitution Debates about the " Other 
House " Cooper's speeches Cromwell dissolves the Parliament, 
February 4 Cromwell's death. 

IN the absence of any positive information on the sub- 
ject of the differences which arose about this time 
between Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Cromwell, it 
might be conjectured that Cromwell's dissolution of the 
last Parliament was disapproved of by Cooper. It does 
not appear that the proceedings of that parliament, 
however much they may have been irritating and dis- 
appointing to the Protector, furnished sufficient cause 
for a dissolution, which immediately rendered it neces- 
sary to trample on Cromwell's own constitution in order 
to raise money. The changes which the Parliament had 
made in the Instrument of Government were, after all, 
not extensive ; all the essentials of the original constitu- 



124 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. V. 

tion promulgated by Cromwell and his officers had been 
retained. Moderate men generally thought that Crom- 
well should have accepted the alterations made by the 
Parliament, and borne with its provocations, rather than 
again peril the settlement of the Commonwealth ; and 
there is no doubt that the dissolution of the last Parlia- 
ment lost Cromwell many supporters. 1 

Cooper never returned to his seat in the Council of 
State. We know nothing at all of his proceedings during 
twenty months which intervened between the dissolu- 
tion of the last Parliament and the assembling of another 
on the seventeenth of September, 1656. But when this 
Parliament assembled, Cooper was regarded by Cromwell 
as an opponent. 

The Royalists became very active in intrigues and 
conspiracies after the dissolution of January 1655 ; but 
Cooper had no connexion now or for some time after 
with this party. The restoration of the heir of the late 
King could only have been regarded at this period as a 
remote possibility by any but the zealous adherents of 
his family. Cooper fell back on the Presbyterian party, 
and in the two next parliaments was one of the leaders 
of the opposition which the Presbyterians and Repub- 
licans combined to wage against Cromwell and his 
successor. X 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was again elected by the 
county of Wiltshire to serve in the second Parliament 
elected according to the provisions of the Instrument 
of Government, which met in 1656. But this time 
Cromwell would not permit him to take his seat. 

1 Ludlow, ii. 512. 



1656. EXCLUDED FROM PARLIAMENT. 125 

The Instrument of Government had provided that, 
for the first three Parliaments called under its provisions* 
all members elected must obtain a certificate of appro- 
bation from the Council, in order to be permitted to sit. 
This provision, designed to secure an observance of the 
qualifications enjoined for members, was stretched on 
the present occasion to exclude a large number of 
members whose opposition Cromwell feared. The 
number of members to whom the Council refused cer- 
tificates of approbation is variously stated ; there is no 
doubt that it exceeded a hundred, and probably it was 
not far below two hundred. Soldiers at the door of the 
House prevented the entrance of all who could not 
produce the Council's certificates. Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper was one of the excluded. About ninety other 
names of excluded members are known; among them 
are Sir Arthur Haselrig, Scot, and Weaver, leaders of 
the Republicans ; and Morrice, Colonel Birch, Alexander 
Popham, Serjeant Maynard, and Sir Harbottle Grim- 
stone, members of the Presbyterian party. Another 
name in the list is that of the Earl of Salisbury, who 
had sat in the Eump Parliament, and who, in the sub- 
sequent reign of Charles the Second, was a zealous 
member of the Opposition of which Shaftesbury was 
the leader. 

Sixty-five of the excluded members, among whom was 
Cooper, signed a letter to the Speaker, complaining that 
they had been forcibly prevented by soldiers from taking 
their seats. This letter was presented in the House by 
Sir George Booth, a distinguished member of the Pres- 
byterian party, who had not been excluded. The House 



126 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

resolved that the Council should be desired to state their 
reasons for what they had done. The Council said that 
the Instrument of Government had imposed on them 
the duty of judging whether the members returned 
possessed the prescribed qualifications; that the same 
Instrument had provided that the members to be elected 
should be " such and no other than such as were persons 
of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversa- 
tion ;" that they had examined all the returns according 
to their duty, and had not refused certificates of appro- 
bation to any who appeared to them to come within the 
above description ; and that for those whom they had 
not approved " his Highness had given orders to some 
persons to take care that they should not come into the 
House." An overpowering majority of the members 
who had been allowed to sit resolved to be content 
with this insolent reply, and to refer the excluded 
members to the Council. 

A Remonstrance, addressed to the people, couched in 
the strongest language, was afterwards drawn up, and 
printed with the names of ninety-three of the excluded 
members appended to it. This Remonstrance declared 
that whoever had advised the Protector's late proceeding 
was a capital enemy of the Commonwealth : that all 
who should sit and vote in the mutilated assembly were 
adherents of the capital enemies of the Commonwealth, 
and betrayers of the people's liberties ; that the assembly 
which now sat was not the representative body of 
England ; that their votes and acts were null and void ; 
and that a free Parliament alone could set aside the 
laws in times of danger, and justly provide for the 



1657. KEMOXSTRANCE OF EXCLUDED MEMBERS. 127 

future government of the Commonwealth. The paper 
concludes by declaring that those who sign it are ready 
to expose their lives and estates to the utmost hazard 
for the service of the people, and to procure the 
assembling of a free Parliament. Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper's name is appended to this printed document, 
But there is reason to think that all the names which 
were printed had not been subscribed to it ; and it 
may be inferred from the strong language of this 
Bemonstrance that it was not openly circulated. 

A few of the members who had been excluded after- 
wards made peace with the Council, and obtained 
admission into the House. But Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper, with the great majority, remained excluded 
during the whole of the first session of this Par- 
liament. 1 

This session lasted nine months, till the twenty- 
sixth of June, 1657. Cromwell's measure of exclusion 
had at last obtained for him a manageable Parliament. 

It is probable, from what took place in this Parlia- 
ment, that Cromwell's principal reason for assembling 
it was to procure a change in the constitution, involving 

1 Dr. Lingard, who is generally most accurate in details, has stated 
incorrectly that Sir A. A. Cooper became Cromwell's intimate adviser 
after this exclusion from Parliament, (xi. 80, note.) A little dis- 
cussion in which Cooper's name was mixed up took place on December 
22, 1656, during his enforced absence from this Parliament. A Captain 
Arthur petitioned for payment of moneys laid out by him for the 
Parliament in the, beginning of the Civil War, and said he had been 
betrayed and taken prisoner by Cooper. One member, Mr. Robinson, 
suggested that Sir A. A. Cooper should satisfy the petitioner ; another, 
Mr. Butler, replied, " Sir A. A. Cooper has done you good service, and 
the petitioner doth not say his sufferings were by him." The matter 
was dropped. Captain Arthur's complaint would probably refer to 
the time when Cooper was on the King's side. (Burton's Diary of 
Cromwellian Parliaments, i. 204.) 



128 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. UITAP. Y. 

the creation of a second chamber, and the substitution 
of the title of King for that of Protector. 

The House had, however, sat some months before any 
step was taken in promotion of such a design. But on 
the twenty- third of February, 1657, Sir Christopher 
Pack, an alderman and one of the members for the city 
of London, suddenly presented to the House a document 
elaborately drawn up, bearing the title of " The Humble 
Address and Eemonstrance of the Knights, Burgesses, 
and Citizens now assembled in the Parliament of the 
Commonwealth," and moved that it should be received 
and read. This was an address to Cromwell, stating 
that the nation could never become settled while it was 
left uncertain who would succeed him after his death, 
and praying him to assume the title of King, and to call 
henceforth a parliament consisting of two houses, and 
to govern the Commonwealth in future according to the 
laws of the nation, subject to such alterations as were 
proposed in this document, which was to supersede the 
Instrument of Government. Apparently, nothing could 
have been more undignified than the mode in which 
this proposal to revive royalty was brought before the 
Parliament. Sir Christopher Pack was probably selected 
to present the address on account of his connexion 
with the city of London, and that it might seem not to 
come from Cromwell himself. But -the worthy alderman 
was no orator, and if there were any design to blind the 
Parliament as to Cromwell's connexion with this address, 
the execution was not successful. Sir Christopher 
uttered a few confused words, of which all that could 
be understood was that he had found somewhere, or 



1657. THE PETITION AND ADVICE. 129 

that some one had given him, a paper which he thought 
worthy of consideration, and which he begged the House 
to receive. Though the motion came before the House 
without notice, the contents of the paper were probably 
generally known, and a scene of violent disorder ensued. 
The small minority of Cromwell's opponents in the 
assembly made up by violence for their want of num- 
bers. It was irregular to present such a document to 
the House without leave previously obtained, and some 
members endeavoured to snatch the paper from Sir 
Christopher. By the violence of opposing members he 
was jostled down the House as far as the bar, when his 
friends rescued him and carried him back to the Speaker's 
chair. After a warm debate, it was decided by a hun- 
dred and fifty-four votes against fifty-four that the 
paper should be read. It was then debated day by day 
till the twenty-seventh of March. A motion made at 
the outset that it should be discussed in Grand Com- 
mittee was rejected by a hundred and eighteen votes to 
sixty-three. But the House discussed separately the 
various clauses of the address. The clauses constituting 
another House to be nominated by the proposed king, 
and to be approved by " this House," were passed with- 
out a division. The substitution of the title of King 
for that of Protector was carried by a hundred and 
twenty-three votes to sixty-two. When the whole 
paper had been gone through, the words " Address and 
Remonstrance " in the title were changed for " Petition 
and Advice," and a clause was added, providing that 
unless Cromwell consented to everything contained in 
it, no part of it should take effect. On the thirty-first 
VOL. I. K 



130 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

of March, the " Humble Petition and Advice " was 
presented to Cromwell for his consent. 

Cromwell refused to accept the title of King. There 
is no doubt that he desired it, and that he had en- 
couraged the preparation of the address by which the 
Parliament asked him to assume that title. But unfore- 
seen difficulties had arisen. His chief officers, including 
his two sons-in-law Lambert and Fleetwood and his 
brother-in-law Desborough, were vehemently opposed 
to the title of King, and a strong adverse feeling, fanned 
by the officers, appeared in the army. Cromwell took 
five weeks to consider what course he would adopt, and 
ultimately refused to be made King. 

By Cromwell's refusal to consent to the clause which 
conferred the title of King, the whole of the Petition 
and Advice fell to the ground. But the House took it 
again immediately into consideration, substituted the 
title of Protector for that of King, and with this altera- 
tion again presented it to Cromwell for his consent. 
Now, however, the Petition and Advice was passed only 
by a majority of three, a large number of its former 
supporters absenting themselves, discontented with 
Cromwell's refusal of the kingship. Cromwell gave his 
consent to the Petition and Advice, as altered, on the 
twenty-fifth of May, 1657. 

The Petition and Advice, which now superseded the 
Instrument of Government, made several changes in the 
constitution of the Commonwealth. 1. The Protector 
was empowered to nominate his successor during his 
lifetime. 2. The Parliament was to consist of two 
Houses. "The other House," as the new second 



1657. THE PETITION AND ADVICE. 131 

chamber is always called in the Petition and Advice, 
was to be composed of not more than seventy nor less 
than forty members, who in the first instance were to 
be nominated by the Protector and approved by the 
Commons' House, but who, after the first nominations, 
were not to be admitted to sit and vote but by the con- 
sent of the other House itself. 3. The number of 
members of the House of Commons and the distribution 
of the representation were to be newly arranged by the 
Parliament then sitting. It was expressly declared in 
the Petition and Advice that nothing contained in it 
dissolved the existing Parliament. 4. It .was provided 
that no members henceforth returned to Parliament 
were to be excluded, except by judgment and consent 
of the House itself; and that forty-one commissioners 
were to be appointed by act of Parliament to try elec- 
tions. 5. The members of the Council, who, as under 
the Instrument of Government, were not to exceed 
twenty-one in number, were to be appointed in future 
with the consent of the Council and of the two Houses 
of Parliament, and were not to be removed but by 
consent of Parliament. 6. After Cromwell's death, the 
commander-in-chief of the army and all field officers 
by land or generals at sea were to be appointed with 
consent of the Council. The Chancellor, Keeper, or 
Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, the 
Treasurer or Commissioners of the Treasury, the Ad- 
miral, the Chief Governor of Ireland, the Chancellor, 
Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal of Ireland, 
the two Chief Justices and the Chief Baron in England 
or Ireland, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in 

K 2 



132 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

Scotland, such officers of state there as by act of Parlia- 
ment in Scotland are to be approved by Parliament, and 
the judges in Scotland hereafter to be made, were to 
be approved by both Houses of Parliament. 7. The 
disposal of the standing forces was to be in the Pro- 
tector, acting with the consent of both Houses during 
the sitting of Parliament, and, while Parliament was 
not sitting, in the Protector acting with the consent of 
the Council. 8. A revenue of 1,300,000/. per annum 
was settled for the support of the Government, of which 
1,000,000/. was for the army and navy, and the remain- 
ing 300,000. for the expenses of the civil government ; 
and it was stipulated that no part of this money should 
be raised by a land-tax. 

An " Additional and Explanatory Petition and Ad- 
vice" was afterwards passed, before the House adjourned, 
which prescribed, amongst other things, an oath to be 
taken by the members of both Houses, by which they 
bound themselves to be faithful to the Protector, as 
chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, and to abstain 
from all designs against his person or lawful authority. 

The House adjourned, under an act specially passed 
for the purpose, from the twenty-sixth of June, 1657 to 
the twentieth of January, 1658 ; and a clause in the 
act commanded the attendance on that day of all mem- 
bers who had been elected to the Parliament, and were 
qualified according to the Petition and Advice. 

On the twentieth of January, 1658, two Houses of 
Parliament assembled. 

Cromwell had nominated sixty-three members of the 
newly-created second House. The nomination of this 



1658. GKOMWELL'S PEERS. 133 

assembly, which was designed to be a body superior to 
the other House, and which would naturally provoke 
comparisons with the old House of Lords, was neces- 
sarily a difficult task ; and it is not astonishing that 
Cromwell was not successful. As on the occasion of 
his naming the Barebone's Parliament, he did his best 
to procure the services of men of birth and station. 
Seven English peers were called to the new House, the 
Earls of Warwick, Manchester, and Mulgrave, Viscount 
Say and Sele, Lords Falconbridge, Eure, and Wharton ; 
but of these only Lord Falconbridge, who had married 
Cromwell's daughter, and Lord Eure consented to sit. 
Lord Broghill, an Irish peer, afterwards Earl of Orrery, a 
restless intriguer through the whole period of the Civil 
War and of the Commonwealth, and afterwards in the 
reign of Charles the Second, and now a zealous supporter 
of Cromwell, eagerly accepted a nomination. One Scotch 
peer, the Earl of Cassilis, was nominated, and did not 
sit. Lord Lisle, the eldest son of the Earl of Leicester, 
the two sons of Lord Say and Sele, Montagu and 
Howard, were on the list, together with most of Crom- 
well's councillors and several of his officers. White- 
locke, St. John, and Glyn represented the law. Of his 
own family, Cromwell named his two sons, Eichard and 
Henry, his brother-in-law Desborough, and son-in-law 
Fleetwood, besides Lord Falconbridge : Lambert had 
now quarrelled with him. Three of the members who 
had been excluded from sitting in the Parliament in the 
former year were named, Popham, Sir John Hobart, and 
Sir Arthur Haselrig. Popham and Haselrig scorned the 
proffered honour ; and it is difficult to understand how 



134 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. V. 

Cromwell could have expected Haselrig's acceptance. 
Pride, Barkstead, Hewson, Goffe, Berry, and Thomas 
Cooper, colonels in the army, who had originally pur- 
sued various trades, and were not men of fortune or 
social position, threw ridicule on this assemblage, and the 
number of the more distinguished nominees who refused 
to accept their nominations reduced this new " other 
House" to about forty of Cromwell's personal adherents. 
The debates in the two subsequent Parliaments, of which 
full reports have been preserved, show the general con- 
tempt felt for this assembly, and the large share which 
this part of the new constitution had in creating diffi- 
culties for Cromwell and his successor. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's name is not in the list 
of Cromwell's " peers," as they came to be called. It is 
clear that Cromwell had now no hope of gaming him. 
It is stated, probably with truth, that Cromwell was 
wont to say of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper that he 
found no one so difficult to manage as that Marcus 
Tullius Cicero, the little man with three names. 1 It 
would seem, as was usually the case with Cooper, that 
his political opposition to Cromwell was not attended 
by personal enmity. In January 1658, the fine of five 
hundred pounds which had been imposed on Cooper by 
the Long Parliament as a composition for delinquency, 
when he came over from the King's side, appears to have 
been discharged by order of Cromwell on Cooper's peti- 
tion. 2 A letter written by Cooper to Henry Cromwell, 
the Protector's son, in the year 1657, has been preserved, 

1 Martyn's Life, i. 168. 

2 MS. memorandum among Lord Shaftesbury's papers. 






1.658. LETTER TO HENRY CROMWELL. 135 

the language of which indicates the greatest intimacy. 
Henry Cromwell was at that time Lord Deputy in 
Ireland, and Cooper addressed to him, on September 10, 
1657, the following quaint and cordial letter : 

"MY LORD AND FATHER, I hear from my brother 
Moore l that your Lordship blames me for not answering 
a letter of yours about some business. I really profess 
I received none such, or else you mought have been 
assured of an answer, for there is no person in the world 
more desires to retain your Lordship's affection and 
good opinion. You have many love his Highness' son, 
but I love Henry Cromwell, were he naked, without all 
those glorious additions and titles, which, however, I 
pray may continue to be increased on you. 

" My Lord, I must yet this once trouble you in the 
behalf of my Lord Moore, for whom you have already 
done so great favours. He has now prepared his busi- 
ness fit for your last act of perfecting your goodness to 
him, his Highness having referred it wholly to your 
Lordship and the Council there. 'Tis not possible he 
should buy any way but in land until his act pass, and 
he have some for sale ; besides, the land he offers lies 
so about Dublin, that it cannot but be convenient for 
the State. If it be as they inform, I wish it in your 
Lordship's possession on any pretence, and there will 
be enough officious to get it confirmed yours ; but that 
is only a fancy of iny own on the sudden. 

" My request for myself is that you love me, and ever 
believe there is no manner of expression enough to tell 
you how really cordial and unchangeably I am, my Lord, 

1 Viscount Moore of Drogheda, who had married a daughter of Lord 
Spenser of Wormleighton, sister of Sir A. A. Cooper's third and present 
wife : he was created Earl of Drogheda after the Restoration. 



136 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

your Excellency's most devoted humble servant and 
dutiful son, 

" ANT. ASHLEY COOPER." x 

When the Parliament met on the twentieth of January, 
1658, under the new constitution of the " Petition and 
Advice," Cooper and the other excluded members of the 
year before took their seats in the House of Commons ; 
and they took the prescribed oath of fidelity to the Pro- 
tector as chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, binding 
them to abstain from all designs against his person or 
lawful authority. 

The addition of the excluded members made the 
House of Commons altogether unmanageable for Crom- 
well. They had had no voice in the framing of the 
Humble Petition and Advice, and they denied its 
legality. On the day of meeting, the Black Kod sum- 
moned the members of the House of Commons to " the 
Lords' House," and there Cromwell addressed the two 
Houses in a speech beginning with "My Lords and 
Gentlemen of the House of Commons." No exception 
was taken at the moment to the use of the word " Lords" 
on these two occasions, but two days after a message 
was announced by the Serjeant from " the Lords," and 
the whole question of the title, powers, privileges, and 

i This letter is printed from Thurloe's State Papers, vi. 506. It 
escaped Mr. Martyn, who appears to have searched the Thurloe 
Papers, and who makes the following statement : " Through the whole 
collection of Secretary Thurloe's papers there is no mention made of 
Sir Anthony but in two letters, wherein he is suspected among others 
to be well-affected to the King, and to have remitted money to him." 
(Life, i. 164, note.) I have not been able to find either of these two 
alleged letters; and I have no doubt that any such suspicions were 
without foundation. 



1658. DEBATES ON "OTHER HOUSE/' 137 

expediency of "the other House," was opened by the 
excluded members. The message was brought by two 
judges. Should the messengers be called in, was the 
first question. Some opposition made to this, lest it 
should be a recognition of the title " Lords " was over- 
ruled, and the messengers were called in, gave their 
message as from "the Lords," and withdrew. Then 
came the question, should the messengers be recalled, 
and told that the House would return an answer by 
messengers of their own. Some were for giving no 
answer at all, till the whole question of the other House 
had been considered ; others were for saying that they 
would return an answer to the other House 'by mes- 
sengers of their own, to show that they did not recognise 
the title " Lords ;" others again were for sending answer 
simply that they would consider of the message. But it 
was carried on a division by seventy-five votes to fifty- 
one that the Speaker should inform the messengers 
that the House would send an answer by messengers of 
their own. It was understood that the whole question 
of the other House would be debated in debating the 
answer to be sent. 

This had taken place on Friday, the twenty-second, 
and on Monday, the twenty-fifth, Cromwell sent to both 
Houses to attend him in the Banqueting House, and 
addressing them this time, " My Lords and Gentlemen 
of the two Houses of Parliament," made a long speech 
on the difficulties of public affairs, and the necessity of 
union. But it was of no use. The House of Commons, 
on the twenty-eighth, appointed a Committee to attend 
Cromwell and inform him, among other things, " that 



138 LIFE OP SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. 

this House will take the matters imparted to them by 
his Highness in his speech at the Banqueting House 
into serious and speedy consideration ;" and Cromwell 
highly resented that the House of Commons should 
take upon itself to answer singly a speech which he had 
addressed to both Houses. Still it was of no use. The 
House resolved to enter on no private business for a 
month, that they might devote themselves entirely to 
the consideration of the Government. They proceeded 
to debate the message from the other House, and this 
debate went on from day to day till the fourth of 
February, when Cromwell, seeing yet no probability of 
an answer being returned to the "Lords' " message, dis- 
solved the Parliament. 

A member of this Parliament made copious notes of 
the debates, which have been preserved and published. 1 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper took an active and leading 
part in the opposition to the new constitution and the 
new House of Lords. Five speeches of his are reported 
in the debates on the message from the other House, 
and summaries are given of very many more of his 
speeches in the following Parliament under Eichard 
Cromwell's short Protectorate. Though all these re- 
ports are little more than skeletons of argument, and 
the reporter has not taken pains with the language or to 
preserve the speaker's style, they yet bear unmistakeably 
the impress of that nervous and subtle oratory, of some 



1 In the work known as the Diary of Thomas Burton, edited by J. 
T. Rutt, 4 vols. 1828. Mr. Carlyle has raised doubts as to whether 
the member was Burton, member for Westmoreland, and suggests that 
it was more probably a Mr. Bacon (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 
ii. 545). The matter is not clear, one way or the other. 



1658. SPEECHES ABOUT "OTHER HOUSE." 139 

of whose efforts finished reports have been handed down 
to us, and which, in the stormy days of the reign of 
Charles the Second, rendered Shaftesbury so formidable 
a leader of opposition. 

The first position taken by Cooper in these debates 
was that the House had to consider, not only what 
answer they should return, but whether they should 
return any answer at all. " Some," he said, " are neither 
for another House nor for the title ; and if you put the 
question to return an answer to the other House, you 
tacitly admit such a House without further debate." l 
The next day he seconded a motion of Sir Arthur 
Haselrig's to have the question considered in Grand 
Committee, that is, in a Committee of the whole House, 
in which every member might speak on the same motion 
any number of times, and every vote of which would 
have to be reported to and re-affirmed by the House. 
This motion was not carried, and the debate then turned 
on what the first question to be decided should be, 
the substance of the answer to be given or the title by 
which the other House should be addressed. Cooper 
made a speech in support of first considering the title, 
which is thus quaintly reported : " I apprehend nobody 
speaks of that notion which I have in my head. Your 
order is very nice. You have a message from the Lords, 
brought by the judges from the Lords. Unusual causes 
produce unusual effects, and nothing so ordinary to 
philosophers as to meet with such. I would rather have 
us consider from whom that message is, and we can 
better tell what answer to return." 2 After a long day's 

i Burton's Diary, ii. 378, January 28. 2 Ib. ii. 401, Jan. 30. 



140 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

debate, the House decided that the title should be first 
considered. Haselrig then again tried to obtain a Com- 
mittee of the whole House, and Cooper again supported 
him. He followed the Solicitor-General, Ellis, who had 
made a learned argument to show that, though the words 
" House of Lords " did not occur in the Humble Petition 
and Advice, it was clearly intended that "the other 
House " should be a House of Lords. Cooper's speech 
is thus reported. " I move to be turned into a Grand 
Committee for three or four days. There is a great 
deal more in it than appears. Admit Lords, and admit 
all. It is fit that laws should be plain for the people. 
We know what advantage the supreme magistrate and 
the other House always get by the learned's interpreta- 
tion of them." 1 By " admit Lords, and admit all," 
Cooper doubtless meant that the admission of the name 
would involve the admission of a House of Lords accord- 
ing to the old constitution, for such is his argument 
in a second speech on this question of a Grand Com- 
mittee, the last and the longest of his speeches in 
this short session. He is then reported as follows, 
February 3 : 

" I am not of their opinion, that say there is nothing 
in the name, and that, if you could get over that, 
the fact would not stick ; but better abstain from 
that than the people suffer. You are now upon the 
brink and border of settlement, and, if you go further, 
it may be you cannot stand. There is nothing but 
a compliment to call a man Lord ; but if one call 
himself lord of my manor, I shall be loth to give him 

1 Burton, ii. 419, Feb. 2. 



1658. SPEECHES ABOUT "OTHER HOUSE." 141 

the title, lest he claim the manor. The gentlemen 
of the long robe will tell you there is much in names. 
The word King, they know, carries all. Words are the 
keys of the cabinet of things. Let us first take the 
people's jewels out before you part with that cabinet. 
If we part with all first, when you come to abatement, 
it is a question how you will redeem them. It was told 
you by a learned gentleman that the writ makes them 
no more than the Instrument 1 makes them, for the 
Instrument makes them not peers for life, as the writ 
does not. It is very clear. We are told it revives the 
old Lords' House. I would fain know where the words 
of revival be. The gentlemen of the long robe say 
nothing of a revival." 

Then with abrupt transition he answers another argu- 
ment, that there must be some mode of address from the 
one House to the other. 

" There must be a way of address. I see no such 
necessity, by the last Instrument. You passed laws 
without the peers' consent after so many days. The 
negative voice was denied the King. You know it was. 
Thus laws passed without the King's concurrence. Con- 
sider, let us not lay foundations that we may repent. 
They must be extant for the future." 2 

On the day on which this last speech was made, the 
House divided on the question whether the motion for a 
Grand Committee should be put, and the numbers were 
equal. The Speaker was about to give his casting vote, 
which would probably have been with the Noes, when 

1 The Humble Petition and Advice. 

2 Burton, ii. 435, February 3. 



142 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. V. 

Mr. Fagg, member for Sussex, stood up and asserted 
that he and another member, Colonel Grosvenor, had 
entered the House before the question was put, but that 
their votes had not been counted. Mr. Fagg's vote was 
allowed, and added to the Ayes, so that the first question 
was carried. But the main question was immediately 
afterwards negatived by ninety-three votes to eighty- 
seven. It was therefore decided not to go into Grand 
Committee. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was one of 
the tellers for the Ayes in the division on the main 
question. 

On the day following this close division, Cromwell, 
dissatisfied with the small majority, dissolved the Par- 
liament. This was Oliver Cromwell's last Parliament. 
Seven months after the dissolution, on the third of 
September, 1658, he died. 

The Petition and Advice had empowered Cromwell to 
declare, during his lifetime, his successor in the Pro- 
tectorship ; and soon after this power was confirmed, he 
had nominated in writing his son-in-law Fleetwood. 
But differences afterwards arose between Cromwell and 
Fleetwood, and now, on his death-bed, Oliver verbally 
nominated his eldest son Eichard his successor, in the 
presence of Fiennes, the first Commissioner of the Great 
Seal, Thurloe, and three other witnesses. The paper in 
which Fleetwood had been more formally appointed was 
at the same time searched for by Cromwell's desire, but 
could not be found. Fleetwood, however, afterwards 
waived all claims arising out of this document, if it 
should be found; and Eichard took his father's place 
without dispute. 



1658. CKOMWELL'S DEATH. 143 

From the dissolution of the Parliament in February 
till Oliver Cromwell's death in September we have no 
information about Cooper; but we find him again a 
member of the Parliament soon called by Eichard 
Cromwell, and there waging as fierce a war as he had 
waged under Oliver against the Petition and Advice 
and its House of Lords. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

16581659. 

Eichard Cromwell proclaimed Protector The military commanders 
jealous of his civilian advisers A Parliament called for January 27, 
1659 Members for England and Wales elected under old constitution 
Scotch and Irish members according to Instrument of Government, 
but not to sit till approved Cromwell's peers summoned by writs of 
old House of Lords Cooper elected for Wiltshire and Poole Sits 
for Wiltshire Debates on bill for recognition of Eichard Cromwell 
sProtector Cooper's many speeches The "Other House" Ques- 
tion of transacting with it Cooper's long speech against time 
Cooper's taunts against one of Cromwell's peers for changes His 
abuse of Cromwell House of Commons agrees to transact with 
other House during this Parliament Unsuccessful attempt to settle 
revenue on Eichard Cromwell Message to other House as to a day 
of humiliation Discussions thereon Quarrel between Eichard 
Cromwell and the military chiefs Eesolutions of House of Com- 
mons against the army Eichard Cromwell orders dissolution of 
Council of Officers Fleetwood and Desborough rally the army, and 
force Eichard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament Fall of Eichard 
Cromwell. 

THE Council assembled immediately after Cromwell's 
death, and unanimously resolved to recognise his death- 
bed nomination of his eldest son Eichard as his suc- 
cessor. His brother-in-law Fleetwood, the Lieutenant- 
General of the army, cordially concurred in this 
decision, declaring that, if the written instrument by 
which he had been nominated should hereafter be 
found, he would regard it as null. Desborough, the 
brother-in-law of Oliver, and the next in position to 
Fleetwood of the military commanders, while his 



1658. EICHAED CROMWELI/S ACCESSION. 145 

superior in energy and influence, also zealously sup- 
ported in the Council Eichard's succession. On the 
following day Richard Cromwell was proclaimed Pro- 
tector in London, without the slightest sign of opposi- 
tion. The support of Fleetwood and Desborough had 
carried that of the army. No opposition appeared in 
any part of the Commonwealth, in England, Scotland, 
or Ireland. Henry Cromwell, who governed as Deputy 
in Ireland, gave a willing support to his brother. Monk, 
the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, declared his more 
important adhesion. Addresses of congratulation came 
in succession from all the counties and cities of the 
three countries, and from the army. 1 The Eoyalists and 
Eepublicans, who had both hoped that the death of 
Cromwell would make an opening for their respective 
causes, saw with surprise the tranquil succession of 
Eichard; and for a few months it seemed as if the 
feeble Eichard, succeeding by a doubtful title to an 
usurped power, was to retain it free from the troubles 
and difficulties which had ever vexed and thwarted the 
great mind of Oliver. 

The support of the army had placed Eichard where 
he was. From the army came the first sign of trouble ; 
and the army ultimately displaced him. The military 
chiefs, who had zealously supported his succession to 
the Protectorship, thought that, as he was a civilian, he 
ought to relinquish the command-in-chief of the army, 
and wished him to transfer it to Fleetwood. The army 
generally approved this idea. Eichard, counselled by 

1 Phillips's Continuation of Sir K. Baker's Chronicle, pp. 635, 636, 
ed. 1684. 

VOL. I. L 



146 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

Thurloe, Fiennes, St. John, Pierpoint, and other civilians, 
and following also the advice of Monk, resisted the pro- 
posals of the officers, and determined to retain in his 
own hands the command of the army. 1 Fleet wood, Des- 
borough, and their friends, now became jealous of the 
influence of Eichard's civilian counsellors, and com- 
plained that they themselves were treated with ingrati- 
tude. Eichard hoped that by calling a Parliament, 
which the wants of his treasury rendered absolutely 
necessary, he should bring to his side a power which 
would hold in check the rising turbulence of the 
military chiefs. 

Writs were issued for a Parliament to meet on the 
twenty-seventh of January, 1659. Some difficulties 
had presented themselves to the Council as regards the 
election of this Parliament. The last Parliament had 
not made a new scheme of representation, as the Humble 
Petition and Advice had enjoined. How then were the 
members of the House of Commons to be elected 
according to the scheme of the extinct Instrument of 
Government, or according to the old law of England ? 
But under the old constitution, Scotland and Ireland 
were not united with England, and there was no law for 
the election of Scotch and Irish members to a common 
Parliament. The Council determined that the members 
for England and Wales should be elected according to 
the old law of the land, and that thirty members, the 

1 Other leading advisers of Richard Cromwell were Dr. Wilkins, 
afterwards Bishop of Chester, Lord Broglull, afterwards Earl of Orrery, 
Colonel Philip Jones, and George Montagu, second son of the Earl of 
Manchester (Ludlow, ii. 632 ; Pepys's Diary, i. 104 ; Clarendon State 
Papers, iii. 421, 423). 



1659. PARLIAMENT SUMMONED. 147 

number prescribed by the Instrument of Government, 
should be elected severally for Scotland and Ireland 
according to the provisions of that constitution, but that 
they should not be admitted to sit till the consent of the 
members for England and Wales was given. With 
regard to the " other House/' a question arose as to the 
way in which they were to be summoned, and it was 
determined to summon them by the same writs as had 
been in use for the House of Lords, under the old con- 
stitution. Those whom Oliver Cromwell had nominated 
members of the "other House" were summoned, without 
any addition. 1 

The reason for reverting to the old constitution for the 
election of the English members was doubtless that it 
gave more scope for the exercise of government influ- 
ence than the more popular scheme of representation 
which had been provided by the Instrument of Govern- 
ment. Eichard Cromwell soon found trouble, where he 
had sought help. An indefatigable Opposition, com- 
posed of Eepublicans and Presbyterians, among the 
latter of whom many were now looking to the restora- 
tion of the royal family, and some were secretly in 
correspondence with the royal exile, endeavoured to re- 
open the whole question of the constitution and Eichard 
Cromwell's power ; and in three short months, Fleetwood 
and the army suppressed the Parliament and drove 
Eichard Cromwell from the Protectorate. 

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was returned to this 
Parliament for Wiltshire and for Poole. For Poole 
there was a double return, which was decided in his 

1 Ludlow, ii. 616. 
L2 



148 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

favour ; and he elected, after this decision, to sit for 
Wiltshire. 1 

The same member whose reports enabled us accurately 
to trace Cooper's course in the last session of Oliver 
Cromwell's last Parliament, continued to take copious 
notes in the present one ; and we find Cooper a constant 
and leading speaker in opposition. The Diarist records 
Cooper's first coming into the House, on the fifth of 
February, as if he were a man of much consequence. 2 

A few days after the Parliament met, a bill for the 
recognition of Eichard Cromwell's title was proposed to 
the House of Commons by Thurloe, the Secretary of 
State. The introduction of this bill led to protracted 
discussions, in which every objection that casuistry 
could suggest was employed by the opponents of the 
Government. The bill having been read a second time 
without a division, a debate was immediately opened by 
Haselrig on the question of going into committee, which 
lasted from the seventh of February to the fourteenth. 
The validity of the Humble Petition and Advice, 

1 Comm. Joiirn. March 30, 1659 ; Burton, iv. 308. 

2 Burton, iii. 80. Attention was called this day (Feb. 5) to Ludlow's 
sitting in the House without taking the prescribed oath, and a debate 
arose, which was interrupted by a member noticing the presence of a 
man named King, who had been sitting in the House not having been 
elected a member, and distributing pamphlets among the members. 
It was moved to send King to the Tower ; several members, and 
among others Sir A. A. Cooper, suggested Newgate, arguing that to 
send him to the Tower would be to give him too much importance. 
It was resolved to send him to Newgate. He was discharged two 
days after, being adjudged mad. The debate about Ludlow was not 
resumed, and he managed to continue to sit without taking the oath. 
(Memoirs, ii. 619.) Later, on the same day, a motion was made to 
appoint a Committee about the maintenance of clergymen in Wales. 
Cooper spoke, and is thus reported : " There is a vast treasure arising 
out of these revenues. I never heard of any account. I have passed 
through Wales, and found churches all unsupplied, except a few 
grocers or such persons that have formerly served for two years." 



1659. OPPOSITION TO EICHAED CEOMWELL. 149 

enacted by a Parliament from which a large number 
of members had been excluded, was again impugned. It 
was argued that Cromwell's nomination of his son 
Eichard by word of mouth on his death-bed, and not 
by a written instrument, was insufficient, even if the 
validity of the Humble Petition and Advice were ad- 
mitted. Abuse and derision were lavished on the so- 
styled House of Lords. It was contended that the bill 
should confirm the people's rights and the privileges of 
the House of Commons at the same time that it con- 
firmed the Protector's title, and a preliminary resolution 
limiting the Protector's powers and securing the House 
of Commons in the two points of the " militia " and the 
u negative voice " was called for. Verbal questions were 
raised, such as those which had made so large a part of 
the discussions on the Instrument of Government in 
1654 : it having been proposed, for instance, to "recog- 
nise" Eichard Cromwell as Protector, the Opposition 
contended that the word " recognise " implied a power 
independent of the Parliament, and proposed to sub- 
stitute "declare;" by way of compromise, the Govern- 
ment party added "declare" to "recognise," and 
withdrew the word " undoubted " before " Protector," to 
which the Opposition had made great objections. 1 Such 
were the topics urged by a multitude of speakers, chiefly 
Eepublicans, during an eight days' debate. Cooper 
warmly supported the proposal for a resolution saving 
the rights of the Parliament, and suggested the passing 
of another resolution, such as had been passed in 

1 Some members objected to "recognise," as a French word. 
Ludlow says that some proposed to "agnize." (Memoir, ii. 634.) 



150 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

discussing the Instrument of Government in 1654, 
that nothing should be binding till the whole bill was 
passed. Cooper's speech is thus reported : 

" You have the same state* of things now before you 
as you had in the Parliament of 1654, our judgments 
differing. A recognition was then proposed. It was 
said that it was not consistent with the care, wisdom, 
and gravity of this House, to pass the interest of the 
single person but with the interest of the people. At 
length a previous vote was agreed upon, that nothing in 
that should be of force, unless the whole did pass. That 
which is now proposed is thought impracticable, but it 
was not so then. 

" You are now upon a Petition and Advice which it 
is told you is a law, and if you say so, the judges will 
say so. Never was so absolute a government. If the 
Florentine and he that sate in the great chair of the 
world 1 had all met together, they could not have made 
anything so absolute. Is there not another House 
sitting that claims a negative over you? When you 
have passed this, what is wanting ? Nothing but 
monies, 

" State the case. The Petition and Advice is neces- 
sary to stand. A Parliament is freely chosen, and we 

1 Machiavel and Pope Alexander the Sixth. There is doubtless an 
omission here, as " all " must refer to more than two. The omission 
may be supplied from a speech of Mr. Hobart, later in the debates, 
and from a passage in Slingsby Bethel's " Narrative" of this Parlia- 
ment. Mr. Hobart is reported as saying, February 28 : " For this 
Petition and Advice, if Pope Alexander and Cardinal Csesar Borgia 
and Machiavel should all consent together, they could not lay a foun- 
dation for a more absolute tyranny. " (Diary, iii. 543). Bethel, in his 
Narrative of the proceedings of this Parliament, printed in the sixth 
volume of the Somers Tracts speaks of the Opposition party as 
' ' showing that if Pope Alexander the Sixth, Csesar Borgia, and their 
cabal had all laid their heads together, they could not have framed a 
thing more dangerous and destructive to the liberty of the people than 
is the Petition and Advice." 



1659. SPEECHES ON " OTHER HOUSE." 151 

own it. We go home by some necessity of state. Then 
does not the Petition and Advice outlive us ? This may 
happen, and produce inconveniences to us ; to the Pro- 
tector none. Is not this security to him that he shall 
be put in the great magna charta ? 

" If the Petition and Advice by piece-meal comes to 
be confirmed, we may not feel the smart of the Petition 
and Advice in this man's time. It may happen in 
another's. It may not sound well in after ages, to have 
things so uncertain and liable to disputes. The laws 
left doubtful, we have not been faithful to his Highness. 

"I move to assert his authority together with the 
liberty of the people. This will be security and in- 
demnity to all. Put the case, that you should vote him 
Chief Magistrate only, and then leave him to the ancient 
laws to expound what that means. Shall we not leave 
him to those ancient doubts and disputes which have 
cost us so much blood ? 

" Englishmen's minds are free, and better taught in 
their liberties now than ever. A Parliament cannot 
enslave the people. It may happen in after ages that 
the people may claim their liberties over again. I 
would have the addition and the question go all to- 
gether. "We have left a bone of contention to posterity, 
I fear. We may rise before all be perfected, for some 
reason of state. It is not against the orders of the 
House to put them together. I. would have them put 
together. Let them go hand in hand." 1 

Later, he made a short speech against the word 
"recognise," arguing that it would take in the whole 
Petition and Advice: "The word recognise goes to 
things, and not to persons. I appeal to the long-robe 

1 Burton, iii. 227, Feb. 11. 



152 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VI. 

men, if recognise take not in all the laws, Petition and 
Advice, and all powers given by that." 1 And again, it 
having been urged that to carry a preliminary restriction 
in the interest of the people would really be doing 
nothing, as unless a clause to the same effect were 
carried in committee, nothing would be secured in the 
bill, Cooper replied that there would be no record in the 
Journals of a clause proposed in committee and rejected : 
" Votes will remain on our books when we are gone, and 
it will appear that we had also care of the people. You 
will have it committed, and nothing appear. I would 
have both appear on our books together." 2 

On the fourteenth of February, immediately after this 
last short speech of Cooper's, two resolutions were 
adopted by the House. The first, "that it be part of 
this bill to recognise and declare his Highness, Eichard, 
Lord Protector, to be the Lord Protector and Chief 
Magistrate of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the 
dominions and territories thereunto belonging," was 
carried on a division by 223 votes to 134. After this 
resolution was carried, Mr. Trevor, one of Eichard 
Cromwell's party, who became Secretary of State under 
Charles the Second, offered a resolution "that before 
this bill be committed, this House do declare such addi- 
tional clauses to be part of the bill as may bound the 
power pf the Chief Magistrate, and fully secure the 
rights and privileges of Parliament and the liberties and 
rights of the people ; and that neither this nor any other 
previous vote that is or shall be passed in order to this 
bill shall be of force or binding to the people until the 

1 Burton, iii. 276, Feb. 14. 2 Ibid. iii. 286, Feb. 14. 



1659. SPEECHES ON " OTHER HOUSE." 153 

whole bill be passed." This resolution, which was 
intended as a concession to the Opposition, was passed 
without a division, Thurloe alone saying " No " to it. 

The consideration of the additional clauses was begun 
on the seventeenth. 1 The Opposition were for beginning 
with the limits of the Protector's power, and more par- 
ticularly with the question of his veto, or negative voice ; 
the Government party contended, on the other hand, 
that the question of the other House should be first 
settled. Cooper, as usual, sided with the Opposition : 

" The bounding the single person is the most proper 
thing in debate, and I apprehended we had now been 
upon the Chief Magistrate's limitations. It is objected 
that men cannot vote unless they know whether there 
shall be another House. That objection is made as if 
we were constituting a new commonwealth. If that 
should be, then, unless you know what power your 
single person shall have, how will you declare the power 
of the other House, for this will still lie in your way ? 
I have not heard that debated yet, whether we are upon 
the footing of the Petition and Advice, or on a new 
foundation, or on the old Constitution. I think we are 
yet to be supposed to be upon the foot of the old Con- 
stitution, unless something appears to the contrary. 

1 On February 16, a motion was made by Mr. Bulkeley, a supporter 
of Richard Cromwell's Government, to accuse Henry Nevil, the well- 
known Republican, and author of " Plato Redivivus," of atheism and 
blasphemy. The object was to prove Nevill disqualified to sit, the 
existing law requiring that members should be " persons fearing God 
and of good conversation," and thus to get rid of an Opposition mem- 
ber. Many defended Nevill, and objected to such a charge being made 
on hearsay : among others Cooper, who said : "A motion of this nature 
ought to be made clearly out. To make a man an offender for a word 
is hard. Manifest and open offences may be punished with more 
severity. I would have the charge clear, that the defence may also 
be clear and certain." (Burton, iii. 300.) In the end, after an 
animated four hours' debate, the matter was dropped. 



154 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VI. 

Therefore, I would not have us surprised in a vote. 
We may by this put a limitation upon this that we 
mean not of, and, instead of bounding the Supreme 
Magistrate, be rather bounding the liberty of parlia- 
ments." 1 

It was decided by an overwhelming majority, 217 
to 86, that the question of the other House should be 
taken first. 

The next day it was resolved without a division that 
it should be part of the bill to declare that the Parlia- 
ment consisted of two Houses. Then came the question 
of the powers of the second House. A discursive debate 
arose on this question. Various members of the Oppo- 
sition contended for the rights of the old House of Lords, 
at any rate for the rights of those of its members who 
had not forfeited for delinquency. Some of the Govern- 
ment party, by way of avoiding this question, proposed 
that it should at once be resolved that the members of 
the other House should not be hereditary ; others pro- 
posed to take into consideration the powers of the 
other House, and to begin with the judicial powers. 
Cooper spoke for determining first whether the other 
House should consist of the old Lords or of Cromwell's 
nominees, before entering into the question of their 
powers : 

" If you would have us all of one mind, your question 
must be as clear as may be. The first question ought 
to be, whether there be a right or no : for where there 
is a right (in all the actions of a man's life) there is a 
duty ; and then matter of convenience or inconvenience 

1 Burton, iii. 335, Feb. 18. 



1659. SPEECHES ON " OTHER HOUSE/' 155 

is out of doors. Two rights are offered to be in being : 
one of the old Lords ; the other of the other House, or 
new Lords, who have already a vast power in their 
hands, and dangerous to the people. Some tell you the 
right of one House, some of another. I offer it to you 
that it is not fit, and if it may not be dangerous, to 
prejudge or preclude either of their rights, before you 
agree to the persons. If there be a right, then all their 
boundaries must be offered to them, whether they will 
pass them or not ; and I have seldom found men in 
power to part with it on easy terms. It is therefore 
necessary to be decided, how far we are to deliberate 
and restrain them in this point. Seeing great rights are 
claimed on both sides, let me be satisfied in that point 
first, before I can give my vote. The consideration of 
the persons is most natural. One while it is argued for 
right, pro and con, and persons differ; and then they 
fly off to conveniency. Matter of right and conveniency 
are two different things. Therefore, now take into con- 
sideration these two claims. Consider first whether the 
old Lords or new Lords have a right or no, and then go 
on to bound them." * 

1 Burton, iii. 418, Feb. 22. On the previous day. Cooper had 
joined in urging the release from prison of George Villiers, Duke of 
Buckingham, on the engagement of his father-in-law, Lord Fairfax. 
This Duke, who became very celebi'ated in the next reign, and closely 
connected in politics with Shaftesbury, both in the so-called Cabal 
ministry and afterwards, had been sent to the Tower by Oliver Crom- 
well in August, 1658, as a royalist intriguer ; and he was now a pri' 
soner in Windsor Castle. Cooper said he had "not so much as a 
correspondence with this person," with whom in the next reign he 
was so intimately associated. He urged strongly the claims of Fairfax 
on the gratitude and respect of the Parliament. " Let it not be thought, 
whatever is in our hearts, that we shall have ingratitude to that 
person that offered the petition. The care that Lord Fairfax will have 
of him in his family will be beyond all security you can care for. You 
may well trust him. " Buckingham was released, on his engagement 
on his honour at the bar of the House, and on Lord Fairfax's engage- 
ment in 20,000, for his quiet behaviour and abstinence from intrigues 
against the Government. (Burton, iii. 370.) 



156 LIFE OF SHAJTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

One of the Court party now proposed that the ques- 
tion should be, whether the House would transact with 
the other House now sitting, as with a House of Parlia- 
ment : and on this question a discussion lasted for nine 
days. Arthur Annesley, the future Earl of Anglesey, a 
leading member of the Presbyterian party, proposed an 
addition to the question of a clause saving the rights of 
the old Peers. Cooper spoke zealously both against the 
proposal to transact and against Annesley's saving 
clause : 

" As to the old Lords, it is the way to destroy their 
rights which you take to pursue them. This is a saving 
that destroys the right. You bar their claim utterly by 
this, whereas you know not but their claim may come 
in more clearly. You make them and their interest 
your everlasting enemies. A few new men, but in the 
room of old men, what will the nation say? Let us 
consider what we can say to posterity. The remaining 
part of that famous Long Parliament would in the issue 
have rendered their designs famous. Your laws and 
liberties are all gone. Two negatives are in one hand. 
An army is in your legislature, and 1,300,000/. per 
annum for ever. To say that a law made under force 
shall be a good law, and binding in reason, is against 
all reason. That about the Bill of Sales is but argumen- 
tum ad hominem. If our neighbours say we look well, 
that will not satisfy; we must examine if we be well. 
I have sat sixteen years here, ventured my life and 
bought lands, and my friends and interest have done so. 
I always hoped, whenever you came to settlement, you 
would confirm all these sales. True, a possessory title 
of Chief Magistrate was never questioned in Parliament, 
but this is upon another foot, the Petition and Advice. 



1659. SPEECHES ON " OTHER HOUSE." 157 

Now are you satisfied of that claim? Is there that 
done that will pass 40/. per annum, and yet are passing 
three nations into the hands of some few persons to 
them and their heirs for ever ? If there be a necessity 
upon us now, where will the necessity be afterwards ? 
Where will be our posterity ? You might have had as 
good a government three hundred years ago. What are 
you at present but a House of Parliament and a single 
person? Is there any such difference than when the 
Parliament was in 54 ? You must either transact, it is 
said, with them, or you must not transact at all. There 
is no such need. Are we bound to this or that other 
House ? We are not bound. It may be they will sit 
without us. I had rather they did so and raised money, 
than that we should so bind ourselves as to be but 
bailiffs and servants to them. It is but a shoeing-horn 
to tell us the right of the old Lords is preserved by this. 
I cannot consent to transact, because it is against the 
rights of others, the rights of this House, and the rights 
of the nation. If you think you have no need of bounds 
nor approving, pass your question singly, and then I 
am sure you are bound for ever. If you will put it, put 
it singly. It shall have my negative." 1 

And again : 

" It is impossible to save the rights of others, if you 

i Burton, iv. 50, March 7. On March 4, Cooper had made a short 
speech on the same subject : "I would not have things misrepresented 
to the House. I was here last Parliament, and the constitution of the 
other House was disputed all along, and their co-ordinate power 
denied still, else we had not been so soon dissolved." (iv. 14.) On 
February 24, he had made a long speech, on a proposal by Thurloe, 
the Secretary, to equip a fleet for support of a mediation by England 
in the war between Sweden and Denmark, objecting to leaving the 
question in the hands of the Protector and Council, as was proposed, 
and claiming the power of peace and war for the Parliament. It was 
ultimately referred to the Protector to prepare a fleet, with a proviso, 
" saving the interest of this House in the militia and in making of 
peace and war." (Burton, iii. 465, 493.) 



158 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

own these upon that foot that they are. You cannot alter 
one bit of it without their consent. Their number is to 
be but seventy. If sixty already, how can that clause 
of yours be practised or put in execution ? Now this 
may be mended, but when you have once owned them, 
you must stay their leisure. If these would give their 
places to old Lords, there is one negative upon you still; 
so you put two bars before their rights to bring in 
the old Lords upon the Petition and Advice : upon that 
foot, I should for ever abhor them, and myself for doing 
it. Upon this new foot, jou cannot restore them; 
though I honour them as much as any man, and wish 
they were restored, but rather never see a Lord than 
have them on such a foot. I would have the question 
put singly, that we may not be surprised in our votes." 1 

Almost immediately after this speech, Annesley's pro- 
viso was put to the vote, and was carried by a majority of 
seven. The main question for transacting was then about 
to be put, when the Commonwealth men, seeing how 
close the last division had been, called attention to the 
Scotch and Irish members, and required that their right 
to vote should be inquired into and decided upon before 
any further proceedings were taken. The Court party 
opposed this, but were obliged to give way ; and it was 
not until the twenty-eighth of March that, the right of 
the Scotch and Irish members having been affirmed 
after very long debates, the question of transacting with 
the other House was resumed. 2 Then another proposed 

1 Burton, iv. 83, March 8. 

2 Cooper had been active in the discussions on the right of the Scotch 
and Irish members, doing of course all he could, as an opponent of the 
Government, to prevent 'their being recognised. He spoke on March 
9, 18, and 22, on this question. On March 9, a motion being made by 
Mr. "Rulkeley, during the debate about the Scotch and Irish members, 



1659. SPEECHES ON " OTHER HOUSE." 159 

addition to the question was discussed, the effect of 
which would have been to postpone the transacting with 
the other House until it had been approved and bounded 
by that House. Cooper supported. this addition. 

" I have observed the fortune of the old Peers, that 
the saving of their rights is the asserting of the rights 
of these, which is the most destructive to them that can 
be. It is clearly a putting others in their place, and is 
setting up a thing that is quite contrary. The saving 
of their rights is the clear proscription of their rights- 
You are upon the greatest piece of prerogative that ever 
was. At once you give him a whole negative in this 
other House. You give him the greatest prerogative 
that ever Prince had. While you have an eye to the 
other House, you overlook one whole negative, and 
reserve but half a negative to yourself. I think that 
those additions of bounding and approving do well suit 
with the new Constitution, and reach not the old." * 

This proposal was rejected, and then the House came 
to the main question. Scot now moved to insert the 
words " during this present Parliament," and this 

to declare any attempt either on the person of the Protector or on the 
House to be high treason, Cooper urged the postponement. " I like 
the thing very well, but it comes not in seasonably. Be the thing never 
so good, it ought not to break in upon this debate. Divert not upon 
this question." On March 16, he warmly supported a motion for 
releasing Major-General Overton from imprisonment in Jersey, and 
annulling the warrant under Cromwell's hand by which he had been 
committed in 1655. "I would not only have the warrant voted 
illegal, but the causes expressed, that it may appear upon your books, 
which will not appear by the warrant. I would have it further added, 
as another cause, that he was sent where a habeas corpus will not 
reach him. I am clearly of opinion, and all the long-robe at the 
Committee of Guernsey are of that opinion, that a habeas corpus 
lies not to Jersey. I would have a precedent. The case of Berwick 
differs much from it. They are a part of England, and send burgesses 
hither." (Burton, iv. 158.) 
1 Burton, iv. 284, March 28. 



160 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. VI. 

motion was supported by Cooper in a long speech, 
which was regarded by the Diarist as one against time. 
" Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper," he says, " made a long 
speech till the House was fuller of those of his party, 
and moved to second the motion that they be but for 
this Parliament, and would have them bounded in 
time." 1 This speech was afterwards printed in full, 
and separately published, and, if it was delivered as 
printed, was a very elaborate oration, intended to pro- 
duce a great effect. It is a very fierce attack on the 
existing order of things, on Oliver Cromwell, and on 
"the other House;" and some individuals among Crom- 
well's Lords are singled out for bitter personality. The 
whole speech may be read at the end of the volume : 2 
one extract will here suffice : 

" What I shall speak of their quality, or anything 
else concerning them, I would be thought to speak with 
distinction, and to intend only of the major part ; for I 
acknowledge, Mr. Speaker, the mixture of the other 
House to be like the composition of apothecaries, who 
mix something grateful to the taste to qualify their 
bitter drugs, which else, perhaps, would be immediately 
spit out and never swallowed. So, Sir, his Highness 
of deplorable memory to this nation, to countenance as 
well the want of quality as of honesty in the rest, has 
nominated some against whom there lies no other 
reproach but only that nomination ; but not out of any 
respect to their quality or regard to their virtues, but 

1 Burton, iv. 286. The Diarist remarks that neither Haselrig nor 
Vane was in the House on this occasion, but that Haselrig came in at 
one o'clock and Vane later. The opponents of the Government had 
endeavoured, just before Cooper made his long speech, to obtain an 
adjournment of the House for an hour, but had not succeeded. 

2 Appendix IV. 



SPEECHES ON "OTHER HOUSE." 161 

out of regard to the no-quality, the no-virtues of the 
rest ; which truly, Mr. Speaker, if he had not done, 
we could easily have given a more express name to this 
other House than he hath been pleased to do : for we 
know a house designed for beggars and malefactors is 
a house of correction, and so termed by our law ; but, 
Mr. Speaker, setting those few persons aside, who, I 
hope, think the nomination a disgrace and their ever 
coming to sit there a much greater can we without 
indignation think of the rest ? He, who is first in their 
roll, a condemned coward; one that out of fear and 
baseness did once what he could to betray our liberties, 
and now does the same for gain. 1 The second, a person 
of as little sense as honesty ; preferred for no other 
reason but his no- worth, his no-conscience; except 
cheating his father of all he had was thought a virtue 
by him, who by sad experience we find hath done as 
much for his mother his country. The third, a Cavalier, 
a Presbyterian, an Independent ; for the Eepublic, for 
a Protector, for everything, for nothing, but only that 
one thing money. 2 It were endless, Sir, to run through 
them all; to tell you of the lordships of seventeen 
pounds a year land of inheritance ; of the farmer lord- 
ships, draymen lordships, cobbler lordships, 3 without one 



1 Nathaniel Fiennes, second son of Viscount Save and Sele, who had, 
in the beginning of the Civil War, surrendered Bristol to the King's 
army without making any defence, and had been condemned to death 
by a court-martial, but pardoned by the Earl of Essex, the General-in- 
ehief. He was now first Commissioner of the Great Seal, and one of 
Uichard Cromwell's chief advisers. His father and a younger brother, 
J ohn, were also named by Cromwell members of the House of Lords : 
the father did not sit. 

2 Supposed to be Lord Broghill, after the Restoration created Earl 
of Orrery ; a poet and play-writer, as well as a versatile and ambitious 
politician. 

3 Colonel Pride, one of the lords, had been a brewer, and is said to 
have begun as a drayman ; and Colonel Hewson, another lord, had been 
a shoemaker. 

VOL. I. M 



162 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

foot of land but what the blood of Englishmen has been 
the price of. These, Sir, are to be our rulers, these the 
judges of our lives and fortunes ; to these we are to 
stand bare, whilst their pageant lordships deign to give 
us a conference on their breeches. Mr. Speaker, we 
have already had too much experience how insup- 
portable servants are when they become our masters. 
All kinds of slavery are miserable in the account of 
generous minds ; but that which comes accompanied 
with scorn and contempt stirs up every man's indig- 
nation, and is endured by none whom nature does not 
intend for slaves as well as fortune." 

It has been suggested that this speech was too strong 
to have been either spoken or at the time published ; l 
but there is a multitude of speeches equally strong 
reported in the Diary which has been so often quoted ; 
and as to publication, there would have been no obstacle 
a month later, after Eichard Cromwell's fall ; indeed it 
is probably then that the speech was published. As a 
composition, the published speech is remarkable ; and, 
like the published speeches of Shaftesbury's later career, 
it gives manifold proofs of the author's literary ability. 
The strong language against Oliver Cromwell, from one. 
who had for a time acted with him and been of his 
Council, is either revolting inconsistency, or to be taken 
as a proof that he had conscientiously given his support 
to Cromwell in the hope of obtaining through him a 
settlement of the nation under a good government, and 
had afterwards conscientiously withdrawn from him, 
because unable to approve his measures. It has been 

1 By the editors of the old "Parliamentary History." 



1659. ABUSE OF CROMWELL AND HIS PEERS. 163 

seen that there is no certain knowledge of the causes 
of Cooper's separation from Cromwell. It is difficult 
to understand how Cooper, with all his changes, could 
have ventured to reproach any one else as " a Cavalier, 
a Presbyterian, an Independent ; for the Kepublic, for 
a Protector, for everything," even though his conscience 
acquitted him of liability to be justly assailed in return 
with the culminating taunt, "for nothing, but only 
that one thing money." Cooper's pecuniary disinterest- 
edness could not be called in question. It may be fairly 
said that such vehement reproaches could not have 
been publicly uttered by one who had been a tool or 
flatterer of Cromwell, or under personal obligations to 
him, for very many would be eager to retort upon him 
and expose his own political changes ; and there is no 
sign in the copious reports of the Diary of Cooper's 
being twitted by any of his numerous adversaries in the 
House with inconsistency or ingratitude. In one of 
his speeches in this Parliament he had openly expressed 
his regret at Cromwell's violent dissolution of the Eump, 
declaring his belief that " the remaining part of that 
famous long Parliament would in the issue have ren- 
dered their designs famous." /'How easy would it have 
been for any Government supporter to reproach him 
in reply with having accepted, soon after this disso- 
lution, a nomination to the Barebone's Parliament, and 
having then again soon after aided in establishing 
the Protectorate ! And, had he been so reproached, 
how natural a defence that, regretting Cromwell's con- 
duct, he had thought it his duty as a good citizen to 
give aid in making the best of the situation, and 1 ad 

M 2 



164 LIFE OF SHAFTESBCJRY. CHAP. VI. 

aided Cromwell as long as his conscience permitted, 
but no longer ! 

The additional words proposed by Scot and supported 
by Cooper, for limiting the recognition of the other 
House to the term of duration of the present Parliament, 
were carried ; and after an unsuccessful attempt, which 
Cooper also supported, to strengthen the limitation by 
further words, " and no longer unless confirmed by Act 
of Parliament," the question of transacting with the 
other House was at last brought to an issue, and the 
following resolution was affirmed on the 28th of March 
by 198 votes to 125: "That this House will transact 
with the persons now sitting in the other House as a 
House of Parliament during this present Parliament, 
and that it is not hereby intended to exclude such peers 
as have been faithful to the Parliament from their 
privilege of being duly summoned as members of 
that House." 

No sooner had the question of the " other House " 
been disposed of, and it had been settled to transact 
with them, than Mr. Bulkeley, one of the constant sup- 
porters of the Government, proposed, on the twenty- ninth 
of March, a bill for settling taxes for the life of Eichard 
Cromwell, Protector, and for a certain time after his 
death. The proposal was strongly opposed, and by none 
more strongly than Cooper. He opposed the introduc- 
tion of the bill, but unsuccessfully : a few days later he 
. proposed by way of amendment a resolution that after 
the end or other determination of the Parliament, no 
law of excise should be of force, and no excise should be 
levied. His speech on this occasion is thus reported : 



1659. REVENUE BILL REFUSED. 165 

" Will you settle this revenue, and not in the body 
of your government, to see what your money shall go 
to support ? It is not yet said what hand you shall 
have in anything. Once declare money, they may go 
on without you. 

"The money [that] is paid already, I would have 
you put no discountenance upon it. Make a previous 
vote, that after this present parliament none shall pre- 
sume to levy this duty. That will keep it afoot this 
parliament ; and in the mean time, you may settle it. 
Nobody can complain why they want money if we be 
dissolved. If you have not time to grant it, and be 
willing to it, you are excused. 

" I shall offer this previous vote ; and he read it 
and put it to the table. He said it was not his own, 
but Mr. Nevill's. ' Resolved and declared, that no law 
for excise shall be of force, nor excise levied, after the 
end or other determination of this parliament.' " l 

Such a resolution, but even more extensive in its 
terms, applying not only to excise, but also to customs 
and all other imposts, was passed without a division ; 
and the object of the Government in proposing the bill 
was thwarted. The resolution was, that after the ter- 
mination of the Parliament no tax of any sort could 
be levied under any previous law or ordinance, unless 
it had been expressly sanctioned by this House. This 
was intended as a check on dissolution, and probably 
accelerated it. 

Four days later, on the fifth of April, the House 
resolved on a declaration for a day of fasting and 
humiliation through the three nations; and it was 

1 Burton, iv. 324, April 1. 



166 LIFE OF SHAJTESBURY. CHAP. VI. 

settled after a renewed short discussion about the 
" other House/' that its title should be " A Declaration 
of the Lord Protector and both Houses of Parliament." 
It then became the subject of the first " transaction" 
with the "other House;" but not till after much dis- 
cussion as to the mode in which the " other House" 
should be communicated with, and the appointment of a 
committee to consider the forms. The House resolved, 
on the recommendation of the committee : 1. " That 
such messages as shall be sent from this House to the 
other House shall be carried by members of this House;" 
and 2. " That such messages as shall be sent from the 
other House to this House shall not be received, unless 
brought by members of their own number." The second 
resolution was carried against the Government by 127 
votes to 114. The message was at last sent up on the 
fourteenth of April, entrusted to one member, Mr. Grove, 
the original mover for a day of fasting. The Diarist 
accompanied him to the " other House," and thus reports 
what passed this day on that subject : 

" I came late and found the House in debate about 
Mr. Grove's going to the other House with the De- 
claration for the fast. Mr. Grove desired instructions 
whether we might stay for an answer. Mr. Bodurda. 
It is not rational that he should come away without an 
answer. I only know two cases where a messenger 
does not stay for an answer : 1. when a herald goes to 
proclaim war, 2. when an apparitor comes to serve a 
citation ; he claps it upon the door and runs away for 
fear of a beating. Mr. Salway. I perceive they are not 
sitting in the other House ; most of them are at Wai- 



1659. MESSAGE TO " OTHEK HOUSE." 167 

ling-ford House. 1 It seems so they were, and not above 
four in the House, but they were gathering up their 
numbers while we were debating. The question was 
put, that Mr. Grove, when he hath delivered his mes- 
sage to the persons sitting in the other House shall 
return to this House without staying for any answer. 
The question was misput ; it ought not to have been 
put with a negative in it. Mr. Speaker declared for the 

Noes, Mr. for the Yeas, and that the Yeas go out. 

Sir Arthur Haslerig and others moved that the Noes 
go out, because it was not new, but the Yeas went out. 
Yeas, 100, Lord Falkland and Sir Arthur Haslerig, 
tellers ; Noes, 144, Mr. Annesley and Sir Coplestone 
Bampfield, tellers. So it passed in the negative. Sir 
Arthur Haslerig said he had the worst luck in telling 
of any man, and so it proved. Mr. Grove, attended by 
above fifty members, quorum myself, carried the De- 
claration to the other House accordingly. After a little 
stay at the door, for the Lords were reading a bill, Mr. 
Grove was called in. He and all the members stood 
bare, by the walls, while the Lord-keeper Fiennes and 
most of the Lords came down to the bar. We made 
one leg, and then went up to the high step ; and before 
Mr. Grove ascended, we made another leg. He delivered 
his message, his verbis, without giving them any title, 
for so was the sense of the House. ' The Knights, 
Citizens, and Burgesses, assembled in the House of 
Commons, have commanded me to present this De- 
claration for a public fast to you, wherein they desire 
the concurrence of this House.' The Lords were bare 
all the time, and we withdrew, with two legs. After a 
little stay we were again called in, and ascended the 

1 Wallingford House was then the residence of Fleetwood, and a 
council of officers constantly met there ; many of the chief officers wore 
l^crs. Waltiugford House was on the site of the present Admiralty. 



168 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CJ-AP. VI. 

step with the same ceremony; all the Lords bare, 
sitting in their places, except Lord Fiennes, who was 
covered, but who stood up bare and returned their 
answer. ' The Lords' and then made a pause, as if 
it had been mistaken ' this House will return an 
answer to you by messengers of their own/ Where- 
upon we withdrew with the same ceremony. It 
seems, after we were all gone out, one of the Lords 
called to Mr. Grove and told him they desired our 
excuse for making us stay so long, for they had read 
half the Declaration before they knew that we stayed. 
Else they would have despatched us sooner. Mr. Grove 
reported this in effect to the House at our return ; only 
he left out that passage, that they said ' The Lords' 
while we were delivering the message." 1 

There was a little discussion the next day as to the 
entry to be made in the Journals of Mr. Grove's report. 

" Mr. Speaker. I desire to know what part of the 
report which Mr. Grove made yesterday you would 
have entered in your Journal. The whole narrative 
was read. Lord Falkland. If you enter all, you will be 
laughed at for your reward. Mr. Grove. If you enter 
all, enter also that there was such a crowd that I could 
not go in, and had like to have gone without my cloak. 
Colonel White. Enter all, save that part of the colloquy 
between Mr. Grove and the single member, that being 
no act of the other House. Mr. Speaker (and it was 
the sense of the House) : Leave it to the Committee 
appointed to peruse the Journal, to insert what they 
think fit." 2 

1 Burton, iv. 426428. 

2 Ibid. 434, April 15. The entry in the Journals, April 14, is 
short: "Mr. Grove brings answer from the persons sitting in the 



1659. WALLINGFORD HOUSE COUNCIL. 169 

While the House of Commons was engaged in these 
solemn discussions of forms, grave questions of sub- 
stance were rapidly developing, comparatively unheeded, 
into danger. The gathering of peers at Wallingford 
Rouse, noted by the Diarist, was a gathering of the 
military Lords hostile to Kichard Cromwell's command 
of the army. The many parliamentary victories of the 
Government over its Eepublican and Presbyterian op- 
ponents availed it nothing; and the fatal blow now 
came to Eichard Cromwell from the military magnates, 
so numerously represented in the House of Lords, for 
which his government had borne so much labour and 
odium in the House of Commons. A large party of 
officers, headed by Fleetwood and Desborough, had early 
shown jealousy of Eichard Cromwell as Commander-in- 
chief. The parliamentary Opposition, though generally 
vanquished by numbers, had necessarily weakened the 
Government ; and as the Government became weaker, 
Fleetwood's party became bolder. A general Council 
of officers had regularly sat at Wallingford House by 
Eichard Cromwell's permission ; and they now passed 
resolutions in offensive language, recommending the 
transfer of the chief command of the army to some fit- 
person in whom they could confide. Fleetwood was the 
person designed. There was an understanding between 



other House that, in obedience to the commands of this House, he 
had delivered to them in the other House the declaration for tho 
public fast, for their concurrence thereunto; that a little time after 
himself and other the members of this House who accompanied him to 
declare his message and went with him into the other House were 
withdrawn, they were called in again, and received thts answer from 
them in the other House, that they would send an answer by mes- 
sengers of their own." 



170 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. VI. 

the Wallingford House officers and the Eepublican 
party, who merged for the time their differences and 
mutual distrust in sympathy of opposition to Eichard 
Cromwell. 

The Protector appealed to the Parliament. After a 
warm discussion, on the eighteenth of April, it was 
resolved : " 1. That, during the sitting of the Parliament, 
there shall be no General Council or meeting of the 
officers of the army, without the direction, leave, and 
authority of his Highness the Lord Protector and both 
Houses of Parliament ; 2. That no person shall have 
or continue any command or trust in any of the armies 
or navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any the 
dominions or territories thereto belonging, who shall 
refuse to subscribe, that he will not disturb or inter- 
rupt the free meetings in Parliament of any of the 
members of either House of Parliament, or their freedom 
in their debates and counsels." These votes were sent 
up to the other House for their concurrence. The 
" Lords " promised to send an answer by messengers of 
their own, and resolved by a majority of one to debate 
the resolutions offered for their concurrence, Eichard 
Cromwell did not wait for the decision of the House of 
Lords, but, acting 011 the advice of his Council, ordered 
the dissolution of the military Council at Wallingford 
House. This, however, was an act of boldness which 
he had neither strength of character nor power in the 
army to maintain. Fleetwood and Desborough appealed 
to force, counted their regiments against Eichard's, and 
demanded a dissolution of the Parliament ; and Eichard 
had no alternative but to comply. 



1659. FALL OF RICHARD CROMWELL. 1?1 

On Friday, the twenty-second of April, the House of 
Commons met in alarm, and after an uneasy sitting 
adjourned to the following Monday. On the evening 
of Friday a dissolution was proclaimed ; and the doors 
of the House were locked, and guards placed round 
the approaches to prevent the members from again 
meeting. 1 

This was the end alike of Richard Cromwell's Parlia- 
ment and of Richard Cromwell's Protectorate. 



i Ludlow's Memoirs, ii. 631642 ; Sir R. Baker's Chronicle, 
p. 641, ed. 1684; Comra. Journ. April 18 22; Burton's Diary, iv. 
pp. 448 and sqq. ; Guizot, Protectorat de Richard Cromwell, &c., 
i. 112129. 



CHAPTER VII. 

16591660. 

Restoration of the Rump Parliament, May 7 Committee of Safety 
appointed Cooper's election petition for Downton of 1640 referred 
to a committee Not seated Cooper elected member of Council of 
State Suspicions of him as a Royalist by some colleagues Scot 
accuses him of correspondence with Hyde He denies the charge 
Cooper rejects Royalist overtures Letter from Monk to Cooper 
Distractions of Council and Parliament Sir George Booth's rising 
Cooper arrested in Dorsetshire, and accused of complicity with 
Booth Council of State and Parliament acquit him Military revo- 
lution by Lambert The Rump suppressed, October 13 Committee 
of Safety nominated by Lambert and his coadjutors, October 25 
Cooper opposes Lambert and the Committee of Safety Monk also 
opposes Cooper's narrative from October 25, 1659, to February 
6, ]660 Treaty of Monk's Commissioners with Committee of 
Safety Attempt to arrest Cooper Overthrow of Committee of 
Safety and restoration of Rump Cooper one of five temporary 
Commissioners for the Army Prompt measures for dispersing 
Lambert's forces Cooper appointed member of new Council of 
State Admitted as member for Downton Made colonel of regi- 
ment taken from Fleetwood Monk's march to London Monk's 
changes of conduct Admission of secluded members, February 26 
Cooper commands the guard on their admission Council of 
State appointed of Royalists and Presbyterians Cooper one New 
Parliament called for April 25 Letter of Montagu to Cooper 
Haselrig, Scot, and others offer Monk the crown Monk refuses 
False story of Monk aiming to be made king with help of French 
Ambassador Lambert's insurrection and defeat by Ingoldsby 
Cooper's letter of rejoicing to Montagu Cooper acts with the 
Presbyterian leaders for bringing in the King on conditions Meet- 
ing of Convention Parliament Monk outstrips the Presbyterians, 
and brings in Charles without conditions Cooper one of twelve 
commissioners of the Parliament sent to the King at Breda- 
Accident on his journey Friendship with John Locke Cooper's 
changes during the last twenty years Satires of Butler and Dryden. 

THERE were two parties among the officers who had 
combined at Wallingford House, under Fleetwood and 



1659. RESTORATION OF RUMP. 173 

Desborough, to force Richard Cromwell to dissolve the 
Parliament. Fleetwood and Desborough themselves 
did not design to depose the Protector or abrogate 
the Petition and Advice : Fleetwood was husband of 
Eichard's sister, and Desborough of his aunt. Their 
object was to take away from Eichard the immediate 
command of the army, and make Fleetwood commander- 
in-chief. But a majority of the officers who met at 
Wallingford House were Eepublicans, and wished to 
establish a commonwealth, without any single person 
at the head having a share in the legislative power. 
When the officers assembled, after the forced dissolu- 
tion, to deliberate on what was next to be done, this 
difference of opinion became manifest. Fleetwood and 
Desborough found that they could not stop where 
they wished. The Council of officers would not listen 
to their pleadings for continuing Eichard Cromwell 
as Protector. It was proposed to revive the authority 
of that remnant of the Long Parliament whose sittings 
Oliver had forcibly discontinued in April 1653. This 
proposal found great support outside Wallingford House. 
The superior officers of the army in London and its 
neighbourhood assembled in St. James's Chapel to 
discuss the position of affairs, and Doctor Owen and 
other Independent ministers, attending to consecrate 
their deliberations by prayer, improved the occasion 
by dwelling on the glories of the old Eump. Lambert, 
whom Cromwell had deprived of his commission, but 
who, though not an officer of the army, had been 
deeply engaged in the late cabals of Wallingford House, 
and who now received the command of a regiment, 



174 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

exerted his powerful influence among the officers to 
promote the restoration of the Eump. The inferior 
officers declared themselves for this measure. A 
petition for the recall of the Eump was presented 
from the city. Fleetwood and Desborough were 
obliged to yield. A communication was opened with 
a few of the most influential members of the Eump. 
A committee, of which Lambert was the chief member, 
deputed by the officers of Wallingford House, had 
several conferences with Vane, Haselrig, Ludlow, and 
Salwey, in order to obtain their consent to certain 
conditions on which the officers proposed to invite 
those members of the Long Parliament who had sat 
after the execution of the King and till April 1653, 
to resume the sovereign authority. These conditions 
were an indemnity for all military and political acts 
since the dissolution of the Eump, a liberal provision 
for Eichard Cromwell, an effectual reformation of the 
Church and the law, and the institution of a senate, 
similar to the second House of the Petition and 
Advice, for a check on the representative assembly 
in making provision for the future government of 
the commonwealth. It is clear that four indi- 
viduals could not undertake to bind the whole 
body ; they objected to the proposal of a senate ; they 
promised to use all their influence to procure an 
ample indemnity and a decent provision for Eichard 
Cromwell, and as to these points they anticipated no 
difficulty ; as regarded the reformation of the law 
and the Church, the members of the Eump were not 
likely to be less zealous than the officers of the armv. 



1659. RESTORATION OF RUMP. 175 

Ultimately a declaration, inviting those members of 
the Long Parliament who had continued to sit after 
the execution of Charles the First to resume the 
sovereign authority over the three nations, was drawn 
up by the council of officers, and presented by Lambert 
to Lenthall, the old Speaker. On the seventh of May 
Lenthall once more took the chair of the Rump in 
the old Parliament House at Westminster, and thus 
the power of the army re-established an authority 
which, just five years before, the power of the army 
wielded by Oliver Cromwell had broken. 1 

Forty-two out of about a hundred and sixty members 
entitled to sit under the limitation imposed took their 
seats in Westminster on the seventh of May. 2 This was 
just more than enough to make a House, and as many 
as could be mustered in London on so short a notice. 
About ninety on the whole in the end took their 
seats, Some of the members whom the army had 
excluded in 1648 endeavoured, on the first day of 
meeting, to enter and sit also, but a military guard 
kept them out. 

The first care of the new rulers was to appoint a 
Committee of Safety, in order to carry on the necessary 
duties of administration, and provide against danger 
from the Royalists, to whom the late confusions had 



1 Lucllow, ii. 642651 ; Sir R. Baker's Chronicle, p. 642. 

2 It is Ludlow's statement that there were now 160 members of the 
Long Parliament still living of those who had sat after the execution 
of the King. (Mem. ii. 645.) But Ludlow is not always accurate, 
and this number is possibly an exaggeration. No more than 122 ever 
voted between the execution of Charles I. and the ejection of the 
Rump in April 1653. See note at p. 91 ; also Hallam's Const. 

ii. 325, and Bisset's History of the Commonwealth, i. 23. 



176 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

given encouragement. This committee was composed 
in nearly equal proportions of officers of the army and 
republican members of the House. It consisted of 
Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, Sydenham, John 
Jones, and Berry, officers of the army, and Haselrig, 
Vane, Ludlow, Salwey, and Scot : Fleetwood, Sydenham, 
and John Jones were also members of the House. This 
committee was to continue only until a Council of 
State was organized ; and no time was lost in electing 
a Council of State. 

Cooper, who had so vigorously co-operated with the 
Eepublicans in the last two Parliaments, immediately 
endeavoured to gain admission to the revived Rump 
as a member, on his never- adjudicated petition for 
Downton at the beginning of the Long Parliament^, 
His case was referred, two days after the Eump was 
reconstituted sovereign, together with the case of Lord 
Fairfax, to a revived committee for examining the 
cases of all members who had not sat since 1648. 1 

S 1 

But Cooper did not succeed at present in gaining 
admission: the reason why is not known. It was 
possibly a reason of form, at least ostensibly, and 
there were suspicions of Cooper's sincerity as a Re- 
publican which may have influenced the adverse 
decision. 2 ^ 

1 Comm. Journ. May 9, 1659. 

2 Ludlow, in one of the suppressed passages in the Appendix I.J. 
says that the Committee, in Cooper's case, " alleging their powers were 
at an end, it was referred to them to search their books,, and state 
matter of fact in relation thereto." He also says that Cooper having 
many friends in the House, those who suspected him managed to get 
the question referred to the Committee, as the best way of putting 
him off. 



1659. MEMBER OF COUNCIL OF STATE. 1*77 

There was no delay in proceeding to appoint a 
Council of State, and Cooper was elected a member. 
It was first resolved that this conncil should consist 
of thirty-one members, twenty-one of whom were to 
be members of the House, and ten to be chosen from 
without. The House began, on the thirteenth of May, 
by electing seven who were not of their body. Lord 
Fairfax, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Bradshaw, Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Sir Horatio Townshend, 
were proposed and agreed to without a division. The 
remaining twenty-four members were elected by ballot 
on the fourteenth and sixteenth. They were Haselrig, 
Vane, Ludlow, Fleetwood, Salwey, Morley, Scot, 
Wallop, Sir James Harrington (the author of "Oceana"), 
Colonels Walton, John Jones, and Sydenham, Algernon 
Sydney, Henry Nevill, Chaloner, Downes, Oliver St. 
John (Chief Justice), Colonel Thompson, Whitelocke, 
Colonel Dixwell, Eeynolds, Berners, Sir Archibald 
Johnstone of Warriston, and Sir Robert Honywood. 
The last three were not members of the House. The 
officers of the army were in a minority in the Council. 

The election of Cooper and of Sir Horatio Towns- 
hend, a young Norfolk baronet of great possessions, 
whose father had been a Cavalier, but who, having 
lately come of age, had acted, like Cooper, with the 
Republican party in the last two Parliaments of the 
Protectors, is said by Ludlow to have surprised and 
disconcerted some of their colleagues. They were the 
two last proposed of the seven first elected from per- 
sons out of the House ; it was at the close of a sitting, 1 

1 Comin. Journ. May 13. 
VOL. I. X 



178 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

and it may be that the House was in some degree 
surprised into electing them. " Which two motions," 
says Ludlow, " being upon the rising of the House made 
on a sudden, before any could recollect themselves to 
speak against them, there being also an unwillingness 
to disoblige those of whom there was any hope, were 
consented to." 1 Cooper had been proposed by Mr. 
Love, a Eepublican, and Townshend by Nevill, who 
was unquestionably of the same party. Ludlow further 
states that several of the Wallingford House officers 
alleged that Cooper and Townshend were "assured 
to Charles Stuart's interest, and that they would give 
intelligence to him of all that passed," and that they 
kept away from the Council by reason of distrust 
of these two colleagues ; and that endeavours were 
consequently used by some friends of Cooper and 
Townshend to persuade them to resign, or at any 
rate not to attend the Council. 2 V With Cooper, any 
such endeavours, if made, were ineffectual. Ludlow 
says that Townshend was persuaded to forbear from 
sitting. Cooper, on taking his seat in the Council, 
took an oath of fidelity to the Corfimonwealth as con- 
stituted, as he had previously taken the engagement 
and as later he took it again, and as he had taken oaths 
of fidelity to the Constitution under the Protectors; 
and whatever suspicions may have been entertained 
by some of his colleagues, there is no pretence for 
saying that he broke his oath by correspondence with 
the exiled Charles or intrigues in his interest. 

V 

1 No. 3 of Suppressed Passages of Ludlow in Appendix III. 

2 No. 4 of Ludlow's Suppressed Passages. 







1659. ACCUSED OF ROYALIST INTRIGUES. 179 

Thomas Scot, a leading Eepublican member, accused 
Cooper and Whitelocke, in the Council, of correspond- 
ence with Hyde, the companion in exile and chief 
counsellor of Charles. Both indignantly denied the 
charge, which Whitelocke says was made on the 
authority of " a beggarly Irish friar beyond the seas ;" 
and both were believed by the Council. Whitelocke, 
himself a sufficiently supple politician, insinuates, as he 
records this incident, that Cooper's solemn denial was not 
necessarily true. " Sir A. A. Cooper," he says, " made 
the highest professions that could be of his innocence, 
and the highest imprecations of God's judgments upon 
him and his posterity, if ever he had any corre- 
spondence with the King or with Sir Edward Hyde or 
any of the King's ministers or friends, and his expres- 
sions were so high that they bred in some the more 
suspicion of him ; but at this time he was believed, 
and what followed afterwards is known." 1 

There is every reason to believe that Cooper's solemn 
denial was true. Eighteen years later, in a letter 
written to Charles the Second and appealing to his 
gratitude and clemency for release from imprisonment, 
he denied all correspondence with the King and his 
party before the Kestoration, as solemnly as he now 
denied Scot's accusation in the Council of State ; and 
how could he venture on a falsehood in this matter to 
Charles? "I had the honour," wrote Shaftesbury to 
Charles the Second in 1677 from the Tower, "to have a 
principal hand in your restoration ; neither did I act in 
it but on a principle of piety and honour. I never 



1 Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 679, May 18, 1659. 
N 2 



180 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

betrayed, as your Majesty knows, the party or councils 
I was of. I kept no correspondence with, I made no 
secret addresses to your Majesty ; neither did I 
endeavour to obtain any private terms or articles for 
myself or reward for what I had done or should do." 
Published letters of Eoyalist agents, the best possible 
witnesses, prove that on the very eve of the Eestoration, 
when Cooper's part was decidedly taken, and he was 
acting with the Presbyterians to bring in the King, he 
was working independently of the Eoyalists, and in a 
manner which did not satisfy them. Lord Willoughby 
wrote to Hyde, February 24, 1660: "Sir William 
Waller and Sir Anthony are his Majesty's fast friends, 
but whether the Presbyterians will not be high in 
them, as to the proposals when they come to be made, 
is the only doubt." 1 Brodrick, a very active Eoyalist 
agent, wrote about the same time that he perceived no 
desire in Cooper to be mentioned to Hyde as offering 
services, such as he was empowered to offer from Charles 
Howard, the future Earl of Carlisle, and from Sir 
Eobert Howard. 2 

At this time, a twelvemonth before the Eestoration, 
immediately after the fall of Eichard Cromwell, Cooper 
separated himself from the general Presbyterian body 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 689. 

2 Ibid. 681, Feb. 26, 1660. Brodrick wrote under the assumed name 
of Hancock ; and after suggesting that power should be given to 
Charles Howard and Robert Howard to make promises to Monk 
and his party, he adds : " Sir A. A. Cooper endeavours the same way 
earnestly, but I do not perceive any desire in him to be mentioned 
by Hancock." Mr. Hallam has fallen into error in speaking of 
Sir Anthony as a correspondent of Hyde (Const. Hist, of England, 
ii. 378, note) ; the letter in the Clarendon State Papers which he 
refers to was written by another Cooper, a Royalist agent. 



1659. REPELS ROYALIST OVERTURES. 181 

to promote the new republic, as he had separated him- 
self before from his Presbyterian friends to sign the 
engagement, enter the Barebone's Parliament, and take 
office under the Protectorate. When the leading Pres- 
byterians generally discountenanced the Eepublicans, 
and were looking to Charles in exile, and many of 
them were joining to prepare the movement which soon 
ended in Sir George Booth's abortive rising, it was 
very natural that there should be suspicions of Cooper 
among the Eepublicans, and hopes of him among the 
Eoyalists ; and these hopes again would increase the 
suspicions. Cooper was the only Presbyterian in the 
Council. Townshend was the young heir of a deceased 
Eoyalist. Published letters of Eoyalists again give 
aid to prove that Cooper disappointed royalist hopes 
and rejected royalist overtures. Brodrick wrote to 
Hyde, on May 23, that Cooper had engaged to raise 
three or four hundred horse in Dorsetshire for a con- 
templated rising for the King, but had not yet left 
London. 1 Now this Brodrick is described by Lord 
Mordaunt, the King's best agent, in a letter written 
June 7, as a very indiscreet and dangerous person, and 
given to drink. Brodrick's statement about Cooper was 
probably an exaggeration of his own hopes : for Mor- 
daunt having been asked by Hyde whether he continued 
to have a good opinion of Cooper, replied, June 16 : 
" Sir A. A. Cooper is rotten, and. sits ; he never knew 
he had a letter, being shy when taxed by Sir George 
Booth." 2 Thus we learn that the King had been led by 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 478. 

2 Ibid. 488, 490. 



182 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. YIT. 

his agents in London to write Jiimself to Cooper, and a 
subsequent letter of Hyde gives information of Cooper's 
refusal. " I am sorry," Hyde wrote to Lord Mordaunt, 
July 3, " Sir A. A. Cooper hath so much disappointed 
your expectations, which no doubt is not for the reason 
he gives, for he is too wise to think it possible that the 
King would write to any subject to assist hirn, whose 
estate he had given away as forfeited, nor doth he 
believe himself a delinquent of that magnitude." 1 It 
is clear enough that Cooper repelled or evaded the 
royalist overtures, and would not encourage Sir George 
Booth. By " Sir A. A. Cooper is rotten, and sits," was, 
of course, meant that Cooper was good for nothing, and 
sat in the Council of State. 2 

The following letter was written by Monk, who 
was at this time Commander-in-chief of the forces in 
Scotland, to Cooper, as a member of the Council of 
State, early in June, and it is interesting as being the 
beginning of their intercourse, and as showing that 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 512. 

2 Mr. Martyn, who says that he follows Stringer, states most 
erroneously that Cooper never sat in this Council. Martyn refers also 
in support of his statement to a tract called " England's Confusion," 
printed in the Somers Tracts (vol. vi. p. 521), by which he says it 
appears that neither Sir A. A. Cooper nor Sir H. Townshend ever sat 
or acted in the Council. But the tract does not say so ; it describes 
all the members of the Council abusively, except Cooper and Town- 
shend, saying of the latter that he was "a gentleman of too good 
estate to be hazarded with such a crew," and of Cooper that he was 
"a gentleman too wise and honest to sit in such company." Town- 
shend probably never sat in the Council ; Cooper did. The Minutes 
of this Council preserved in the State Paper Office begin only on 
August 11. TJien Cooper was absent from the Council, in Dorsetshire, 
and afterwards he was charged with having abetted Sir George Booth's 
rising. But after he was acquitted of this accusation he attended the 
Council constantly till the revolution made by Lambert and Fleetwood 
in October ; and there is no doubt that Cooper had frequently sat in 
the Council between May and August. 



1659. LETTER OF MONK. 183 

Monk regarded Cooper as an active and influential 
member of the Council. Similar letters were written by 
Monk to other members of the Council and to the 
Speaker, who read the letter received by him to the 
House : l 

" HONOURABLE SIR, It is some trouble to me that, 
the first time I should have occasion to write to you, it 
must be to request a favour at your hands. But I hope 
you will please to pardon this my incivility and bold- 
ness, and place me in the list of your friends ; for I can 
assure you I shall be as ready to serve you as any friend 
you have. Understanding that there is a committee 
appointed by Parliament for the presenting of officers to 
be continued in the several regiments in England, Scot- 
land, and Ireland, and knowing the officers here were, 
upon the first motion, most desirous that the Long 
Parliament might be recalled to return to their former 
station, I make it my request to you, that you will be 
assisting that there may be no alteration amongst the 
officers belonging to the forces here ; for I shall desire 
you to find credit herein, that you may be confident 
that there is not any you can employ will be more 
ready to serve the Commonwealth than they. But in 
case my request for the whole cannot be granted, I shall 
entreat that the officers of my own regiment of horse 
and foot, and Colonel Talbot's regiment (a list whereof 

1 Comm. Journ. June 9, 1659. Sir A. Haselrig was commissioned 
to prepare an answer, which may be read in the Journals, June 10. 
The answer was rather curt, but, though compliance was not promised, 
Monk's desire was in fact complied with, the Parliament and the 
Council attaching great importance to his support. Mr. Martyn says 
that Cooper's exertions in Monk's favour caused jealousy, and led 
to his being accused by Scot in the Council of holding correspondence 
with the King and Hyde. (Life, i. 204.) But Scot s accusation was 
prior to the date of Monk's letter. 



184 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY, CHAP. VII. 

I have sent enclosed), may be continued : they have 
usually quartered nearest me ; and so are best known to 
me. I shall also desire you will acquaint as many 
members of the House as you shall think fit to engage 
in this business, by doing which you will very much 
oblige, 

" Your humble servant, 

" GEORGE MONK. 
"Dalkeith, 4th June, 1659. 

" For the Hon. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 

" One of the Council of State, at Whitehall." 

Cooper apart, the -new Council was a discordant 
body; and divisions and jealousies soon appeared among 
the army party and Eepublicans, both in Council and 
Parliament, which strengthened royalist hopes, and 
led in a few months to another military subjugation by 
Lambert. The weak and distracted state of the Council 
and the Parliament, in the month of June, is graphically 
described in two royalist letters printed in the Claren- 
don State Papers. " The confusions now," writes Major 
Wood, June 3, 1659, " are so great that it is not to be 
credited ; the chaos was a perfection in comparison of 
our order and government ; the parties are like so many 
floating islands, sometimes joining and appearing like a 
continent, when the next flood or ebb separates them 
that it can hardly be known where they will be next." 1 
A more particular account of the divisions in the 
Council at this time is given in a letter of June 7 from 
Lord Mordaunt, who describes the members as follow. 
1. John Jones, Fleetwood, and Berry, for restoring 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 479. 



1659. SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S RISING. 185 

Pdchard Cromwell; 2. Salwey, Vane, Lambert, and 
Haselrig for the Petition and Advice and an execu- 
tive of seven Haselrig, however, not always with 
the three others, and he and Salwey more Presby- 
terians than anything else; 3. Ludlow, Nevill, Sir 
James Harrington, and Mildmay, Eepublicans, "who 
lead the House as to plurality of voices," but want 
interest in the army ; 4. Overton, R Fox, and Fifth 
Monarchy men. 1 

Extensive preparations were made by the royalist 
party for a general rising in England and Wales on 
the first of August: the Presbyterian gentry entered 
largely into the project, and it was the policy of the 
Royalists to give prominence to the Presbyterian 
element. Shortly before the first of August, Charles 
moved secretly from Brussels to Calais, in order to 
be ready to cross if the rising succeeded. But the 
Council of State obtained timely knowledge of the 
design, and prevented risings in many parts of the 
country. Several who had undertaken to move failed 
at the last moment. The principal rising was in 
Cheshire, under Sir George Booth, and the Parliament 
despatched a force under Lambert, by whom Booth 
was easily defeated. 

Shortly after this unsuccessful rising, Cooper was 
arrested in Dorsetshire by a Major Dewey on suspicion 
of correspondence with Sir George Booth. The arrest 
was on a statement by a boy from Wales, named 
Nicholas, that he had carried a letter to Cooper from 
Sir George Booth. Major Dewey wrote to the Council 
1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 483. 



186 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIT. 

of State on August 21, reporting the arrest of Cooper 
and the statement of the boy Nicholas. The Council 
reported the matter to the Parliament, which approved 
of Dewey's proceedings, and directed the Council to 
institute an investigation. The Council then ordered 
Dewey to release Cooper, and wrote to Cooper desiring 
his attendance. They appointed a committee to con- 
duct the inquiry, which consisted of the following 
members : Whitelocke, Bradshaw, Sir Henry Vane, 
Walton, Morley, Salwey, Johnstone of Warriston, 
Nevill, Desborough, Sir James Harrington, Downes, 
Eeynolds, Chaloner, Haselrig, Berners, and Berry. 
This committee reported to the Council, and the 
Council, on September 1.2, unanimously resolved: 
"That it be humbly reported to the Parliament that 
upon the examination taken before the Council or 
otherwise, in the business of Sir A. A. Cooper, referred 
to the examination of the Council by order of Par- 
liament, it doth not appear to them that there 
is any just ground of jealousy or imputation upon 
him, and Mr. Neville is desired to make this report." 
The Parliament adopted the report of the Council 
without a division. The members present in the 
Council who unanimously acquitted Cooper, were Sir 
H. Vane (chairman), Colonel Thompson, Berners, 
Johnstone of Warriston, Nevill, Walton, Sydenham, 
Haselrig, Scot, Dixwell, Bradshaw, Desborough, Fleet- 
wood, and Downes. 1 The Committee was so composed 

1 Minutes of the Council of State in the State Paper Office from 
August 25 to September 12, 1659. M. Guizot, who had not seen these 
Minutes, has hazarded an assertion that Cooper, though acquitted, was 
justly accused : "Accuse abon droit de complicite dans 1'iusurrection, 



1659. DISSENSIONS OF PARLIAMENT AND ARMY. 187 

that its verdict, adopted unanimously by the Council 
and the Parliament, may be taken as an entire acquittal 
of Cooper. Ludlow, carried away by his bitter feeling, 
has given an unfair account of the judgment, stating 
that " upon examination of a boy which brought, as was 
supposed, a letter from Sir George Booth before his 
rising, to Sir A. A. Cooper, it was found that he dis- 
missed the boy with much civility, in token of con- 
senting to what was done." 1 This may have been the 
evidence on which he was accused, but the acquittal 
was entire and unqualified. 

Lambert's easy victory over Sir George Booth was, 
within two months, followed by another easy victory 
of Lambert over the Parliament itself. The Eump 
failed, as Eichard Cromwell and his Parliament had 
failed, to satisfy the demands of the army and its 
officers. The Eump, immediately after its restoration, 
had, on the indication of the officers of the army, 
appointed Fleetwood commander-in-chief, but limited 
his commission to one year ; and instead of authorizing 
him to issue commissions to the officers nominated 
by the Parliament, they resolved that the commissions 
should be signed by the Speaker, and that the officers 
should come to the House to receive them from his 
hands. The army had submitted to these arrange- 
ments, but most reluctantly. Soon after the suppres- 
sion of Sir George Booth's insurrection of August, fifty 

Sir Antoine Cooper, sur le rapport de Nevil, fut declare innocent." 
(Protectorat de K. Cromwell et Retablissement des Stuart, i. 211.) 
There is no known evidence on which to dispute the justice of the 
acquittal. 
1 No. 5 of Suppressed Passages of Ludlow in Appendix III. 



188 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VI T. 

officers of the brigade which had served under Lam- 
bert's orders, met at Derby and prepared a memorial 
praying that Fleetwood should be made commander- 
in-chief of the army without limitation of time, Lambert 
major-general, Desborough lieutenant-general of the 
horse, and Monk major-general of the foot, and that 
no officer of the army should be dismissed from his 
command except by a court-martial. The memorialists 
complained that the Parliament had not shown enough 
energy in suppressing the late rebellion, and had not 
sufficiently punished those engaged in it or sufficiently 
rewarded those who had suppressed it ; and they pressed 
for settlement of the government in a representative 
assembly and a senate. The memorial came to the 
knowledge of Haselrig, who immediately brought it 
before the House, and moved that Lambert and some 
others should be seized and sent to the Tower. This 
motion was not persevered in ; but a resolution was 
passed, " that to have any more general officers in the 
army than are already settled by the Parliament is 
chargeable and dangerous to the Commonwealth;" 
and by another resolution Fleetwood was charged " to 
communicate the order of this House to the officers 
of the army, and to admonish them of their irregular 
proceeding, and to take care to prevent any further pro- 
ceedings therein by the soldiers." 1 A council of officers 
now met at Wallingford House, where great anger 
was expressed, and it was resolved to prepare an address 
to the Parliament which should not be open to the 
objections made against the former memorial. This 
1 Comm. Journ. Sept. 23. 



1659. LAMBERT'S MILITARY REVOLUTION. 189 

address was presented by Desborough and other 
officers on the first of October ; and the House took 
it into consideration. They were proceeding with the 
consideration of it, when, on the twelfth of October, 
Colonel Okey communicated a letter which he had 
received, signed by Lambert, Desborough, and seven 
other officers, inviting him to get signatures to the 
address among the soldiers of his regiment. This 
roused the indignation of the Commonwealth party. 
They had just received intelligence that Monk favoured 
the Parliament against the army. Encouraged by this 
news, they determined to proceed vigorously. The 
doors of the House were ordered to be locked, and 
votes were passed depriving Lambert, Desborough, and 
the other officers who had signed the letter to Okey 
of their commission, revoking Fleetwood's commission 
as commander-in-chief, and placing the government of 
the army in seven commissioners, Fleetwood, Ludlow, 
Monk, Haselrig, Walton, Morley, and Overtoil. There 
had lately been much suspicion of Lambert that he 
designed to make himself Protector, or even King, and 
it was probable that, when the House met the next 
day, a motion would be carried to send him to the 
Tower. 1 

The next day Lambert filled the approaches to the 
House with soldiers, and prevented the meeting of the 



1 Carte's Collection of Letters, ii. 203, 225, 246, 265. These letters 
of royalists mention that Lambert was distrustful and jealous of Fleet- 
wood, that Vane and Thurloe favoured Lambert's ambition, and that 
Fleetwood was believed to be inclined to restore Charles. Hyde, 
writing to Ormond, says he had heard that Lambert was saved from 
the Tower by only three voices (p. 265). 



190 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VII. 

Parliament. During the thirteenth and fourteenth the 
rival troops of Lambert and the Parliament stood in 
hostile attitude in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
Parliament House in Westminster, but no collision 
occurred, and Lambert triumphed without bloodshed 
or even a blow. 1 

The friends of the Parliament mustered strong in the 
Council on the afternoon of the fourteenth, Lambert, 
Desborough, and Berry being absent, and it was re- 
solved, " That those persons that do exercise the chief 
power and command in the army, and all others con- 
cerned, be ordered to withdraw the guards about the 
Parliament House and Westminster and parts adjacent, 
to the end the Speaker and members of Parliament 
may return to the free exercise of the legislative power 
and their duty." The Council met again next morning, 
when the serjeant-at-arms reported that he had given 
the order of the day before to the Council of officers, 
"and delivered it to the Lord Lambert, General Des- 
borough, Colonel Berry, and Lord Fleetwood, and, being 
withdrawn, was again called in and had this answer, 
that they had received the order of the Council and 
would take a convenient time to consider of it." 2 
When this report was given, the Parliament had been 

1 There is a very valuable and interesting letter of Mordaunt in 
Carte's Collection, ii. 244, describing the positions and proceedings of 
the opposed troops with much minuteness. 

2 Minutes of Council of State in State Paper Office, October 13-15. 
M. Guizot is in error in describing the order of the Council of State of 
the 14th for Lambert's forces to retire as a compromise of the Parlia- 
ment party with Lambert. (Protectorat de Richard Cromwell, &c. 
i. 228.) He also in the same passage erroneously describes the Parlia- 
ment party as acquiescing in the result : some Republicans gave in to 
Lambert, others stood out against him. 



1659. OPPOSES LAMBERT. 191 

vanquished and the military revolution was complete. 
The Council adjourned to the afternoon, when Fleet- 
wood was present, and it was then proposed that, in 
consequence of the condition of affairs, the Council 
should adjourn till the end of November. This pro- 
posal was negatived. 

Cooper was present at these meetings of the Council 
of State of the fourteenth and fifteenth of October, and 
in this conjuncture he stood by the Council of State 
and by the Rump against Lambert and his party. The 
Council of State continued to hold sittings till the twenty- 
fifth, when a new Committee of Safety superseded it : 
but Cooper did not sit again after the afternoon of the 
fifteenth ; nor did Haselrig, Bradshaw, Walton, or Nevill. 
Bradshaw, the celebrated President of the High Court 
of Justice which tried and sentenced Charles the First, 
died a few days afterwards, having attended the council 
in spite of illness to protest against the military revolu- 
tion. Scot and Eeynolds appear to have attended the 
council till it ceased to sit on the twenty-fifth ; but 
they opposed Lambert. Vane, Salwey, and Harrington 
left the Republican party on this occasion, and sided 
with Lambert and the new Committee of Safety. 

Lambert and the officers acting with him had, indeed, 
on the thirteenth of October, immediately after the inter- 
ruption of the Parliament, nominated a rival temporary 
Council of State, consisting of ten persons, Fleetwood, 
Lambert, Whitelocke, Vane, Desborough, Harrington, 
Salwey, Berry, Sydenham, and Johns tone of Warring- 
ton. These, however, continued to attend the sittings 
of the old Council of State till it expired on the twenty- 



192 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

fifth. The council of officers had also, on the thirteenth, 
appointed Fleetwood commander-in- chief of the army, 
Lambert major-general, Desborough commissary-general 
of the horse, and Fleetwood, Lambert, Yane, Des- 
borough, Ludlow, and Berry commissioners for the nomi- 
nation of all officers of the army. 1 On the twenty-sixth 
of October, they nominated a Committee of Safety of 
twenty-three members, viz. Whitelocke (who was made 
keeper of the Great Seal), Fleetwood, Lambert, Des- 
borough, Steel (Chancellor of Ireland), Vane, Ludlow, 
Sydenham, Salwey, Walter Strickland, Berry, Law- 
rence, Harrington, Johnstone of Warriston, Alder- 
man Ireton, Tichborn, Hews on, Clark, Bennet, Colonel 
Lilburne, Holland, Henry Brandriff, and Eobert 
Thomson, and they at the same time published a 
declaration, in which they pronounced all the votes 
of the Eump Parliament passed on and after 
the tenth of October to be null and void, proclaimed 
their desire to give full liberty to all the people of Eng- 
land, to make a complete reformation of the law, and to 
maintain a faithful ministry by some better means than 
tithes, and declared that they had no intention of 
setting up a military or arbitrary government, but that, 
having appointed in the first instance a Committee of 
Safety, they designed to prepare a suitable form of 
government without a single person, kingship, or House 
of Lords. 2 

Cooper was now, with some other members of the 
displaced Council of State, indefatigable to overturn the 

1 Sir R. Baker's Chronicle, p. 661. 

2 Ibid. p. 662 ; Ludlow, ii. 715. 



1659. MONK AGAINST LAMBERT. 193 

new Committee of Safety and restore the power of the 
Eump. There acted with him of the late Council Scot, 
Haselrig, Colonels Morley, Beynolds, and Walton, 
Wallop, Nevill, and Berners. 

The hopes of Lambert and Fleetwood soon received 
a heavy blow from Monk, who commanded the army in 
Scotland; he announced decided hostility to the revo- 
lution. They had hastened after the event to seek the 
support of Monk; and he replied in terms of strong 
disapproval. Monk wrote at the same time to the 
Speaker, declaring his intention to expose himself and 
his army to the utmost hazards for the restitution of 
the Parliament. He immediately proceeded to prepare 
his army to move. The Committee of Safety sent off 
Colonel Talbot and Dr. Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, 
to Monk, to endeavour by explanations to persuade him 
to come to terms with them ; and shortly after, in orde^ 
to be prepared for the failure of these negotiators, the} 
despatched Lambert to the North with a force of 12,000 
horse and foot. Talbot and Clarges arrived at Edin- 
burgh on the second of November. Monk accepted the 
proposal to treat, and appointed Major Knight, Lieut.- 
Colonel Clobery, and Colonel Wilks commissioners 
for this purpose. He instructed his commissioners to 
insist on the restoration of the Parliament ; but if the 
members should refuse to sit, then, and then only, he 
authorized them to discuss some other form of govern- 
ment. The commissioners proceeded to York to treat 
with Lambert, and, on finding that he had no power 
to treat for the restitution of the Parliament, they went 
on to London. There the terms of a treaty were soon 

VOL. i. o 



194 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

arranged by them with Fleetwood in disregard of 
Monk's instructions as to the restoration of the Par- 
liament. This treaty was concluded on the fifteenth 
of November, and provided for the meeting on the 
second of December of a general Council nominated 
from the army and fleet to determine a new form of 
government, and for the prompt summoning of a new 
Parliament according to whatever might be the reso- 
lutions of the proposed general Council. 

The day after Monk's commissioners had made the 
arrangement with the Committee of Safety, Cooper and 
Haselrig had a meeting with them and endeavoured to 
persuade them to recede, but entirely without success. 
Cooper has himself narrated the course of events 
and his own active proceedings from the establish- 
ment of the Committee of Safety on the twenty- 
fifth of October to the sixth of February, 1660, when 
the Eump, which had in the meantime been restored on 
the twenty-sixth of December, admitted the secluded 
Presbyterian members, and made the way clear /or a 
new Parliament and the restoration of Charles./ It is 
only a fragment of a narrative which remains, both 
beginning and ending in the middle of a sentence. It 
is clear from internal evidence that this narrative was 
composed or refashioned after the Eestoration ; it may 
be another portion of the Autobiography of Shaftes- 
bury's old age. 1 

1 Clarges is always called Sir Thomas Clarges in the narrative : and 
he was knighted by Charles at Breda, in May, just before the Restora- 
tion. The tone with regard to Monk is hardly what would have been 
Cooper's tone at the time of these events or very soon after : and the 
general tone of the narrative is that of justification for posterity. 



1659. HIS OWN NAKRATIVE. 195 

"[General Monk was commander-in-chief 1 ] in Scot- 
land, and expected no great good to himself from so great 
a change, acted without the least communication with 
him. He, therefore, to secure himself and his interest, 
forthwith new-models his army, cashiers such officers as 
he suspected, and puts in their room absolute creatures 
of his own; with this army he marches towards the 
borders of England, and is there faced by a stronger 
army under the command of General Lambert, but 
neither of them being willing to put all to a venture, 
they remained in that posture whilst General Monk 
sends three officers, Colonels Wilks, Clobery, and 
Knight, to General Meetwood and the rest of the Com- 
mittee of Safety at Westminster, to treat with them, 
and to know what terms they might expect from them. 

" In the meanwhile, myself and some others that 
were of that Council of State which was turned out by 
Lambert, constantly and privately met, turning every 
stone to recover our lost power, and hearing of these 
Commissioners sent up from General Monk, Sir Arthur 
Haselrige and I, after several attempts, at last procured 
a meeting from them at the Fleece Tavern, in Covent 
Garden, where at first they told us they had the day 
before made a full agreement with General Fleetwood 
and, therefore, were not then capable of answering any 
of our expectations ; but we laid before them the great 
uncertainty their General underwent in joining with 
these men, the best he could expect was to be gently 

This fragment of a narrative I have found among the papers at St. 
Giles; but it is not in Shaftesbury's handwriting. Mr. Martyn has 
given a paraphrase of it in his Life (i. 209230), but he has inter- 
woven some errors. A similar account also is given in Locke's Frag- 
ment of a Memoir, with some variations, errors, and interesting addi- 
tions, all most likely arising out of conversations with Shaftesbury 
and Stringer. 

1 The words in brackets are supplied, as indicated by the context, 
to complete the first sentence. 

o 2 



196 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VII. 

laid aside, and then ruined with some more artifice and 
caution than other men ; that if, on the other hand, he 
declared for the restoring of the Parliament, he was 
fully assured to be generalissimo of all their forces, 
neither had he any competitor. Besides, we told them 
our cause was not so desperate, for we had a great cor- 
respondence and interest with the inferior officers and 
common soldiers of every troop and company they had 
in their army about London. Besides, we had Ports- 
mouth at our devotion, and Sir Charles Coote had 
assured us of six thousand men out of Ireland upon the 
first notice ; Vice- Admiral Lawson, who commanded 
the fleet now in the mouth of the river, was our firm 
friend ; and that my Lord Fairfax, who had the greatest 
interest of any man amongst the soldiers, utterly ab- 
horred the present proceedings. Upon these discourses 
we found Clobery and Knight very glad that there was 
so fair a prospect of a better way than they were in, 
and assured us they would do their best to cause 
General Monk to break off the treaty, to refuse the 
terms offered, and to declare for restoring the Parlia- 
ment. But Colonel Wilks persisted. 

"Whilst these Commissioners were returning to Monk, 
we were not idle, but Sir Arthur Haslerig and Colonel 
Morley went to Portsmouth, which town I had under- 
taken to them should be delivered into their hands, the 
Governor, Colonel Whetham, being my friend and very 
long acquaintance. I was left with a commission for 
general of those forces we expected every day should 
revolt from them about London. 1 This matter was not 
carried so secretly, but that some uncertain and dark 

1 Substantially the same story is told in Locke's fragmentary Me- 
moir, and it is there mentioned that Shaftesbury "would often tell it 
laughing that, when he had his commission, his great care was where 
to hide it." (Works, ix. 275.) 



1659. HIS OWN NAKEATIVE. ] 97 

discourse of it came to the Committee of Safety. So 
that Colonel Cook was sent by General Fleetwood to 
bring me prisoner to him, which he did, using me very 
civilly, as also did the General himself, who was natur- 
ally an obliging man. I quickly found upon discourse 
with him that they were in a mistake, and apprehended 
I was to command the forces in the West against them, 
which I assured him upon my word and honour was not 
so. Then the General demanded of me my word that 
I would act nothing to their prejudice, which I refused 
to give, declaring that I was of the Council of State, 
and greatly trusted by the Parliament whom they had 
turned out, and resolved to do all I could for their 
restitution ; that they might give losers leave to speak, 
since they were well assured we had no power to act 
anything with ; the army was wholly at their devotion ; 
and they could not find, perhaps, another way to lose it 
than by using me and others of their old friends and 
commanders scurvily ; that I knew their apprehension 
of me lay in the West, because of the interest I had 
there ; that, being their prisoner, and to obtain my 
liberty, I would give him my parole not to depart the 
city without his leave. This the General accepted, and 
I was released ; but before the next day they had better 
intelligence, and gave order for the reseizing me at 
any rate, which was executed accordingly, 1 and at ten 

1 There is an error here in Locke's narrative : he describes Lambert 
as coming in to the Committee of Safety after Fleetwood had released 
Cooper on his parole, and pressing for his arrest. Lambert was at this 
time in the North with his army, watching Monk. Martyn also 
erroneously places Lambert in London at the time of the restoration of 
the Rump. Locke tells an amusing minute story of the attempt to 
arrest Cooper, which he would probably have derived from Shaftesbury 
himself, and which may be true : " Sir A. A. coming home to his 

house in Street in Covent Garden, one evening, found a man 

knocking at his door ; he asked his business : the man answered, it was 
with him, and fell a discoursing with him. Sir A. A. heard him out, 
and gave him such an answer as he thought proper, and so they 



198 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

o'clock at night a party of soldiers broke suddenly into 
my house, frighted my wife and my only child, lying- 
then sick of the small-pox ; broke open all the trunks, 
boxes, and closets, ran their swords into the hangings, 
but lost their labour, and found me not, I being upon 
notice removed some minutes before, and continued 
unknown and secret in the city, until, by the assistance 
of several officers that were of our party, I had got the 
Tower delivered into my hands ; and all the army they 
had about London, both horse and foot, drawn up in 
rank and file in Lincoln's Inn Fields (without their field- 
officers and captains), declaring all for the restoration 
of the Parliament, which the Monday following was 
restored in triumph ; and one of the first things they 
did that day was to appoint me and some others Com- 
missioners for the present command of their army and 
forces. Whereupon I, with the other Commissioners, 
1 caused several clerks to be set to work, and that night 



parted ; the stranger out of the entry where they stood into the 
street, and Sir A. A. along the entry into the house ; but guessing by 
the story the other told him that the business was but a pretence, and 
that his real errand he came about was something else, when he parted 
from the fellow he went inwards, as if he intended to go into the 
house, but, as soon as the fellow was gone, turned short, and went out, 
and went to his barber's which was but just by; where he was no 
sooner got in, and got upstairs into a chamber, but his door was beset 
with musketeers, and the officer went in too with others to seize him ; 
but not finding him, they searched every corner and cranny of the 
house diligently, the officer declaring he was sure he was in the house, 
for he had left him there just now ; as was true, for he had gone no 
further than the corner of the Half Moon Tavern, which was just by, 
to fetch a file of soldiers that he had left there in the Strand out of 
sight, whilst he went to discover whether the gentleman he sought 
were within or no ; where doubting not to find him safely lodged, he 
returned with his myrmidons to his house, sure, as he thought, of his 
prey ; but Sir A. A. saw through his made story, and gave him the 
slip. After this he was fain to get out of the way and conceal himself 
under a disguise ; but he hid himself not lazily in a hole ; he made 
war upon them at Walliugford House, incognito as he was, and made 
them feel him, though he kept out of sight." (Locke's Works, ix. 
277.) 



1659. HIS OWN NARRATIVE. 199 

dispatched orders, and sent them to every field-officer 
in Lambert's army; wherein, after a preamble of the 
miraculous restoration of the Parliament, and the return- 
ing of the London army to their duty, they were required 
upon pain of cashiering immediately to march the regi- 
ments to such quarters and posts as were therein assigned 
them, which were carefully designed far enough distant 
from each other or from the place wherein they then 
lay. Those orders had their effect, and Lambert's army 
vanished in an instant, not one entire regiment disobey- 
ing the order. The same order we sent that night to 
every county in England and place where their single 
and dispersed troops lay, such as were not in regiments, 
and therefore we ventured .the boldlier, and required 
them instantly to disband, and sent orders and autho- 
rities to some confiding persons that were near, to see it 
done. These also had the effect we intended, so great 
was the consternation upon this sudden and unexpected 
revolution." 

Though Shaftesbury, writing from his own point of 
view, may make himself a little too prominent and 
important, this account contains nothing at variance 
with other published accounts of authority; what he 
says of his own proceedings is indeed substantially con- 
firmed by other statements, and several confirmatory 
additions may be made to this narrative. Cooper's and 
Haselrig's fruitless conference at the Fleece Tavern, in 
Covent Garden, with Monk's commissioners, was on the 
sixteenth of November ; and on the nineteenth he and 
eight other members of the late Council of State wrote 
to Monk, thanking him for his opposition to the Com- 
mittee of Safety and support of the late Parliament, 



200 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

and assuring him of their zealous co-operation. 1 A few 
days later, the same nine, acting always as the Council 
of State, passed a commission constituting Monk com- 
mander-in-chief of the forces of England and Scotland. 
The eight who thus acted with Cooper have been already 
named : Scot, Haselrig, Colonels Morley, Eeynolds, and 
Walton, Wallop, Nevill, and Berners. Cooper, Scot, 
Berners, and Weaver addressed a long letter to Fleet- 
wood, bearing date December 16, and soon after printed, 
in which they boastingly owned an unsuccessful attempt 
to get possession of the Tower ; declared that they had 
acted " by authority from the Council of State, who at 
the passing of that resolve had the sole legal power from 
the Parliament of ordering, directing, and disposing of 
all the garrisons and forces of this Commonwealth, both 
by sea and land," and resented the endeavour to arrest 
Cooper. 2 Cooper (}id secure the Tower eight days later, 
on the twenty-fourth. " The Speaker," says Whitelocke, 
"with Cooper, Reynolds, Weaver, and Berners, went 
to the Lord Mayor, and discoursed with him and 
the Sheriffs touching the Parliament's meeting again 
speedily, and found them to like well of it ; from him 
they went to the Tower, and secured that." 3 Clarendon 
describes the surprise and grief of the Committee of 
Safety when they heard of the defection of Admiral 
Lawson, who brought his squadron into the Thames, 
and declared for the Parliament. " It broke," he says, 
"the heart of the Committee of Safety:" they sent 

1 The substance of the letter is given in Baker's Chronicle, p. 673. 
Scot signed it first of the nine, as President. 

2 This letter is printed in Appendix IV. 
s Memorials, p. 691, December 24, 1659. 



1659. TEMPOKAEY COMMISSIONER FOR ARMY. 201 

down Vane and two other intimate friends of Lawson, 
to remonstrate with him ; and these, " when they came 
to the fleet, found Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and two 
others, members of Parliament, who had so fully pre- 
possessed him, that he was deaf to all their charms, and 
told them that he would submit to no authority but 
that of the Parliament." 1 A doggrel ballad of the time, 
which celebrated the fall of the Committee of Safety, 
recognises Cooper as one of those who chiefly contri- 
buted to the event, in co-operation with Monk. 2 

The first act of the Parliament on its restoration was 
to appoint seven Commissioners, of whom Cooper was 
one, to take temporary command of the army until the 
return from Portsmouth of Haselrig, Morley, and Walton, 
three of seven who had been made Commissioners for 
the army by the Parliament on October 12, just before 
Lambert's revolution, and the only three of those seven 
who had opposed the Committee of Safety. Cooper's 
six colleagues in this temporary commission were 
Alexander Popham, Colonel Thompson, Scot, Colonel 
Okey, Colonel Alured, and Colonel Markham. It was 
these Commissioners who executed the prompt dispersion 
of Lambert's forces which Cooper has related. Their 

1 Clarendon, Hist, of Rebellion, xvi. 106. 

"Sir Ashley Cooper, Scot, and more, 
Such honest hearts there are good store, 
The famous Lawson and the Fleet, 
And London lads in every street, 
"Who vow to make subverters stare 
At Tyburn in the open air 
For doing what no King did dare, 

And thus vows our brave George. " 
This is from a ballad called "The Noble English Worthies," to be 
found in Wright's " Political Ballads of the Commonwealth," vol. iii. of 
the Percy Society's Publications. 



202 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

power lasted only for two days, for Haselrig, Morley, 
and Walton returned on the twenty-eighth. A letter of 
one of the Eoyalist agents, Brodrick, addressed to Hyde, 
proves that Cooper's proceedings were a mystery as well 
as a disappointment to the Eoyalists. Brodrick couples 
him with another Presbyterian, Popham, who had un- 
doubtedly been actively engaged in Sir George Booth's 
rising. "Alexander Popham," writes this active agent 
on December 30, " was in recompense chosen one of the 
seven generals to take care of the army in the absence 
of Haselrig, Walton, and Morley, expected two days 
after, so that his dignity lasted double the time of 
Bibulus's consulship, and to us appeared twice as ridi- 
culous. Sir A. A. Cooper seems very eager in establish- 
ing these people, but the friends of both these great 
men find plausible excuses for every action of them." l 

The care of the government of the Tower was also 
entrusted by the Parliament, on the very day of its 
meeting, to Cooper, Weaver, Scot, and Berners. 2 Their 
functions ceased on the seventh of January, when 
Colonel Morley was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower. 
A Council of State, consisting of thirty-one members 
twenty-one members of the Parliament, and ten not 
belonging to it was appointed on the second of Janu- 
ary, to continue till the first of April. Cooper was 
elected by the largest number of votes among the ten 
not belonging to the Parliament. 

Now, at last, Cooper obtained recognition of his claim 
to sit for Downton, on his old petition of 1640. Once 

i Clarendon Papers, iii. 637. 2 Comra. Journ. Dec. 26. 



1660. ADMITTED INTO THE PARLIAMENT. 203 

more his case was referred with that of Fairfax to a 
Committee ; and this time the Committee reported that 
he was entitled to the seat. 1 The House immediately 
adopted the report, and Sir Anthony at once took his 
seat, on the seventh of January, and once more sub- 
scribed the Engagement. Shortly after, he was made 
colonel of Fleetwood's regiment of horse, Fleetwood 
having been deprived of it. His commission was given 
him by the Speaker at the clerk's table. 2 

Cooper, now admitted to sit, was at once a leading 
man in the Parliament. He had probably now made 
up his mind to endeavour to obtain the restoration 
to the House of the Presbyterian members who had 
been secluded before the King's execution, and he 
soon separated from Haselrig, Nevill, and other Ee- 
publicans. A letter of the royalist Lord Mordaunt, 
of January 14, describes him as the leader of a 
party of some twenty-three opposing another party 
of about sixteen led by Nevill. "The present com- 
plexion of the Parliament," writes Mordaunt to Hyde, 
" is very pale ; Sir Arthur Haselrig undermined by 
Cooper, Morley, and Weaver, and from a Kodomont 
is reduced to a pitiful rogue. : . . Cooper yet hath his 
tongue well hung, and words at will, and employs his 
rhetoric to cashier all officers, civil as well as military, 
that sided with Fleetwood and Lambert; and Morley 
rebukes all the sectaries. Thus these two garble the 
army and state. . . . The parties in the House are 
diametrically opposite: the three -and -twenty with 
Cooper, who acts Cicero ; and some sixteen with Nevill, 

i Comm. Journ. Jan. 5 and 7, 1660. 2 Ibid. Jan. 18. 



204 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

who represents Anthony." l It may be gathered from 
this letter that Cooper had not the confidence of the 
Eoyalists, and that they made no pretension of right 
to complain of his having deceived them. 

Monk was now on his way from Scotland to London. 
He had crossed the Tweed on the first of January, 
after receiving news of the discomfiture of the Com- 
mittee of Safety and the re-establishment of the Eump. 
He made a slow march with his army to London, which 
he entered on the third of February. 

Shaftesbury's narrative is now resumed : he claims 
to have cleared the way for Monk by the dispersion of 
Lambert's forces effected by himself and the other tem- 
porary Commissioners for the army, immediately after 
the re-assembling of the Kump : 

"The way being thus cleared before them, General 
Monk marches up with his small army to London, and 
by the way in Yorkshire is caressed by General Fairfax, 
and is met before he comes to London with addresses 
from the persons of quality, Presbyterians, and other 
men of sober principles from all parts of England, 
who with one voice began to intimate their desires of 
restoring him their lawful Prince, and ancient govern- 
ment. This at first was but modestly intimated, and 
not boldly spoken out, and was as civilly and darkly 
returned by him; yet every one departed from him 
extremely well satisfied of his good intentions, and 
much the rather because his lady, that came with him, 
did not spare to declare her passion for the King's cause 
(which was most real and sincere in her) ; besides, her 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 650. 



1660. HIS OWN NAKKATIVE. 205 

brother, Sir Thomas Clarges (a very understanding and 
industrious gentleman), did apparently influence the 
General all he could that way. These proceedings, by 
that time the General came to London, had given such 
an alarm to Sir Arthur Haselrig, Mr. Scot, and the rest 
of that party, that they began already to cast about how 
they might deliver themselves from so dangerous a 
person ; divers of them made a tender to me of the 
generalship, if I would declare, and march their army 
against him, which had been no difficult undertaking, 
his army being small and his horse very bad, and our 
army being highly and particularly disgusted with him 
and his ; because all along their march through England 
they had taken upon them a distinguishing name of 
' Coldstreamers,' as if they had done some mighty thing 
more than the rest, whereas they had only fared harder, 
until we had opened to them the way to better cheer. 
But, however, I had given General Monk my word to 
be his friend, and therefore could not break it ; besides, 
I assured myself he was doing that that I and all good 
men prayed for, and therefore was not to be disturbed, 
but rather assisted by all that sincerely wished the public 
good. This rendered me with them in the same state 
as General Monk, or rather worse, inasmuch as prin- 
ciples are less reconcilable than interests. The General 
had very wisely for himself caused all the regiments to 
march out of London, to remote and distant quarters, 
the day before his army came into the town ; so that 
there was no apparent opposition to him, but that he 
was master of his own actions, or at least might have 
been so if he pleased. Yet the jealousy grew so strong 
every day more and more with those that aimed at 
maintaining the oligarchy, that they resolved to put the 
General upon some action that might lose his interest 
in the city, and by consequence in the nation ; the old 



206 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VII. 

army (all but those he called Coldstreamers, that he 
brought up with him) being sufficiently disobliged, not 
only by that form of distinction these had so cheaply 
purchased, but also by the plain distrust he had shown 
of them, in removing them so far from London and 
dispersing their quarters ; for, if they could reduce his 
interest within the compass of that small army, and 
that the Presbyterians and Cavaliers would look on and 
become unconcerned in him, they knew how easily and 
speedily to do his business. 

" In order to this, Sir Arthur Haselrig and his party 
caused a meeting to be summoned in the Council 
Chamber of such persons as they liked best, as well 
members of the Council of War as members of their 
Council. Sir Arthur himself was created General, and 
as soon as he came they locked themselves up and set 
guards at the doors, with express orders that none what- 
ever should be suffered to come so much as near 
them. Of all this, myself and several others that were 
members of both Councils, and such as were looked 
upon as General Monk's friends, had not the least 
notice. 1 But they had not been sitting half an hour, 
before an officer of the army, meeting me and Mr. 
Weaver in Fleet Street, stopped the coach we were in, 
and asked me whether I knew of the Council of War 
now sitting in the Council Chamber at Whitehall, which, 
he said, was certainly met upon very important affairs, 
because of the locking their doors and the orders they 
had given, both which he, then being in the outward 
room, saw and heard. Upon this, Mr. Weaver and I 
made haste to Whitehall, and found no access was to be 



i It is here omitted to be said, but it is clear from what follows, that 
Monk himself was summoned to the meeting; its object, indeed, being 
to prevail upon him to act with Haselrig and his party against the 
City. 



1660. HIS OWN NARRATIVE. 207 

had to them, although Mr. Weaver was of the Council 
of State as well as I, and the respect the officers that 
guarded the doors bore us had allowed us to knock and 
call at several of the doors ; so that we were forced with 
shame to retire to the Lady Monk's lodgings, whom we 
found extremely apprehensive of their designs, assuring 
us her husband knew nothing of this sudden calling 
them together. She was not satisfied until she had 
caused us to return with her to the Council door, where 
she knocked very hard, and called aloud that she had 
business of great consequence to impart to her husband; 
but neither her authority nor her artifice could get them 
within to open the doors or give one word of answer. 
After this second repulse, we waited on my Lady back 
to her lodgings, and stayed there till the General came, 
which was until it was past two of the clock in the 
morning ; he brought with him as much confusion and 
disturbance in his face as ever was seen in any man's of 
his courage and resolution. He told us all was nought, 
and that this was plainly a designed and packed meet- 
ing ; and that he saw they meant to ruin him, for they 
had taken a pretence from a ridiculous attempt of some 
apprentices and others in the City some days before, 
and had expressly ordered him to pull down, that very 
morning, all the gates, portcullises, and chains of the 
City of London, and to send prisoners to the Tower ten 
of the principal citizens. His lady and we laid before 
him the certain ruin such an action would bring upon 
him; that it would lose him the hearts of all the honest 
and sober party, and deliver him up into the hands of 
those that perfectly hated him. He replied that, be it as 
it would, he could not now do other than to obey their 
orders, which was indeed punctually performed the 
same morning : so that the next day the Parliament 
thought themselves in a capacity to use him as they 



208 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

pleased; and accordingly, instead of making him General 
of all their forces, as he was promised and did expect, 
they pass one of their acts, all in the same day, by 
which they placed the command of their armies and 
forces in five Commissioners, or any three of them, 
whereof he had the honour to be one, and Sir Arthur 
Haselrig and three more of Sir Arthur's sure friends 
were the others." 

The five Commissioners appointed were Monk, Hasel- 
rig, Morley, Walton, and Alured. Cooper was proposed 
as one, but his name was rejected by thirty votes against 
fifteen. 1 Shaftesbury's narrative proceeds : 

" The same evening, General Monk returned to his 
lodgings at Whitehall, where his lady, Sir Thomas 
Clarges, myself, and some other of his friends repre- 
sented to him the condition he was in, and the neglect 
the Parliament had put upon him, so that his ruin 
was near at hand, if he did not take some vigorous 
course to prevent it. And we prevailed upon him 
so far, as that he returned with his forces the next 
morning into the City, and there demanded of those 
sitting at Westminster a full and free parliament, in 
a letter signed by himself and fourteen of the chief 
field-officers of his Coldstreams ; that afternoon repair- 
ing to Guildhall, where he gave the Lord Mayor and 
Court of Aldermen an account of what he had done, 
and made an apology for what he had been forced 
to do some days before. The merit of his present 
action did easily expiate for that great affront he had 
put upon them, insomuch as he was followed home to 
his quarters with the greatest acclamations imaginable; 
and through the whole City there was such expression 

1 Comm. Journ. Feb. 11, 1660; Ludlow's Memoirs, ii. 831. 



1660. HIS OWN NARRATIVE. 209 

of joy, both by ringing of bells, bonfires, roasting of 
rumps, and all other ways that men's fancy could invent, 
that the like has not been seen or heard peradventure 
in any age." 

Mr. Martyn adds, perhaps on Stringer's authority, 
what is very likely, that Cooper, Popham, and other 
Presbyterians, helped to reconcile Monk with the City 
authorities after he had angered them by acting on the 
instigation of Haselrig's party ; and the same writer 
tells from Stringer the following story of Cooper on this 
occasion. As Sir Anthony and Popham were returning 
home, the mob, all for the City and against the Eump, 
surrounded their carriage, crying out, " Down with the 
Eump ! " Sir Anthony put his head out of the window, 
and said, "What, gentlemen, not one good piece in a 
rump?" The mob was pleased with the joke, and, 
recognising friends, followed the carriage with cheers. 1 
To return to Shaftesbury's narrative : 

" This so frightened and alarmed the Parliament, that 
they immediately vote a filling up of their House, and 
are now willing to impart the power they can hold no 
longer within the narrow bounds of their own number 
to some others of their friends ; but they passed withal 
the strictest qualifications imaginable, that none but 
such as were zealous men of the party might get 
amongst them. So that they made appear to the world 
that their design was to have continued a legislative 
power in themselves, their friends, and their posterity, 
and never settle a government that might be equal and 
just to the people; whose security could lie in nothing 
so much as that their representatives should, in a short 

1 Martyn's Life, i. 226. 
VOL. I. P 



210 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

distance of time, annual or biennial, be accountable to 
them, and now eligible by them. Neither was General 
Monk without his apprehensions that matters might 
go too fast for him, and overset him ; and he at last 
not finding his own account, he refused divers of the 
worthiest aldermen and citizens, that addressed to him 
to have their militia raised, and care taken to have the 
best men put in the head of them, which himself might 
nominate. He treated at the same time with all sorts 
of men, and appointed a select number of several sorts 
to confer together, and consider what they had to offer 
concerning the present posture of affairs; intermixing 
them as he thought fit, sometimes two, sometimes three 
parties together, keeping the world in great uncertainty, 
and (if myself and others that were nearest him were 
not mistaken) himself too. But he must suddenly come 
to some issue or another, for the Lord Fairfax, a man of 
great courage, resolution, and integrity, with the greatest 
part of the gentry and ministers of the North, who were 
all not a little influenced by Mr. Bowles, a Presbyterian 
minister at York, a man of great wisdom and reputa- 
tion, and fit for the management of the greatest affairs ; 
these, with the entire Presbyterian party, had declared 
for a free Parliament, or the re-admitting the secluded 
members. The same declaration was also made by 
Sir Charles Coote, Sir Theophilus Jones, Sir Henry 
Ingoldsby, and others in Ireland, to whose courage, 
fidelity, and conduct was owing, not only all that was 
done there, but much of what was done in England ; for 
we should have hardly ventured to have made an oppo- 
sition to the Committee of Safety; neither would General 
Monk have broken his treaty with General Fleetwood, 
if we had not had assurance from them of considerable 
aid and assistance by Sir Charles Coote, who was sent 
over on purpose to us. 



1660. HIS OWN NAEEATIVE. 211 

" The General was now removed to Alderman Wale's 
house, next door to Drapers' Hall, where, as I was 
waiting on my Lady, Colonel Markham came to me, 
and told me he just then came from the General, and as 
he went in unto him, he met coming out Sir Arthur 
Haselrig and Mr. Scot, whom he overheard saying they 
would secure Sir Anthony Cooper before to-morrow 
noon. But he thought they had been tampering with 
him, and feared they had come to some agreement; 
upon this I presently went to the General, told him 
what I had heard, and pressed him to deal clearly with 
me ; and after some dark discourse, I got from him a 
direct acknowledgment that he was come to a full agree- 
ment with them, and had engaged to return the next 
morning to his lodgings at Whitehall, and to support 
their interest and obey their commands ; he did not deny 
to me that they had promised him to be sole General of 
all their forces ; he promised me they should do me no 
wrong, and that he would take upon himself to make 
all friendship betwixt me and them, and to take care of 
my interest as his particular friend. This being about 
five o'clock in the afternoon, I left him and told him 
I would wait on him at supper and desired some more 
discourse upon this subject with him after supper. So 
I went immediately to rny Lady Monk, and gave her 
an account of the whole matter, and desired her to send 
for her brother Clarges, as I would for Colonel Clobery 
and Colonel Knight, that we might altogether make 
our utmost effort upon the General ; which we did that 
night, and it was near three o'clock in the morning 
before he yielded to us, when we obtained from him a 
resolution to restore the secluded members to their 
places that very morning, and a commission to Sir 
Thomas Clarges and myself to summon them together, 
and so cause them to attend him at the Prince's lodgings 

P2 



212 LIFE OF SHA.FTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

in Whitehall by nine o'clock that morning, from whence 
he would cause them to be restored with honour and 
safety to their places in the Parliament-house. Sir 
Thomas and myself lost no time ; before eight o'clock 
that morning we had got together to Mr. Annesley's 
house in Drury Lane a considerable number of the 
secluded members, and before nine brought them to the 
great room in the Prince's lodgings in Whitehall; and 
all this happened to be without giving the other party 
the least notice or alarm, inasmuch as that Sir Arthur 
Haselrig came to wait on the General, thinking he was 
returned to Whitehall upon their treaty of the day be- 
fore; but as soon as he came into the aforesaid great 
room, and saw so considerable a number of the old 
secluded members, he changed his colour and grew ex- 
tremely pale, and in great passion came up to me, and 
told me this was my doing, but it should cost blood ; I 
replied, his own if he pleased, but Sir Anthony Cooper 
would not be secured that morning. The General just 
then came out, who told Sir Arthur that challenged him 
of his promise that [it was necessary for the public peace 
to restore these members, who had declared they intended 
no alteration of the government ; and since there was no 
method of issuing summonses but by writs in the name 
of the keepers of the liberty of England by authority of 
Parliament, it could not be apprehended that any other 
government would be introduced]." l 

The admission of the secluded members took place 
on the twenty-first of February. Cooper, now colonel 
of a regiment of horse, commanded the guard appointed 
to escort them into the House. 2 This had been Cooper's 

1 The words between brackets are supplied from Martyn's narrative ; 
the fragment found among Lord Shaftesbury's papers ending in the 
middle of a sentence. 

2 Coke's Detection, ii. 95. Independent testimonies to the important 



1660. RE- ADMISSION OF SECLUDED MEMBERS. 213 

object since the last restoration of the Kump, which he 
had had so large a share in effecting ; and he and his 
followers in the Rump now finally separated from their 
former republican coadjutors, Haselrig, Scot, Nevill, and 
others. The Presbyterians were now in an overwhelming 
majority in the Parliament. A new Council of State 
was immediately appointed, in which none but Presby- 
terians and friends of a restoration were named. It 
need not be said that Cooper was one. The others were 
Monk, Popham, Pierpoint, Crewe, Colonel Rossiter, 
Knightly, Colonel Morley, Lord Fairfax, Sir Gilbert 
Gerard, St. John, Sir John Temple, Widdrington, Sir 
John Evelyn, Sir William Waller, Sir Richard Onslow, 
Sir William Lewis, Montagu, Sir Edward Harley, Colonel 
Norton, Annesley, Holies, Colonel Thompson, Trevor, 
Sir John Holland, Sir John Potts, Colonel Birch, Sir 
Harbottle Grimstone, Swinton, Weaver, and Serjeant 
Maynard. 

Monk was appointed Commander-in-chief, and Cooper 
received from him commissions to be Governor of the 
Isle of Wight .and Captain of a company of foot in that 
island. 1 

It was soon settled, after the admission of the secluded 
Presbyterian members, that the Long Parliament should 

part which Cooper had in persuading Monk to restore the secluded 
members, and to his influence at this time with Monk, may be found 
in Bishop Kennet's Register, pp. 59, 61, 62 ; Baker's Chronicle, ed. 
1684, p. 687; and Gumble's Life of Monk, p. 261 ; and see the last of 
the suppressed passages of Ludlow in Appendix III. 

1 Wood, Ath. Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 70. The captain's commission, 
dated February 25, is in Lord Shaftesbury's possession ; but I have not 
been able to find the commission of governor. There is, however, no 
doubt that Cooper was at this time Governor of the Isle of Wight, 
and his commission as such was temporarily renewed in the name of 
Charles II. on the Restoration. 



214 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

expire on the seventeenth of March, and that a new 
Parliament should be called for the twenty-fifth of 
April. On the thirteenth of March it was resolved 
without a division, " that the engagement, appointed to 
be taken by members of Parliament and others in these 
words, ' I do declare and promise that I will be true 
and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as the 
same is now established, without a King or House of 
Lords/ be discharged and ta,ken off the file ;" and "that 
all orders, enjoining the taking of the said engagement, 
be, and are hereby, vacated and expunged out of the 
Journal Book of Parliament, and that Mr. Prynne, 
Serjeant Maynard, and Colonel Harley do see the same 
expunged accordingly." 

The following letter from Montagu, afterwards Earl 
of Sandwich, who had the command of the fleet, ad- 
dressed to Cooper, is a proof of his activity at this time 
as a member of the Council of State : 

" SWIFTSURE, OFF GREENHITHE, 

" March 24, 1659. 

" SIR, This evening I have received your commands 
concerning an establishment for the navy, which I shall 
obey as soon as I possibly can. I suppose it will neces- 
sarily require Monday's time, and Tuesday's perhaps, to 
inform myself and consider about it ; after which you 
shall receive a further account from 

" Your most humble servant, 

"E. MOUNTAGU." 

The foiled Republicans now bethought themselves of 
an expedient, to play Monk against the Presbyterian 



1660. OFFER TO MONK TO MAKE HIM KING. 215 

leaders, and offer him their support if he would take 
the Crown himself. There is no doubt that such an 
offer was now made to Monk by Haselrig, Scot, and 
other Eepublicans. This is stated in the account of 
events preceding the Eestoration appended to later 
editions of Sir Kichard Baker's Chronicle, which, though 
ill- written and clumsily put together, has value, as being 
known to have been written with much assistance from 
Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law; and the 
statement is confirmed by many passages of the des- 
patches of the French Ambassador, M. de Bourdeaux. 
The idea was absurd : Monk treated the applicants 
civilly, and tried to keep them in good humour, but 
never entertained the project. Clarges gave Cooper 
information of what was passing. The following is an 
extract, from a narrative inspired, if not written, by 
Clarges himself: 

"The Council of State sitting at the time of this 
private conference, and within two chambers of the 
place where it was transacted, he (Clarges) sent in to 
the Council to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and informed 
him of what he knew, and what he further suspected ; 
upon which it was agreed, that, as soon as the General 
should depart from them and come into the Council, he 
should move that all clerks and attendants that were 
not Councillors should withdraw, and the doors be 
locked, and then declare that he had had information 
of a dangerous design in some seditious persons, who 
were continuing to make disturbances in the nation, 
and that they had proceeded so far as to make some 
indecent overtures to him, of which he desired that the 
Council might receive a full discovery, that thereupon 



216 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

they might apply themselves to prevent the conse- 
quences of it. But the General, being unwilling to 
expose those men to ruin, though they deserved not his 
favour, because his purposes were designed to be effected 
by the most peaceable ways, told the Council that there 
was not so much danger in agitation as they appre- 
hended, but that it was true some had been with him 
to be resolved in scruples concerning the present trans- 
actions in Parliament, but they went away from him 
well satisfied." 1 

The despatches of Bourdeaux entirely bear out the 
account given in the foregoing extract. Bourdeaux 
writes that there are different opinions about Monk's 
object, but always gives his own opinion that he intends 

i Phillips's Continuation of Baker's Chronicle, ed. 1684, p. 693. 
This is probably a fair and correct account of an incident which has 
been wonderfully exaggerated and enlarged in the Locke Memoir of 
Shaftesbury, and in Martyn's Life. The story, as there told, is as 
follows : that Haselrig and Scot had a zealous coadjutor in Bourdeaux, 
the French Ambassador, who represented that he was instructed by 
Cardinal Mazarin to urge Monk to make himself King and offer him 
aid from France ; that Monk consented ; that Monk's wife, who, being 
concealed behind the curtains, had overheard the conversation, sent 
Clarges to inform Cooper; that Cooper immediately summoned the 
Council of State, declared what he had heard, conjured Monk to 
restore Charles, and obtained from him the requisite assurances, and 
various changes among officers of the army and governors of forts 
likely to make the restoration of Charles more secure. The account in 
the Locke Memoir ends thus: "The French Ambassador, who had 
the night before sent away an express to Mazarin, positively to assure 
him that things went here as he desired, andj that Monk was fixed by 
him in his resolution to take on himself the government, was not a 
little astonished the next day to find things taking another turn. 
And indeed this so much disgraced him in the French Court that he 
was presently called home, and soon after broke his heart. " There is 
no such despatch in the French Archives, which I have carefully 
examined. M. Guizot has fairly published all that is material in 
the despatches of Bourdeaux of this period in the Appendix to his 
Life of Monk (Documents Historiques, Nos. 4552, March 15 to 
April 2, 1660), and in the Appendix to his History of Richard 
Cromwell and the Restoration (Documents Historiques, vol. ii. 
Nos. 3336, March 25 to April 5, 1660). 



1660. NO FRENCH PLOT TO MAKE MONK KING. 217 

to restore Charles ; he speaks of the offer made to Monk 
by the Bepublicans, and mentions surmises that he de- 
sired to make himself king ; he makes no mention of 
communications between himself and Haselrig's party. 
Convinced that Monk meant to restore the King, he 
endeavoured to induce him and the Presbyterians to 
avail themselves of the aid of France, and employ France 
to mediate the conditions of restoration ; for this purpose 
he tried to flatter Monk, through Clarges, and made 
strong professions of Cardinal Mazarin's friendship for 
him, and readiness to serve him. In playing this 
game, Bourdeaux appears to have a little exceeded his 
instructions, and practised some diplomatic finessing. 
Anxious to secure for France the honour of mediation 
and all the influence which would flow from it, and fore- 
seeing a strong desire to avoid French interference, he 
endeavoured to ingratiate himself with Monk by flatter- 
ing messages, offering the aid of the French Government 
to obtain for him from Charles all that he could desire 
of profit or honour, and stating that the French king 
was so completely his friend that he would even aid him 
for his own elevation to the throne. "It has seemed 
to me suitable," says Bourdeaux, writing to Cardinal 
Mazarin, " to dispose him by these marks of esteem to 
a better reception of the other proposals with which 
I might be charged." 1 This crafty insinuation of 
Bourdeaux, designed to aid the acceptance of an offer 
of French mediation for the restoration of Charles, is 
apparently the sole foundation for the story of his active 
concurrence in the scheme to make Monk king. His 
1 March 29, 1660 ; Guizot's Monk (Documents Historiques, No. 50). 



218 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

instructions from Mazarin were no more than to convey 
to Monk general expressions of friendship and support 
in his designs, which were believed to be for the restora- 
tion of Charles. It was of course the object of Bourdeaux 
to stand well with Monk, to be prepared for all con- 
tingencies, to do the best for French influence, and to 
use flattery as well as other means for gaining know- 
ledge of Monk's plans. He writes that in his interviews 
with Monk he could extract nothing from him ; and the 
statements of Bourdeaux in the above-quoted despatch, 
and in another to Mazarin of April 5, describing an 
interview with Monk, 1 tally sufficiently with the account 
derived from Clarges: 2 It may be safely stated, then, that 
Monk did not entertain the idea of making himself 
king, that the French Ambassador did not act in such 
a scheme, and that the story of Cooper's foiling Monk's 
design for the kingship is an extravagant exaggeration. 3 
Another alarm and difficulty arose for those who were 
now endeavouring to bring about a restoration of the 
old monarchy from an insurrection headed by Lambert. 
The re-established Kump had made Lambert a prisoner 
in the Tower, on his refusing to find bail for twenty 
thousand pounds. The Kepublican leaders were engaged 

1 No. 52 of Appendix to Guizot's Monk. 

2 Baker's Chronicle, p. 695. 

3 This story, soon after its publication in the Locke Memoir, was 
satisfactorily refuted, without aid from the French Archives, by George 
Granville, Lord Lansdowne, nephew of Sir John Grenville or Granville, 
who negotiated with Monk for Charles, in his " Vindication of General 
Monk." (Works, vol. ii. pp. 159 seqq.) It is stated in a despatch 
of Bourdeaux of July 1, 1660 (in the archives of the French Foreign 
Office), that Clarges had told Lord St. Albans that parties anxious to 
make the restored King quarrel with France had urged him (Clarges) to 
say that Bourdeaux had charged him to persuade Monk to make himself 
Protector, and keep Charles out. Bourdeaux adds, that Clarges had 
already publicly denied this at the Hague. 



1660. EEJOICES IN LAMBERT'S DEFEAT. 219 

in a plan for freeing him by finding the bail required by 
the Council of State, in order that he might head an 
insurrection; but before this plan could be executed, 
Lambert acted for himself, and made his escape on the 
sixth of April. He raised a few troops in the midland 
counties, but could make no resistance to a small force 
sent against him by Monk under Colonel Ingoldsby. 

The following letter was written by Cooper to 
Montagu on April 23 ; and there is no stint in his 
rejoicing at Lambert's defeat : 

" MY LORD, Your Lordship's letter brings that account 
of the fleet, and so satisfactory as might be expected 
from it, since put under the conduct of such a general. 
I hope you did not mistake the expression in my letter 
about transposing your officers, as if it had any reflexion 
of not approving what your Lordship had done, being only 
to give you notice timely of this alteration about sending 
the ' Worcester ' into the Straits, lest, when your officers 
are fixed, it might be disobliging to remove them back. 

" This morning the certain news of Colonel Lambert his 
being taken came to the Council. There appeared with 
him six troops of horse in Daventry fields in Northamp- 
tonshire, Colonel Okey, Axtel, Creed, Sir Arthur Hasel- 
rig's son and others. But when Colonel Ingoldsby came 
up, the kind men without showing much courage ren- 
dered themselves. Thus God has blasted the wicked in 
their reputations and bloody designs, and I hope will 
bless us with a happy settlement, which is the prayer of, 

" My Lord, 
" Your most faithful and humble servant, 

" ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER." l 

1 The latter half of this letter is printed in Bishop Rennet's Register, 



220 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

In the meantime, Cooper and the Presbyterian leaders 
were pursuing their design of a restoration of Charles 
on conditions. Lord Mordaunt, writing to Hyde on 
April 19, mentions Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper as a 
member of a Presbyterian " cabal," then meeting con- 
stantly, of which the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland, 
and Manchester, Lord Wharton, Holies, Annesley, Pier- 
point, Popham, Sir William Lewis, and Sir Gilbert 
Gerard, were among the members. The object of these 
Presbyterian leaders was to propose the restoration of 
Charles on terms very similar to those which had been 
offered in 1648 to his father in the Isle of Wight, and 
they were discussing how the chief offices of state should 
be distributed. They are described as fearing that 
Monk would spoil their plans, and recall the King 
without conditions. 1 This fear was realized. 

When the Convention Parliament of two Houses for 
England and Wales, according to the old constitution, 
met at Westminster on the twenty-fifth of April, 
Monk had arranged his plans with the King through 
Sir John Grenville. Lord Lansdowne, in his " Vindi- 
cation of Monk/' in which he refutes the story of 
Cooper's thwarting Monk's aims on the Crown, de- 
scribes Cooper as acting with the Presbyterian leaders 
independently of Monk, and proposing with them 
a negotiation which Monk's prompt action cut short. 
Cooper had been returned to the new House of Commons 
for Wiltshire. The Act of the expiring Long Parliament 
by which the summoning of this Convention had been 

p. 120. I have been enabled to complete the letter from a copy pre- 
served at St. Giles's among Lord Shaftesbury's papers. 
1 Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 705, 729. 



1660. CHARLES RESTORED. 221 

settled, had prescribed qualifications for its members 
designed to exclude old royalists, and had contained a 
clause saving the rights of such members of the old 
House of Lords, and such only, as had been always 
faithful to the Parliament. With Monk's countenance 
and support these restrictions were disregarded, when 
the Parliament met. The disappointment and dismay 
of the Presbyterians were great. 1 Pepys records the 
reproaches of Montagu, who thought the Presbyterians 
too exacting, but " shook his shoulders when he told me 
[Pepys] how Monk had betrayed them, for it was he 
that did put them upon standing to put out the lords 
and other members' that come not within the qualifica- 
tions, which he did not like ; but, however, he had done 
his business, though it be with some kind of baseness." 2 
The Presbyterians could now no longer control the move- 
ment, and had nothing to do but to make a virtue of 
necessity. Sir John Grenville appeared in both Houses 
on the first of May, and presented the King's letters 
to the two Speakers and his famous Declaration, dated 
from Breda. On the twenty-third of May Charles landed 
at Dover, and on the twenty-ninth, his birthday, he 
entered London, a restored King, and restored without 
conditions. The two Houses had sent Commissioners to 
Breda to invite him to return. Cooper was one of the 
twelve deputed by the Commons. The other eleven 
were Lords Fairfax, Falkland, Bruce, Castleton, Herbert, 
and Mandeville, Sir Horatio Townshend, Sir George 



1 See the Despatches of Bourdeaux, May 10, 21, Nos. 59 and 60, 
Appendix to Guizot's Monk. 

2 Diary, April 29, 1660, vol. i. p. 61. 



222 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

Booth, Sir John Holland, Sir Henry Cholmley, and 
Denzil Holies. 

On his journey to Breda on this occasion Cooper met 
with an accident by the upsetting of his carriage, which 
caused an internal abscess that was never cured. That 
Shaftesbury constantly suffered from this malady during 
his later years of political eminence has been made 
notorious by the foul gibes of vile lampooners. This 
misfortune brought him advantage by leading, in the 
year 1666, at Oxford, to the acquaintance of John 
Locke, who quickly became his intimate friend, and 
an inmate of his house ; whose friendship was a chief 
help and solace of his troubled life, and whose great 
name is inseparably associated with Shaftesbury's to 
bring him honour. 

We have now gone through twenty years of Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper's public life, which began 
before he was of age : he began as a Eoyalist, and he 
is now a Eoyalist again. The intervening time has 
been full of change and revolution, and he has changed 
often, influencing public changes or following in their 
wake. His course has been that of a restless, excitable, 
eager, impulsive man, not content to be idle or let his 
talents long lie hid under a bushel ; full of desire to 
govern men and control events, and full of confidence 
in himself. Such a man is prone to quit a party if he 
does not have his own way: such a man is often the 
most hopeful in the outset, and the first to despair. 
Every politician's life is a public target, and satire and 
malice have not spared Cooper's changes. Lord Mac- 
aulay has latterly given new life and prominence to 



1660. DEYDEN ON SHAFTESBURY. 223 

the sparkling satire of Butler and Dryden's reckless 
and venomous invective. 1 The author of " Hudibras" was 
an honest and consistent Boyalist, and it was but natural 
that he should misinterpret Cooper's actions, and suppose 
interested calculation and unprincipled scheming where 
the friendly and charitably disposed and well-informed 
may see the working of an ardent temperament on an 
active intellect. Admirable as is Dryden's satire for 
keenness and his verse for vigour, the malice and false- 
hoods of one who was himself unrivalled for apostasy, 
and who had chosen the ignoble task of reviling Shaftes- 
bury to please his royal master, should receive reproba- 
tion. Dryden, who bespattered Cromwell's grave with 
fulsome flattery in the first days of his son's Protector- 
ship, when it seemed strong and durable, and who, in a 
short twelvemonth, flattered the restored Charles and 
vilified Cromwell ; Dryden, who slavered the Lord 
Treasurer Clifford with praise in one dedication, and in 
another, a few years after, lauded his successor, Danby, 
as the repairer of Clifford's mismanagements ; 2 Dryden, 
who, when he addressed his venal dedication to Clifford, 
praised the acts of the Cabal, and afterwards denounced 
them when hope of other profit inspired him against 
Shaftesbury ; Dryden, who could describe Charles the 
Second as a liberal patron of arts and letters when he 
wrote to please James, and sneer at him as neglecting 

1 In his Essay on Sir'William Temple ; where Macaulay speaks only 
of Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," and does not mention the 
fiercer and coarser invective of "The Medal." 

2 Compare Dryden's dedication of his "Amboyna" to Clifford in 
1673 with his dedication of "All for Love" to Danby in 1678. 
Presents of money were received and expected in return for these 
eulogistic dedications : and this mode of flattery was a part of Dryden's 
means of living. 



224 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. VII. 

and degrading genius when to James had succeeded 
William; 1 Dry den, who when Charles the Second, who 
had befriended t him and whom he had flattered, lay 
cold in the grave, endeavoured to load his memory with 
the opprobrium of his own licentious play writing, 
the willing servility of a coarse nature to degraded 
tastes ; 2 Dry den, who, fresh from ridicule and abuse 

1 Iu the " Threnodia Augustalis," an ode on the death of Charles II. 
by Dryden, "servant of his late Majesty and the present King," there 
are these nattering lines : 

" Amidst the peaceful triumphs of his reign, 

What wonder if the kindly beams he shed 
Eevived the drooping Arts again, 
If Science raised her head, 
And soft Humanity, that from rebellion fled ! " 

In his Address to Sir Godfrey Kneller, published in 1694, Dryden 
wrote : 

" Apelles' art an Alexander found, 
And Raphael did with Leo's gold abound, 
But Homer was with barren laurel crowned ; 
Thou hadst thy Charles a while, and so had I, 
But pass we that unpleasing image by." 

2 In a reply to Jeremy Collier's reproaches for his immoral play- 
writing, Dryden wrote, in his very last Epilogue, composed a few weeks 
before his death, for a representation for his own benefit : 

" Perhaps the parson stretched a point too far 

"When with our theatres he waged a war. 

He tells you that this very moral age 

Beceived the first infection from the stage ; 

But sure a banished court, with lewdness fraught, 

The seeds of open vice returning brought. 

The poets, who must live by courts or 'starve, 

Were proud so good a government to serve ; 

And mixing with buffoons and pimps profane, 

Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain. 

Thus did the thriving malady prevail, 

The court its head, the poets but the tail. 

The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true, 

The scandal of the sin was wholly new. 

Misses there were, but modestly concealed ; 

Whitehall the naked Venus first revealed, 

Who standing as at Cyprus in her shrine, 

The strumpet was adored with rites divine." 

But Dryden' s licentious writing is not confined to his plays. Lord 
Macaulay, who, in his early Essay on Sir William Temple, assailing 



1660. DRYDEN ON SHAFTESBURY. 225 

of Eoman Catholic priests, and from expounding in 
matchless verse the tenets of Protestantism, became a 
Eoman Catholic when it seemed likely that James would 
establish the Eoman Catholic religion, and when to adopt 
that religion was the way to the King's heart : it is this 
Dryden who has arraigned Shaftesbury for political 
venality, treason, and apostasy, and who by the power 
of his verse and the fame of his poetry has been mainly 
instrumental in blackening Shaftesbury's name for pos- 
terity. A careful examination of Shaftesbury's public 
career and private life and character reveals many 
misstatements and exaggerations in Dryden's attacks. 
Change of opinion is not necessarily wicked or dis- 
honest. In times of successive revolution, patriots who 
desire public quiet and orderly rule may accept and 
endeavour to make the best of several successive forms 
of government. In France, do we not know of honour- 
able men who have been successively Eoyalists under 
Charles the Tenth, Eoyalists under Louis Philippe, 
Eepublicans, supporters of the Second Empire ? In our 
own land and in our own time, in happy absence of 
revolution, have not foremost statesmen and whole 
political parties, in the short space of one generation, 

Shaftesbury, calls as a witness Dryden's "gorgeous satiric muse, 
who comes sweeping by in sceptred pall, borrowed from her more 
august sisters," has in his later " History of England" given a scathing 
sketch of Dryden's character. " Self-respect and a fine sense of the 
becoming," says Macaulay the historian, "were not to be expected 
from one who had led a life of mendicancy and adulation." And after 
rebuking the impurity of Dryden's plays, he proceeds to reprobate 
justly the grossness of his translations. " He made the grossest satires 
of Juvenal more gross, interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of 
Boccaccio, and polluted the sweet and limpid poetry of the Georgics 
with filth which would have moved the loathing of Virgil." (History 
of England, ii. 200. ) 

VOL. I. Q 



226 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VII. 

completely changed their political creeds \ It is beyond 
doubt that Shaftesbury never sought or made pecuniary 
profit out of his politics : Dryden's charge of venality is 
false. Shaftesbury was born to wealth and high social 
station. If he was ambitious, public ambition is not a 
sin ; it is indeed recognised in others as the useful spur 
of noble minds to public service. Shaftesbury may have 
been headstrong, impatient, volatile; but he was not 
mercenary, he was not self-seeking ; and no imputation 
or even suspicion lies on him, in any part of his career, 
of trickery or falsehood. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

1660. 

Sir A. A. Cooper made a Privy Councillor at Canterbury His pardons 
Distribution of offices and honours Privy Council Hyde Chief 
Minister Committee for Foreign Affairs or Cabinet King's active 
supremacy in Government Convention Parliament Sir A. A. 
Cooper's speeches The Bill of Pardon and Indemnity Cooper 
desired no exceptions for life Monk and Cooper unjustly re- 
proached by Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson Royal assent to the 
Act, August 29 Cooper's speeches on details Helped to save 
Haselrig Trials of the Regicides and others Cooper one of the 
Judges His sitting on the trial defended Appointed member of 
Councils of Trade and Plantations His cavalry regiment disbanded 
Revenue and Church questions Abolition of Court of Wards 
Cooper supports postponement of Bill for Church Settlement 
Defends the King in debate on grievances Dissolution of Con- 
vention Parliament, December 27. 

AT the time of the Kestoration, Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper was close on completing his thirty-ninth year. 
He was at once specially recommended by Monk to 
the notice of the restored King, and received an early 
mark of favour. While Charles halted at Canterbury 
for a couple of days before making his triumphal entry 
into London, he gave Garters to Monk, Montagu, and 
a faithful Koyalist, the Earl of Southampton ; he con- 
ferred on Morrice, a relative of Monk, who had more 
than any one else of his confidence during the last few 
eventful months, the office of Secretary of State ; and 
he made Cooper a member of the Privy Council. 1 

1 Continuation of Clarendon's Life, 13. Clarendon says that it 
was hoped and believed that, as Cooper's wife was a niece of the Eaii 

Q 2 



228 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

Cooper afterwards appeared at the head of his regi- 
ment of cavalry, which had been Fleetwood's, in the 
army assembled at Blackheath when the King ap- 
proached the capital. Like all who had been im- 
plicated in any of the irregular proceedings of the 
past period of civil wars and revolutionary govern- 
ments, he availed himself of the King's promise of 
pardon from Breda, to all who within forty days should 
properly demand it, and were not afterwards excepted 
by Parliament, and he received a formal pardon on 
the twenty-seventh of June. Further pardons were 
granted to him under the Great Seal on the tenth of 
February and the eighth of June, 1661. 1 

In the distribution of offices and honours which 
followed the Eestoration, great pains were taken to 
attain an appearance of equality between those who 
had steadily clung to the Eoyal fortunes and old ad- 
versaries who had now mainly contributed to effect the 
Eestoration. To Monk both King and people gave 
pre-eminence of merit, and he was for the moment 
the nation's idol ; he was re-appointed Lord General, 
was appointed Master of the Horse, a Groom of the 
Bedchamber, and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with the 
understanding that he should perform the duties of 
this last office by deputy, and was created Duke of 

of Southampton, "his slippery humour would be easily restrained 
and fixed by the uncle." This early nomination of Cooper to the 
Privy Council is doubtless the explanation of a statement by eulogistic 
biographers that Charles showed his high admiration of Cooper by 
placing him in the Privy Council above his brother, the Duke of 
Gloucester, and above Monk. (Eawl. Rediviv. p. 49, and "Brief 
Account" in Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. p. 368.) 

1 These pardons are among the papers in Lord Shaftesbury's posses- 
sion at St. Giles's. 



1660. DISTRIBUTION OF OFFICES. 229 

Albemarle. Hyde, the King's chief adviser in exile, 
was made Lord Chancellor and a Peer, with the title 
of Baron Hyde; he became Earl of Clarendon later, 
at the Coronation. The office of Lord Treasurer was 
given to the Earl of Southampton, but it was first, at 
his request, put into commission, that the Treasury 
might be brought into some order before he assumed 
the charge, which he did in September. The offices 
of Lord Chancellor and Lord Treasurer having been 
given to Eoyalists, the office third in rank in the 
kingdom, that of Lord Privy Seal, was given to Viscount 
Saye and Sele, one of the survivors of the Presbyterian 
leaders of the beginning of the Civil War. Ormond, 
one of the King's most devoted and distinguished 
followers, was made Lord Steward ; he was raised from 
the rank of Marquis, to be a Duke in the Irish Peerage, 
and was made an Earl in the Peerage of England. 
The Earl of Manchester, the Lord Kimbolton of 1641, 
was Lord Chamberlain ; the Duke of York was appointed 
Lord High Admiral; Montagu, who had been the 
friend and servant of Cromwell, and one of his peers, 
and who had served under every government of the 
Commonwealth, was created Earl of Sandwich and 
appointed Master of the Wardrobe. Of the two 
Secretaries of State, one, Nicholas, was an old servant 
of the King and of his father ; the other, Morrice, was 
a Presbyterian, and the particular friend of Monk. The 
Privy Council, comprising the King's two brothers and 
all surviving Privy Councillors of Charles the First, 
consisted at the outset of this reign of thirty members, 
of whom twelve had been opponents of the Eoyal cause ; 



230 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

viz. Monk, the Earls of Northumberland, Leicester, and 
Manchester, Viscount Saye and Sele, Lord Eoberts 
(appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland, but who shortly 
after, on the death of Lord Saye and Sele, exchanged 
that office for the Privy Seal), Montagu, Morrice, 
Arthur Annesley, Denzil Holies, Charles Howard, and 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. 

Hyde continued to be the King's chief adviser. The 
name of Prime Minister was then known only as that 
of a French institution, and the name and office were 
regarded with dislike, founded partly on aversion to 
a French example, and partly on jealousy of inter- 
ference with the constitutional functions of the Privy 
Council. Charles, whose indolence and love of pleasure 
made him peculiarly dependent on Clarendon's labori- 
ousness, had the vanity of wishing to be thought to do 
everything himself, and loved to call himself his own 
Premier Ministre. 1 There was not then, as now, an 
united Ministry, dependent for existence on the con- 
fidence of the Parliament, and governing the King's 
policy; each Minister held his office at the King's 
pleasure, and was entirely the King's servant. There 
was no necessary unity of sentiment or action among 
the Ministers ; high officers of State, and also sub- 
ordinate officials, often opposed in Parliament measures 
promoted by the King, and retained their offices; a 
Minister would be dismissed singly by the King on 
account of personal displeasure. 



i M. de Bonrdeaux mentions in a despatch of June 7, 1660, in the 
archives of the French Foreign Office, that Charles trusted a great 
deal to Hyde, but did not like him to be called Prime Minister. 



1660. PKLVY COUNCIL AND CABINET. 231 

The Privy Council being too numerous for matters 
requiring secrecy and despatch, a small Committee of 
that body was appointed, consisting of those who had 
most of the King's confidence and favour; and this 
Committee was his constant council of advice. Such 
a Committee of the Privy Council had existed before 
the Civil War. 1 It was called the Committee for 
Foreign Affairs, and, in common conversation, the 
King's Cabinet or Cabal. This Committee for Foreign 
Affairs is the origin of the present Cabinet. It was 
in the nature of things that it should become more 
important than the Privy Council itself. Its encroach- 
ments on the functions of the Privy Council gave rise 
to frequent complaints during the reign of Charles the 
Second. Twice during his reign, after the fall of 
Clarendon in 1667, and after the fall of Danby in 1679, 
Charles was so far moved by the popular outcry against 
Prime Minister and Cabinet as to promise publicly 
that he would be governed entirely by the advice of 
his Privy Council, and have no secrets from that body. 
But on both occasions the promise was almost imme- 
diately broken. In truth, a chief minister and a small 
council of advice were necessities for the Sovereign. 
Thus it happened that, in the interval between the 
Eestoration and the Eevolution of 1688, the Cabinet, 

1 Clarendon minutely describes such a Committee of the Privy 
Council in 1640. " These persons," he says, "made up the Committee 
of State (which was reproachfully after called the juncto, and enviously 
then in the Court the Cabinet Council), who were upon all occasions, 
when the Secretaries received any extraordinary intelligence, or were 
to make up any extraordinary despatch, or as often otherwise as was 
thought fit, to meet: whereas the body of the Council observed set 
days and hours for their meeting, and came not else together except 
specially summoned." (Hist of Eebelliou, ii. 99.) 



232 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VIII. 

notwithstanding all the opposition and obloquy which 
it created, came to assume a regular form and recog- 
nised position in the State, and both Cabinet and 
Prime Minister have long been practically important 
parts of our Constitution. 

Hyde, then, without the name of Prime Minister, 
and holding a position materially different in many 
respects from that of the Prime Minister of to-day, 
became the chief director of public affairs ; and he con- 
tinued ostensibly to hold this position until his hard 
fall in 1667. His first colleagues in the Committee 
for Foreign Affairs, were Southampton, Monk, Ormond, 
Lord Colepepper, and the new Secretaries of State, 
Nicholas and Morrice. Hyde, Ormond, Colepepper, 
and Nicholas, had formed the King's council of advice 
in exile. Colepepper, who was also appointed Master 
of the Eolls, died within a few months after the 
Eestoration. The Duke of York was called a little 
later to the meetings of the Cabinet, and afterwards 
Sheldon, the Bishop of London. 1 Thus, in the first 
Cabinet of the Eestoration, the Eoyalist party predomi- 
nated; Monk (who was not a politician, and did not 
shine in council) and Morrice being the only two there 
of the King's new friends. The King called which of 
his Privy Councillors he chose to this Committee, and, 
when he chose, ceased to call them ; some were some- 
times called in for the discussion of a particular 
measure, sometimes to aid the King in opposing his 
usual Cabinet. The active supremacy of the King 
must never be forgotten in judging the statesmen of 

1 Pepys's Diary, ii. 30, 155. 



1660. CLAKENDON'S MINISTRY. 233 

this period. Charles the Second continually had secrets 
from his Cabinet and Prime Minister, which he en- 
trusted to favourites who were not even Privy Coun- 
cillors. Most of the labour of administration fell on 
the chief Minister, and public odium fell on him for 
miscarriages; but a policy for which he was blamed 
had sometimes been determined on by Charles without 
his knowledge or against his remonstrances, in concert 
with other Ministers, or even with household parasites 
and mistresses. This soon became apparent under 
Clarendon's ostensible chief ministry. The Earl of 
Bristol, who had been one of Charles's Secretaries 
of State while he was in exile, but who, having em- 
braced the Eornan Catholic religion, was excluded from 
office and from the 'Privy Council on the Eestoration, 
and the Duke of Buckingham, a friend of Charles's 
youth, who in May 1662 was appointed a Privy Coun- 
cillor but had no office, came to possess the King's ear 
and know all his secrets, and used their influence 
against Clarendon. Sir Charles Berkeley, a servant of 
the Duke of York, afterwards created Earl of Falmouth, 
gained a great ascendency with the King by agree- 
able personal qualities and by forwarding his pleasures. 
Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, who succeeded 
Nicholas as Secretary of State in 1662, joined 
with Berkeley against Clarendon, who had hoped to 
play Bennet against Berkeley ; and all who wished to 
thwart Clarendon with the King found an eager patron 
in the favourite mistress, Lady Castlemaine, who 
nightly held a rival Cabinet in the palace. 

The Convention Parliament, which had recalled 



234 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VIII. 

Charles, was not dissolved until the twenty-second of 
December, 1660. The resolution passed by the Lords, 
when they first met, for excluding all peers created 
since the commencement of the Civil War, was, after 
the King's return, rescinded in prompt obedience to 
a royal message, and the new peers were admitted to 
sit. Two days after the King's entry into London, he 
gave his assent to a Bill declaring the two Houses 
then sitting to be a legal parliament. It is obvious 
that a parliament which had not been legally convened, 
if the stamp of law were required, could not thus 
invest itself with legality ; but the expedient was useful 
for the moment ; and all the acts of this Convention 
were afterwards submitted for confirmation to the par- 
liament which assembled in the following year under 
the forms of the Constitution. The oaths of allegiance 
and supremacy were administered to the members of 
both Houses. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, now a 
member of the Privy Council, was one of the repre- 
sentatives of the new Government in the House of 
Commons. The others were Morrice, Arthur Annesley, 
Holies, Charles Howard, and Sir Heneage Finch, the 
Solicitor-General. Cooper at present held no office 
besides that of Privy Councillor ; he was not appointed 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Under Treasurer till 
nearly a year after the Kestoration, nor till after he 
had been made a Peer, which was not till the 
Coronation. 

A few slight notices of Cooper's speeches in the 
Convention Parliament are furnished by some extracts 
printed in Cobbett's "Parliamentary History" from a 



1660. PAKDON AND INDEMNITY BILL. 235 

manuscript Diary of one of the members. 1 It would 
seem, from the extracts there published, that Morrice 
and Finch took the leading part in the debates in 
behalf of the Government. 

The question of pardon and indemnity was the first 
which called for settlement. The Commons had begun 
upon a Bill with this object before the King's arrival, 
and he seized the earliest occasion to urge them to 
expedite its progress. It was yet some time, however, 
before the Bill passed the two Houses ; so many ques- 
tions arose about exceptions. 

Charles, in his Declaration sent from Breda, in which 
he offered a general pardon, had guarded himself by 
speaking of such exceptions as might be made by 
Parliament ; and in his letter to the House of Commons 
which accompanied that Declaration, he had clearly 
indicated his expectation that Parliament would exact 
an atonement for his father's death. It is clear, both 
from previous declarations and from addresses which 
he afterwards made to the House of Lords, that the 
wish of Charles was, that all who had joined in the 
sentence on his father or who had signed his death- 
warrant, should suffer the extreme penalties of high 
treason. The Commons by no means carried out this 
intention. They began by resolving that of the sur- 
viving judges of Charles the First who sat when 
sentence was passed upon him, seven only should be 

1 It is stated that the Diary was communicated to the editors of 
the "Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England" by the 
Rev. Dr. Charles Lyttelton, Dean of Exeter (vol. iv. p. 73). It would 
he of interest to know where this manuscript Diary now is. The Dean 
was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. 



236 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

excepted for life and estate. 1 The remainder of such 
surviving judges of the King were to be visited with 
penalties not extending to life, to be determined by 
a future Act. The seven to be excepted for life and 
estate were selected : General Harrison, Say, Colonel 
John Jones, Scot, Holland, Lisle, and Barkstead. A 
proclamation was then published by the King, at the 
request of the two Houses, calling upon all the late 
King's judges, who sat when sentence was passed, to 
surrender on pain of being excepted for life and estate. 
Nineteen surrendered in consequence of this procla- 
mation. There were eleven who failed to surrender; 
and the Commons, before the Bill left them for the 
House of Lords, added these eleven to the seven pre- 
viously selected to be excepted for life and estate. 
Had they surrendered, their lives would have been 
secure, so far as depended on the intentions of the 
House of Commons. Having thus dealt with the 
living judges who had sat when sentence was passed, 
the Commons proposed, with regard to their associates 
now dead, that Bradshaw, the President of the Court, 

i Commons' Journals, May 14, 1660. This resolution has been 
misdescribed by Mr. Hallam and other writers, who have made an 
unjust charge of inconsistency and breach of faith against the 
Commons. Mr. Hallam erroneously says that " the Commons voted 
that not more than seven persons should lose the benefit of the 
indemnity, both as to life and estate," and then proceeds to represent 
all their subsequent exceptions, whether for life and estate or for 
minor penalties, as infractions of this first resolution. (Constit. History, 
ii. 414.) The resolution was strictly confined to those then living of 
the King's judges who had sat when sentence was given, and limited to 
seven the number of such judges to be excepted for life and estate. 
The Commons were, therefore, quite free both to except for life and 
estate others who were not in the category of surviving judges who sat 
when the sentence was passed, and to except for minor penalties others 
in that category beyond the number of seven. The same mistake 
occurs in Mr. Lister's Life of Clarendon, ii. 16. 



1660. PARDON AND INDEMNITY BILL. 237 

Cromwell, Ireton, and Pride should be attainted by 
Act of Parliament, and that the estates of the remainder 
should be mulcted by another Act. The Commons then 
further excepted for life and estate seven individuals 
who were not among the King's judges, but who had 
been prominently accessory to his death. These were 
Coke, late Chief Justice of Ireland, who had acted 
as solicitor for the trial ; Brompton and Dendy, two 
officers of the Court, the two persons who were on the 
scaffold in disguise when the sentence was executed; 
Hewlet, who was accused of having been the King's 
executioner ; and Hugh Peters, who had preached many 
violent sermons instigating to the King's death. They 
excepted for minor penalties to be regulated by a future 
Act the survivors, and the estates of such as were dead, 
of those judges who had not been present when sen- 
tence was passed, but who had sat on previous days 
of the trial ; and among the living were Lord Monson, 
Harrington, the author of "Oceana," and Robert Wallop. 
They likewise excepted for minor penalties, to be pre- 
scribed by a future Act, twenty individuals who had 
no direct part in the King's trial, but had .been pro- 
minent actors in the late revolutions, among whom 
were Speaker Lenthall, Sir Harry Vane, Oliver St. 
John, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Desborough, Lambert, and 
Fleetwood. 1 

1 "With reference to this exception of twenty for minor penalties 
under a future Act, Mr. Hal lam makes another unjust charge of 
inconsistency against the House of Commons. The House resolved on 
June 8, that "the number of twenty and no more, other than those 
already excepted, or who sat as judges on the late King's Majesty, 
shall be excepted out of the Act of General Pardon and Oblivion, for 
and in respect only of such pains and penalties and forfeitures (not 



238 LIFE OP SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

Such were the exceptions from pardon in the Bill 
sent up from the House of Commons to the House 
of Lords. A wiser policy, at this moment of general 
reconciliation, and when so many who were now in 
the councils of the restored King had been as much 
guilty of high treason in the eye of the law as his 
father's judges, would have spared the lives of all, 
and confined itself to measures necessary for future 
security. This was the intention of Monk, and the 
first advice which he gave to the King. This was the 
opinion strongly expressed by several of the Presbyterian 
leaders, including the Earl of Northumberland. This 
was the earnest desire of Fairfax, who had effectively 
contributed to the Eestoration. This was the wish and 
hope of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. Ludlow mentions 
as a proof of Monk's treachery that, on Lord Saye and 
Sele's suggesting to him before the Eestoration that 
some who had had a principal part in the King's execu- 
tion should be put to death, he replied in anger, " Not 
a man ; for if I should suffer such a thing, I should be 
the arrantest rogue that ever lived." 1 Mrs. Hutchinson 
brands Cooper as a vile traitor, because, before the Eesto- 
ration and before the meeting of the Convention Par- 
liament, he had strongly protested to her husband 
that, if the popular enthusiasm brought back the King, 

extending to life) as shall be thought fit to be inflicted on them by 
another Act." Mr. Hallam represents that they broke their resolution 
by ordering a prosecution of Milton for his books (Const. Hist. ii. 
414, note). But the resolution of June 8 did not preclude such a 
prosecution : John Goodwin was ordered to be prosecuted at the same 
time for a book of his. These orders were made on June 16, while the 
House was engaged in selecting the twenty to be dealt with under the 
resolution of June 8. 

1 Ludlow's Memoirs, iii. 11. 



1660. PARDON AND INDEMNITY BILL. 239 

not a hair of any man's head nor a penny of any 
man's estate should be touched for what had passed. 1 
Cooper's or Monk's language would not lose force in 
either Ludlow's or Mrs. Hutchinson's description. But 
even admitting the words as described, there is clearly 
passion and prejudice in both judgments. It does not 
require an extraordinary charity to see in both state- 
ments evidence of an intention which deserved praise, 
and which, certainly so far as Cooper was concerned, 
was frustrated by events beyond his power of control. 
If Monk could not impose the condition, how was 
Cooper to accomplish his desire? 

If any were to die, it cannot be said that the Commons 
desired an immoderate number of victims. Nor can we 
reprobate the feelings which led the son of the murdered 
King to demand even a larger expiation of his father's 
death. The Lords altered the bill so as to give effect to 
the King's wishes. They proposed to except for life and 
estate, in one comprehensive clause, all who had sat on 
the King's trial at the time when sentence was passed, 
and who had signed the death-warrant. They went 
further, and excepted for life and estate Vane, Lambert, 
Haselrig, Axtel, and Hacker. They also determined to 
except for life and estate four of the members of the 
High Courts of Justice which had condemned to death 
four members of their own body, the Duke of Hamilton, 
the Earls of Holland and Derby, and Lord Capel ; and 
they gave to the nearest relation of each of these peers 
the choice of one expiatory victim. The King had 

1 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, near the end, where 
the last restoration of the Rump, and the re -admission of the secluded 
members, are briefly spoken of. 



240 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

thanked the Lords for excepting all his father's judges ; 
but all these additional exceptions for life were against 
his expressed wishes. The Lords' amendments were 
not acceptable to the Commons, and it was with much 
difficulty that the two Houses came to an agreement. 
The Commons objected to excepting for life and estate 
the regicides who had surrendered in obedience to the 
King's proclamation calling on them to do so on pain 
of being excepted. They argued, justly, that the natural 
interpretation to be put on the proclamation was, that 
the lives of those who surrendered should be spared. 
It is probable that the Commons, on the one hand, and 
the King and Lords, on the other, had concurred in this 
proclamation with different meanings. The Commons 
had clearly intended it in the sense in which they now 
argued that it should be taken ; they had previously 
selected seven who should be excepted for life, and 
resolved that all the rest should be subjected to penalties 
not extending to life : and they proposed by the pro- 
clamation to frighten them into surrendering for these 
minor penalties, on pain of being excepted for life if 
they did not surrender. The King and the Lords, on 
the other hand, who were not bound by the preliminary 
resolutions of the Commons, and who were for except- 
ing all the King's judges for life, must be supposed to 
have concurred in the proclamation, understanding it in 
the sense in which they now argued that it should be 
taken, and which the words may be made to bear, that 
those who surrendered should have the benefit of a trial, 
while those who did not surrender should be visited, 
without trial, with the extreme penalties of high treason. 



1660. PARDON AND INDEMNITY BILL. 241 

The meaning given to the proclamation by the Commons 
was that which the public generally assigned to it. If 
the words of the proclamation were only ambiguous, 
those who had surrendered should have been allowed 
the benefit of the ambiguity. Yet it was with very 
great difficulty that the Lords were prevailed upon to 
recede one step. After three conferences between the 
two Houses, the following compromise was agreed 
upon. 

The nineteen regicides who had surrendered were to 
remain in the bill, as the Lords had placed them, ex- 
cepted for life and estate ; but a proviso was introduced 
declaring that, if on trial they were sentenced to death, 
the sentence should not be carried into effect without a 
special Act of Parliament passed for their execution. 
The Lords abandoned their proposal of the victims to 
avenge the deaths of the peers executed under sentences 
of the Commonwealth High Courts of Justice. The 
Commons consented to the exception of Hacker and 
Axtel for life. Yane and Lambert remained in the bill 
as excepted for life ; but the two Houses agreed to 
present a joint address to the King, praying him to 
spare their lives. Haselrig's life was spared ; and he 
was placed in the bill with others to be visited with 
penalties not extending to life, which should be fixed 
by a future Act. Arthur Annesley, Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper, and Colonel Birch spoke for Haselrig in the 
Commons, w^here it was voted to disagree with the 
Lords' amendment in his case ; and Monk afterwards 
successfully exerted his influence in the Lords to 
obtain their acquiescence in the vote of the Commons. 

VOL. I. E 



242 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

Lambert, Vane, Haselrig, and Axtel had been four of 
the twenty, not judges of the late King, whom the 
Commons had in the first instance selected for minor 
penalties, under a future Act; the remaining sixteen 
of these twenty were now, instead of being reserved for 
subsequent legislation, declared disqualified from holding 
any office; and the same disqualification was imposed 
on all who had been members of any High Court of 
justice. 

Three months had been consumed in discussion ; and 
at last, on the twenty-ninth of August, the royal assent 
was given to the Act of Pardon, Indemnity, and Ob- 
livion. Cooper does not appear to have taken a pro- 
minent part in the discussions relative to the Bill of 
Indemnity ; his name does not occur in any of the 
various Committees appointed during its progress. 
Twice he is reported in the Diary already referred to 
as having spoken on the side of leniency. On one 
occasion he opposed a clause which had been moved 
for making all officers who had served under the Pro- 
tectorate refund their salaries ; saying that " he might 
freely speak, because he never received any salary, but 
he looked upon the proviso as dangerous to the peace 
> of the nation ; adding, that it reached General Monk and 
Admiral Montagu after the House had given them 
thanks, and thousands besides." Cooper on this occa- 
sion closed the debate, which had lasted above two 
hours, and was very animated ; and the clause was 
rejected by 180 votes to 151. 1 The other speech re- 
ported of Cooper's was on the Lords' amendment 

1 Parl. Hist. iv. 78, July 4. 



1660. TRIAiS OF THE REGICIDES. 243 

excepting Haselrig for life. " Sir A. A. Cooper was for 
executing nobody but those who were guilty of the 
King's blood, and said he thought this man not con- 
siderable enough, and moved to put him with the rest." 
Haselrig's life was saved by 141 votes to 116. 1 

On the twelfth of September the Parliament was 
adjourned for two months, and during this adjournment 
took place the trial of those individuals who had been 
excepted for life and were in custody. 

A Special Commission was appointed for these trials ; 
and, to give greater solemnity, all the chief Ministers 
and most of the members of the Privy Council were 
named Commissioners. The whole number of the Com- 
missioners was thirty-four, and among them, of those 
who had been adversaries of Charles and of his father, 
were Monk and Montagu, now Duke of Albemarle and 
Earl of Sandwich, Lords Manchester, Saye and Sele, and 
Koberts, Denzil Holies, Arthur Annesley, Sir Harbottle 
Grimstone, Secretary Morrice, and Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper. Sir Orlando Bridgman, the Lord Chief Baron 
of the Exchequer, a royalist lawyer, presided. Twenty- 
eight individuals in all were tried by this Court, and all 
were found guilty. Ten of them were immediately 
executed : Harrison, Scrope, Clements, Scot, Carew, 
Jones, Coke, Hacker, Axtel, and Hugh Peters. The 
rest were respited, in accordance with the provision of 
the Act of Indemnity that those who had surrendered 
in obedience to the royal proclamation should not be 
executed unless an Act were expressly passed for their 
execution. A bill for this purpose was passed by the 

1 Parl. Hist. iv. 109, August 24. 
R2 



244 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

Commons in the next Parliament/ but was dropped in 
the House of Lords, by the wish of Charles himself, and 
by the management of Clarendon; and the eighteen 
now respited ultimately escaped execution. 

Shaftesbury's share in this trial of the regicides has 
been generally condemned, not only by enemies, but also 
by persons otherwise not unfriendly to his memory. 
This much is clearly unjust in the censure lavished on 
Shaftesbury, that he has been visited with reproach 
from which others similarly situated have gone free. 
Even if a distinction can be allowed between Shaftes- 
bury and such of his fellow-judges, Manchester, Eoberts, 
Holies, and others, who had not only had no part in 
the execution of Charles the First, but had kept aloof 
from all succeeding governments and had reappeared in 
public life only for the Eestoration, how can Monk and 
Montagu be distinguished from Shaftesbury ? Montagu 
especially had been Cromwell's favoured friend ; he had 
been long, as Cooper was for a short period, one of 
Cromwell's Council of State ; he had been, what Cooper 
had not been, one of Cromwell's Peers. But, in truth, 
no fundamental difference can be shown in favour of 
the Presbyterian noblemen and gentlemen who had 
carried on war against the King, and were now sitting 
with Cooper and Montagu in judgment on authors and 
abettors of his execution. All had been, according to 
the law, guilty of high treason, Manchester, Eoberts, 
Saye and Sele, and Holies, not less than Monk, Montagu, 
and Cooper ; and none of these who now sat as judges 
were less rebels by law than the regicides whom they 
judged. The law of high treason, however, apart; there 



1660. COOPER A JUDGE OF THE KEGICIDES. 245 

is a distinction between complicity in the King's trial 
and execution, and all those other acts of war against 
his authority and person, and of support of de facto 
revolutionary governments, of which many who now 
sat as judges on the regicides had been guilty. This 
distinction was taken by common consent at the Eesto- 
ration. It was part of the compact between King and 
people, that amid general pardon, indemnity, and oblivion, 
there should be expiation for the execution of Charles 
the First. None of those who, having helped to bring 
about the Eestoration, sat as judges on this occasion, had 
had part in the trial, or approved the execution. Cooper 
was as clear of that offence as Holies or Grimstone. If 
he acknowledged the government which afterwards stood 
between the nation and anarchy, he did so unfettered by 
previous connexions, and did what might be done, and 
was done, by many good citizens, supporting an existing 
authority when none other was probable. If he served 
under the Protectorate of Cromwell, gave him inde- 
pendent counsel, and was on terms of familiar friendship 
with the great Protector and his family, he did not 
thereby become an approver of the King's execution, any 
more than do those who now admire Cromwell as a great 
man, and deem him worthy of a statue among English 
sovereigns at Westminster. 

Another broad and obvious distinction, which was 
also taken at the Eestoration, was between those who, 
like Vane, Lambert, and Haselrig, had opposed the 
royal family to the last, and those who had done service 
in the Eestoration. The Eestoration, like most great 
political acts, was a compromise. The members of the 



246 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. VIII 

Government formed on this eventful occasion had each 
and all to make concessions of opinion and sacrifices of 
feeling. Eoyalists forgave Presbyterians and Cromwell- 
ites ; the King placed old adversaries of his father and 
of himself in high offices around him; and it was re- 
quired of the Presbyterian leaders to concur in excep- 
tions from pardon, and join in the trial for their lives of 
some who had brought Charles the First to the scaffold, 
and had in arms resisted the Eestoration. It is known 
that the Presbyterian leaders, and Cooper in the number, 
had endeavoured in the first instance to prevent all 
exceptions for life, and afterwards, when they were 
unsuccessful in this, to reduce the number of such 
exceptions as much as possible. It would have been 
far better if those who had kindled the Civil War, or 
who had adhered to the governments ol* the Common- 
wealth, could have been absent from this trial; but then 
it would have appeared as a pure Eoyalist vengeance ; 
the nation would not have seemed united. 

As regards Cooper, amid all the obscurity which still 
exists as to the details of his career during the Common- 
wealth, there are two written passages which are safe 
guides to the conclusion that he was clear of approval of 
the execution of Charles the First and clear of treachery 
or servility in the restoration of Charles the Second. One 
passage is that in which Hyde, writing confidentially to 
Charles nearly twelve months before the Eestoration, 
declares it impossible that Cooper should think himself 
so great a delinquent as that his estate would be forfeited 
if Charles were restored to his father's throne. 1 The other 

1 Clarendon State Papers, iii. 512. 



1660. FURTHER PROCEEDINGS AGAINST REGICIDES. 247 

passage is that in which Shaftesbury, writing in 1677 
from a prison to which an arbitrary act of power had 
consigned him, solemnly calls the King to witness, in a 
letter which he would expect to be read by many 
enemies, and saying what none could judge better of 
the truth of than the King himself, that he had acted in 
the Kestoration as a patriot and a man of honour, had 
betrayed no associate, held no private correspondence 
with the King, made him no private addresses, and never 
endeavoured to make terms for himself or obtain a 
reward for his co-operation. 

When the Convention Parliament again assembled 
after the recess, an Act was passed for the attainder 
of Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, and Pride, and of the 
King's surviving judges who had fled. Some debate 
arose on a pr<5posal to allow just debts, legacies, and 
funeral expenses out of the forfeiture of the estates. 
This was supported by Finch, Annesley, and Holies ; 
the last observing that " he had as great an abhorrence 
of that black crew as any one." Prynne vehemently 
took the other side. Cooper appears to have argued 
for the exceptions. He said, " There was reason to 
allow settlements before marriage or as far in retro- 
spect as 1647." x Both Houses concurred in a reso- 
lution that the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, 
and Pride should be exhumed, carried to Tyburn, there 
hung up for a time, and then buried under the 
gallows ; and this resolution was executed as regards 
the bodies of the first three on the next thirtieth of 
January. In the first session of the next Parliament, 
1 Parl. Hist. iv. 156, Dec. 4. 



248 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

an Act was passed for pains and penalties on those 
who had been excepted from the Act of Indemnity 
for minor penalties by future legislation; and on the 
thirtieth of January, 1662, Lord Monson, Sir Henry 
Mildmay, and Eobert Wallop, three of the King's 
judges who had sat on previous days of the week, 
but not when sentence was given, were carried through 
the streets on hurdles, pinioned, and with halters round 
their necks, from the Tower to Tyburn and back 
again. It has been already stated that a bill, after- 
wards introduced to authorize the execution of those 
of the King's judges who had surrendered themselves, 
was not proceeded with; it had passed the House 
of Commons, but was stopped in the Lords. Yane 
and Lambert were brought to trial for their lives in 
1662, by order of the House of Commons, notwith- 
standing that in the Convention Parliament both 
Houses had presented an address to the King, desiring 
that in any event their lives might be spared, and 
the King had acceded to this desire. Vane was 
executed ; Lambert's life was spared by the exercise 
of the King's prerogative. The executions in England 
ended, in 1662, with three of the King's judges who 
had fled to Holland and were given up by the States. 
In Scotland there had been three other executions ; 
the three victims were the Marquis of Argyle, Guthrie 
a clergyman, and one Gowan, of whom Burnet says 
that " the man was inconsiderable, till they made 
him more considered by putting him to death." All 
the expiations by life, for the death of Charles the 
First and the past rebellion, have now been enumerated. 



1660. SETTLEMENT OF KEVENUE. 249 

During the recess of the Convention Parliament,, 
which continued till the sixth of November, Sir 
Anthony Ashley Cooper was named member of a 
Council of ten appointed to superintend the plantations 
or colonies, and also member of a very numerous 
Council for trade. It is clear from many papers pre- 
served at St. Giles's, that Shaftesbury gave great atten- 
tion to the business of these two councils, and later 
chapters will contain proofs of his official diligence 
in these matters. 

There appears to be a mistake in the statement 
made by some biographers, that Cooper was appointed 
after the Eest oration Governor of the Isle of Wight, 
The commission previously given him by Monk for 
that government may possibly have been renewed 
temporarily under the royal authority. But there is 
no doubt that the second Lord Colepepper was 
appointed Governor of the Isle of Wight in 1662, on 
the surrender of the Earl of Portland's patent from 
Charles the First. 1 An act granting a supply for the 
disbanding of the army had received the royal assent 
before the adjournment, at the same time as the Act 
of Pardon and Indemnity ; and Cooper soon ceased 
to hold a cavalry colonelcy. 

When the Convention Parliament met again in 
November, the two questions which chiefly engaged its 
attention were revenue and the Church. The House 
of Commons had already agreed, before the adjourn- 

1 Lord Campbell erroneously states that Cooper was made Lord 
Lieutenant of Dorsetshire at this period. He never obtained this 
office. In "Rawleigh Redivivus" it is said that he received it in 
1672, but this is a mistake. 



250 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

ment, to a vote to settle a revenue of 1,200,OOOZ. a 
year on the King for his life. The ways and means 
were now to be provided ; these were derived from 
an increase of excise duties, an increased tax on wine 
licences, and the post-office. The Court of Wards and 
all military tenures of knight-service were abolished, 
and the King was recompensed for the loss of revenue 
from the Court of Wards with one-half of the new 
excise duties. In the passing of this measure Cooper 
had a part. " Sir A. A. Cooper spoke against the 
Court of Wards and for the excise." l He had suffered 
grievously in youth from the Court of Wards. 

As regards the Church, a measure was passed without 
difficulty for restoring to their livings such of the 
ejected Episcopal clergymen as were still alive, and for 
confirming Presbyterian incumbents in all cases where 
the ejected clergyman was dead, or where the actual 
incumbent had been presented on a legal vacancy. 
But though this measure was now passed without 
difficulty, the next Parliament refused to confirm it; 
and the Act of Uniformity made general havoc with 
the Presbyterian clergymen whose titles were thus 
legalized. The Presbyterian party had high hopes, 
immediately after the Eestoration, of such a settlement 
of the Church establishment as would be agreeable to 
their own views of discipline and economy ; and a bill 
for this purpose was early introduced under the title 
of " An Act for the maintenance of the true Eeformed 
Protestant Church and for the suppression of Popery, 
superstition, profaneness, and other disorders and inno- 

1 Extract from MS. Diary in Parl. Hist. iv. 148, November 21. 



1660. DEBATES ON KELIGION. 251 

vations in worship and ceremonies." On the sixth of 
July this bill was read a second time, and referred to 
a Committee of the whole House, which was ordered 
to meet for matters of religion every Monday. The 
difficulty of reconciling the views of the royalist Episco- 
palians with those of the Presbyterian party, by which 
this bill had been brought forward, soon became appa- 
rent ; and the result of the deliberations in Grand 
Committee was to adjourn the Committee for three 
months and recommend an address to the Crown, 
desiring his Majesty to call a number of divines to 
advise with him on matters of religion. Brief reports 
of two discussions on this bill in Committee of the 
whole House are given in the Parliamentary History 
from the Diary already mentioned ; and in one of 
them Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper appears urging the 
postponement of the question : " Sir A. A. Cooper said, 
our religion was too much mixed with interest, neither 
was it ripe enough now to handle that subject, and 
moved that this debate be now laid aside, and the 
whole Committee adjourned for three months." After 
a long debate, which lasted till the very unusual hour 
of ten at night, the Committee having " sat an hour 
in the dark before candles were suffered to be brought 
in, and then they were twice blown out, but the third 
time they were preserved, though with great disorder," 
the vote which has been mentioned, and for which 
Cooper spoke, was come to. 1 The King now called 
a meeting of Episcopal and Presbyterian divines ; and 

1 Parl. Hist. iv. 79, 82, July 9 and 16. There is clearly some 
mistake in the Parliamentary History in giving the same vote as 
carried at the end of both these debates. 



252 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. VIII. 

a Declaration, drawn by Hyde, was submitted to them 
and issued during the recess, well adapted for con- 
ciliation of the Presbyterians. But the Declaration was 
necessarily provisional and subject to the future deci- 
sion of Parliament ; and it further avowed the King's 
intention of submitting the Liturgy of the old Church 
to revision by a synod equally composed of Episco- 
palian and Presbyterian divines, and of asking the 
advice of Convocation on all matters of ceremony and 
discipline with a view to future legislation. It also 
repeated the promise contained in the Declaration from 
Breda of "liberty to tender consciences, and that no 
man should be disquieted or called in question for 
differences of opinion in matters of religion, which do 
not disturb the peace of the kingdom;" with the addi- 
tion, also contained in the Declaration from Breda, 
which implied the necessity of legislative sanction, that 
" we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parlia- 
ment as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to 
us for the full granting of that indulgence." The 
Declaration gave high satisfaction to the Presbyterians : 
Dr. Keynolds, a leading Presbyterian divine, imme- 
diately after accepted the bishopric of Norwich ; 
Eichard Baxter refused indeed a bishopric, but seri- 
ously considered the proposal. When the Parliament 
re-assembled in November, the House of Commons 
immediately thanked the King by acclamation ; but 
an attempt made by Presbyterian members to pass 
an Act confirming the Declaration was not successful. 
This bill was opposed by the Government, and also 
by some Presbyterian members, among others Serjeant 



1660. DISSOLUTION OF CONVENTION PARLIAMENT. 253 

Maynard; and it was rejected on the second reading 
by a majority of twenty-six. It is difficult to elicit 
from the scanty and somewhat confused information 
which exists what were the exact reasons for rejec- 
tion of this bill ; but some members appear to have 
stated that it went further than the 'Declaration, and 
others urged waiting for a synod, as had been intended 
in the Declaration. 1 The King's government probably 
opposed the bill with the intention of consulting Con- 
vocation, and with the desire, through the constitutional 
mediation of that body and of a legal Parliament, to 
give legal effect hereafter to the various conciliatory 
concessions of the Declaration. The King himself 
seems really to have desired an extension of the basis 
of Church communion so as to comprehend the Pres- 
byterians and a general toleration of other sects, 
including Eoman Catholics. 

This Convention Parliament was dissolved on the 
twenty-seventh of December. It was "beginning," 
says Pepys, " to grow factious." 2 There had been, 
a fortnight before, a debate on grievances raised by 
Sir Walter Erie on a money-bill, according to old 
custom. " Sir Walter Erie moved to do somewhat for 
the good of the people, in lieu of those great payments, 
and complained of some disorders in the army. He 
said that soldiers had come into some houses he knew 
of, and, calling the people ' Eoundheads,' had done 
much mischief." Sir John Northcote seconded the 
motion. Colonel King, Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Bamp- 

1 Parl. Hist. iv. 141, 152, November 6 and 28. 
9 Pepys's Diary, i. 169. 



254 LIFE OF SHAFTESBTJKY. CHAP. VIII. 

field complained of the power of Lord Lieutenants. 
Sir George Booth complained of great abuses abroad. 
Here was an array of old Presbyterian members 
grumbling already. Sir Heneage Finch, Colonel Charles 
Howard, and other ministerial members, urged that 
the remedy would be the settlement of the militia ; 
a bill proposed for this purpose had been rejected. 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper appeared also in defence 
of the King's government. "Those things," he said, 
" had no approbation from his Majesty, but checks ; 
and he moved for a law to know how to walk by 
a rule, but to pass over such things as could not be 
justified." l 

i Tarl. Hist. iv. 160162, December 13. 



CHAPTER IX. 

16611664. 

Meeting of new Parliament Cooper made Lord Ashley at the Corona- 
tion Appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Under Treasurer 
Violent policy of the new Parliament The Corporation, 
Uniformity, and Militia Acts Lord Ashley's opposition to these 
measures The King and Clarendon endeavour to check the violence 
of the High Church party Bill for confirming Presbyterian 
ministers in vacant livings Dispensing clause proposed in the 
Uniformity Bill by Clarendon on the King's recommendation 
Refused by the Lords Charles promises a three months' suspension 
of the Act of Uniformity, but cannot fulfil his promise King's 
marriage Sale of Dunkirk King's Declaration of Indulgence, 
December 26, 1662, advised by Bennet, Bristol, and Lord Ashley 
Dispensing Bill presented to House of Lords by Lord Roberts by 
the King's desire Lord Ashley warmly supports the Bill 
Clarendon opposes it Despatches of the French Ambassador, 
M. de Comminges Clarendon's inaccuracies The Dispensing Bill 
dropped Proclamation for banishing Jesuits and Roman Catholic 
priests Conventicle Act Lord Ashley grows in favour with the 
King His ability and influence Bristol's attack on Clarendon 
Lord Ashley and others work against Clarendon with encourage- 
ment 'from the King Testimonies to Lord Ashley's assiduity and 
ability. 

THE Convention Parliament having been dissolved, a 
new Parliament was immediately called. This met for 
the first time on the eighth of May, 1661, and con- 
tinued in existence for eighteen years. 

When the new Parliament assembled, Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper was no longer a commoner. He had, 
within the preceding month, on the occasion of the 
Coronation, been raised to the Upper House with the 
title of Baron Ashley of Wimborne St. Giles. This 



256 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. VIII. 

was one of several honours conferred at the same time 
on Boyalists and on old adversaries who had obtained 
the King's pardon and favour. Of the former class, 
Hyde, who had previously been created Baron Hyde, 
was promoted to be Earl of Clarendon; Lord Capel, 
for his father's services and death, was raised to be 
Earl of Essex ; Sir John Grenville was created Viscount 
Lansdowne and Earl of Bath ; Lord Brudenell was 
made Earl of Cardigan, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis 
Baron Cornwallis. The old adversaries who had con- 
tributed to effect the Kestoration now rewarded were, 
Charles Howard, who became Earl of Carlisle ; Arthur 
Annesley, who had lately inherited the Irish peerage 
of Viscount Valentia, Earl of Anglesea ; Crewe, Baron 
Crewe ; Holies, Baron Holies ; Sir Horatio Townshend, 
Baron Townshend ; Sir George Booth, Baron Delamere ; 
and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley. 1 

A few days after the meeting of Parliament, on the 
thirteenth of May, Lord Ashley was appointed Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer and Under Treasurer. The 
place of Chancellor of the Exchequer had been held up 
to this time by Clarendon, and the duties of Under 
Treasurer had been discharged by the Lord Treasurer, 

1 Lord Campbell says that Shaftesbury always took to himself the 
whole merit of the Restoration, representing Monk as his tool, and "in 
the preamble to his patent of peerage he introduced a statement that 
this ' happy event was chiefly brought about by the efforts of our right 
trusty and well-beloved Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. ' " There is no 
such passage in the patent. The following is a correct translation of 
an extract from the patent : " After very many endeavours of bringing 
a remedy to these evils, undertaken with as much prudence as 
possible, at length by his counsels, in concert with our beloved and 
faithful George Monk, knight, c., &c. he did a service worthy to be 
remembered, and most grateful to us, in the great business of restoring 
us to our kingdom, and delivering his country from the bitter servitude 
under which it so long groaned. " 



1661. NEW HOUSE OF COMMONS. 257 

the Earl of Southampton, in pursuance of letters patent, 
specially authorizing him to discharge them. Lord 
Ashley probably owed this appointment in some measure 
to his connexion by marriage with the Earl of South- 
ampton : his wife was Lord Southampton's niece. 1 Lord 
Ashley held the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer 
until he was made Lord Chancellor in November 1672. 
He ceased to be Under Treasurer when, after Lord 
Southampton's death, the Treasury was put into com- 
mission in 1667, he himself, as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, being one of the Commissioners. 

The new House of Commons, elected while the 
nation's fit of exuberant revived loyalty was not yet 
over, presented a large majority of enthusiastic Eoyalists 
and High Churchmen. They began by voting that the 
League and Covenant, and the Acts for erecting a High 
Court of Justice for the trial of Charles Stuart, for sub- 
scribing the Engagement, for establishing a Common- 
wealth, and for renouncing the title of the present King, 
and for security of the Protector's person, should be 
burnt by the common hangman in Westminster Hall. 
They required every member to take the Sacrament 
kneeling. They restored the bishops to the House of 
Lords. They passed an Act for the punishment of 
any one who should call the King a heretic or papist, 
or should assert either that the Long Parliament was 
not dissolved or that Parliament possessed legislative 

1 Lady Ashley, the third wife, married in 1656 (see p. 121), was 
daughter of Lord Spencer of Wormleighton, by Penelope, sister of the 
Earl of Southampton. Mr. Hallam has made a mistake in speaking 
of Sir Philip Warwick as Chancellor of the Exchequer ; he held the 
subordinate office of Secretary of the Lord Treasurer. (Const. Hist. ii. 
423, note.) 

VOL. I. S 



258 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

authority independently of the King. They also passed 
an Act declaring the sole right of governing the militia 
to be in the King. Old royalists were in ecstacies. A 
few days after the meeting of the Parliament, Daniel 
O'Neil, an old servant of the King, wrote to Archbishop 
Bramhall. " The Parliament will settle the militia upon 
the King and his heirs, a step never yet made towards 
the perpetual peace of these nations. In a word, there 
is nothing relative to the good of the kingdom and his 
Majesty's satisfaction but this Parliament is prepared to 
do." * But moderate men, who desired conciliation and 
tranquillity, shook their heads. Eoger Pepys, member 
for Cambridge town, told his relative the diarist that 
things were basely carried on in Parliament by the 
young men, that did labour to oppose all things that 
were moved by serious men. " They are the most pro- 
fane swearing fellows that ever he heard in his life, 
which makes him think they will spoil all, and bring 
things into a war again if they can." 2 

Three measures of the utmost practical importance, 
and containing much mischief, were passed in the first 
session of this Parliament, which lasted, with an inter- 
vening adjournment from July till November, until 
May 1662. These measures were : 

1. The Act for the government of Corporations, 
which appointed commissioners empowered to remove 
all officers in corporations at their discretion, and re- 
quired all who were retained, or who were hereafter 
appointed, to renounce the League and Covenant as 

1 Eawdon Papers, p. 150, May 23, 1661. 

2 Pepys's Diary, i. 212, July 31, 1661. 



1662. ACT OF UNIFORMITY. 259 

an unlawful oath, take the oaths of allegiance and 
supremacy, and declare on oath their belief of the 
unlawfulness of taking up arms against the King on 
any pretence whatever, and their abhorrence of the 
traitorous doctrine that arms may be taken up by his 
authority, against his person or against those com- 
missioned by him ; and which also provided with regard 
to future officers, that no man should be eligible who 
had not within the year before his election taken the 
Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of 
England. By this Act, all Dissenters from the Church 
were excluded from municipal offices: 

2. The Act of Uniformity, which enacted that the 
Book of Common Prayer and of Ordination of Ministers, 
as revised by the Convocation in a spirit anything but 
favourable to Nonconformists, should be used in all 
places of public worship, and that all beneficed clergy- 
men should, on some Sunday before the feast of St 
Bartholomew, August 24, in 1662, read the service 
from it, and at the close of the service declare their 
" unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained 
and prescribed in it," on pain of deprivation ; that no 
person should administer the Sacrament or hold eccle- 
siastical preferment who had not received episcopal 
ordination ; and that all incumbents, dignitaries, officers 
in universities, public schoolmasters, and even private 
tutors, should subscribe a renunciation of the Covenant 
and a declaration of the unlawfulness of taking up 
arms against the Sovereign, the same tests as had been 
inserted in the Corporation Act. Here, then, was a sad 
substitute for that Act for confirming the King's 

s2 



260 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. I XI 

gracious Declaration of October 1660, which had nearly 
been passed by the Convention Parliament; rigorous 
exclusion took the place of conciliation and com- 
prehension : 

3. The Act for ordering of the military forces, which 
enjoined on all lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, 
and all officers and soldiers, the same tests as were 
contained in the Corporation and Uniformity Acts, 
excepting the renunciation of the Covenant. 

There was a more vigorous opposition to these Acts 
in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons. 
In the Upper House much opposition was offered, 
though unsuccessfully, by a small band of noblemen 
of the old Presbyterian party, including Lord Ashley, 
and reinforced by the Earl of Southampton. Lord 
Ashley is stated by Mr. Martyn, probably on the 
authority of that portion of Stringer's manuscript 
which cannot now be found, to have argued strongly 
and wisely against the Corporation Bill : 

" Lord Ashley set forth the ill consequences of the 
bill in various instances ; viz. the injustice it might 
do to the wealthiest, the most able, and the most 
conscientious members of their respective corpora- 
tions; the fixing these in the hands of perhaps the 
most profligate persons in them, at least the dividing 
of the people into parties; and he showed that, as it 
would be a restraint upon those who had a regard 
to their oaths and their country, it was the most 
effectual method which could be contrived for lodging 
the executive power of the Government in the hands 
of such persons as could make no difficulty of sub- 



1662. OPPOSES BILLS AGAINST DISSENTERS. 261 

jecting the whole nation to an absolute tyranny of 
both Church and State." 1 

Of the Uniformity Bill Mr. Martyn states that " the 
Earl of Southampton and Lord Ashley were remarkably 
strenuous against several clauses, and the former, being 
told that it was believed he had spoken three hundred 
times against the bill, answered that he was so firmly 
persuaded of the fatal consequences of it, that he would 
have spoken three hundred times more to have pre- 
vailed." And again, it is stated by the same writer 
that the Earl of Southampton and Lord Ashley, with 
others, warmly opposed the Militia Act. 2 These state- 
ments of Mr. Martyn as to Lord Ashley's opposition 
to the measures of 1662 are generally confirmed by 
the well-known and valuable pamphlet bearing the 
title of a " Letter from a Person of Quality to a Friend 
in the Country," published in 1676, which is printed in 
Locke's Works, but which is without doubt erroneously 
ascribed to Locke. 3 They are further confirmed by 

i Martyn's Life, i. 255. 2 Ibid. pp. 260, 262. 

3 I make this assertion positively, on the authority of an unpublished 
letter of Locke in the possession of Mr. E. A. Sanford of Nynehead 
Court, Somersetshire, from which Mr. Sanford has kindly given me 
permission to print an extract. Locke's letter is addressed to the 
Earl of Pembroke, and was written December 8, 1684, soon after he 
was deprived of his studentship in Christchurch, Oxford. " I have 
often wondered, in the way that I lived and the make I knew myself of, 
how it could come to pass that I was made the author of so many 
pamphlets, unless it was because I of all my Lord's [Shaftesbury's] 
family happened to have been most bred amongst books. This opinion 
of me I thought time and the contradictions it carried with it would 
have cured, and that the most suspicious would at last have been 
weary of imputing to me writings whose matter and style have, I 
believe (for pamphlets have been laid to me which I have never seen), 
been so very different that it was hard to think they should have the 
same author, though a much abler man than me. . . . And it is a 
very odd fate that I did get the reputation of no small writer without 
having done anything for it. For I think two or three copies of verses 



262 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

the whole tenour of Shaftesbury's subsequent political 
life. 

The violent legislation of the High Church and 
Royalist party was displeasing to Charles, who felt 
that his promises from Breda were substantially, if 
not literally, broken ; and it was displeasing also, though 
perhaps in a less degree, to his honest but prejudiced 
adviser, Clarendon. The opposition made, before the 
Act of Uniformity was passed, to the confirma- 
tion of the Act of the Convention Parliament for 
confirming Presbyterian ministers in vacant livings 
was strongly resented by both King and Chancellor, 
and no historian has done justice to this conduct. The 
following is from a letter written by Doctor, after- 
wards Sir Peter, Pett to Archbishop Bramhall, on the 
eighth of February, 1662: 

" There have been great animosities lately, and heats 
in the House of Lords, about the bill for the confirma- 
tion of ministers that passed in the last Parliament 
in England, save only as to those livings where Lords 
had the jus patronatus, which the Commons in this 
Parliament would have had the Lords join with them 
in exploding. At first all the bishops in the House 
of Lords were against it, and most of the Protestant 
lords temporal. But my Lord Chancellor was resolved 
to oblige the Presbyterians by keeping the Act from 
being repealed, and at last got seven of the bishops to 
join with him, five of which I have not forgot the 
names of, and they were the Bishops of London, Nor- 

of mine published with my name to them have not gained me that 
reputation. Bating these, I do solemnly protest in the presence of 
God that I am not the author, not only of any libel, but not of any 
pamphlet or treatise whatever in part good, bad, or indifferent." 



1662. KING'S DISPENSING CLAUSE. 263 

wich, Exeter, Lincoln, Worcester. 1 The Duke of York 
was likewise brought over by his father-in-law, and the 
Earl of Bristol was v Jiement in the thing, and all the 
Popish lords. The Presbyterian ministers sent Calamy, 
Baxter, and Bates, that day to the Chancellor to give 
him thanks. Some of the Commons, going to the 
King' the day before to desire him to express himself 
positively against the confirmation of the ministers, 
he said he had promised them at Breda the continuance 
in their livings; whereupon they said that the Com- 
mons might possibly, many of them, be tempted not to 
pass the bill intended for enlarging of his revenue, if 
his Majesty would favour the confirmation of the Pres- 
byterian ministers ; to whom the King answered that, 
if he had not wherewith to subsist two days, he would 
trust God Almighty's providence rather than break his 
word." 2 

These facts, which rest on unexceptionable authority, 
place the conduct of the King and of Clarendon in a 
new light, and are much to their credit. But they did 
not succeed in procuring confirmation of the Act. 

Again, no historian has noticed the fact that a very 
earnest effort was made by the King and Clarendon, 
while the Bill of Uniformity was in the Lords, to 
introduce a clause enabling the King to dispense 
with its provisions. Such a clause was presented by 
Clarendon to the House of Lords on March 17, as 
" recommended from the King." 2 Notice was taken the 
next day of this recommendation, probably by Bristol, 
as an infringement of the privilege of Parliament, but 

1 These five bishops were Sheldon, Reynolds, Ward, Sanderson, 
and Moiiey. 

2 Rawdon Papers, p. 137. 



264 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. IX. 

a motion made for a resolution saving the privilege of 
the House was negatived. The bill was recommitted 
on the nineteenth, with a reference to the Committee 
of "the proviso sent from the King." But the Com- 
mittee did not adopt the clause. Archbishop Bram- 
hall's correspondent, Sir Peter Pett, and Pepys, both 
mention Clarendon's eagerness in advocating this clause, 
which was violently opposed by Bristol. 1 The Duke 
of York warmly supported Clarendon. " The Presby- 
terians and other "Nonconformists," says Pett, "would, 
as I am credibly informed by a knowing person, have 
offered to the King as great a revenue for their tolera- 
tion as he will have from chimneys, if the aforesaid 
proviso would have passed among the Lords and 
Commons and had the royal assent." It is strange 
that Clarendon in his " Life " makes no mention of this 
memorable incident. 

The. Act of Uniformity received the royal assent 
on the nineteenth of May, 1662. Three months only 
remained for the Presbyterian clergy to make their 
choice between conformity and loss of their prefer- 
ments. An attempt was made in the interval to work 
on the King to obtain by proclamation, or by order of 
the Privy Council, or in some other way, some relief 
from the provisions of the Act, or at least an extension 
of time. Charles promised a three months' suspension 
of the Act ; but he was unable to fulfil his promise. 
The bishops denied his power to suspend, and declared 

1 Rawdon Papers, pp. 141, 143 ; Pepys's Diary, i. 336, March 21, 
1662. This clause, the terms of which have not before been published, 
is printed from the Rolls of the House of Lords in the Appendix VI. 
It is not given in the Lords' Journals. 



1662. KING'S DECLARATION. 265 

that they must and would execute the Act. Monk and 
Manchester, on this occasion, warmly urged the sus- 
pension prayed by the Presbyterian ministers, but they 
were overruled by Clarendon and the King's other 
Eoyalist advisers, and especially by the zeal of Bishop 
Sheldon. 1 When St. Bartholomew's Day came, two 
thousand Presbyterian clergymen obeyed conscience 
and quitted the Church. 

After the close of the session of 1662 came two 
events of importance, with neither of which, however, 
was Lord Ashley specially connected, the King's 
marriage with the Princess Catharine of Portugal, by 
which Bombay and Tangier became British possessions ; 
and the sale of Dunkirk to France, from want of money, 
for four hundred thousand pounds. In October, Sir 
Henry Bennet, better known by the title which he 
afterwards acquired of Earl of Arlington, replaced 
Nicholas as Secretary of State, and Bennet's influence 
soon became prejudicial to the supremacy of Clarendon. 

Under the influence of Bennet, Bristol, and Ashley, 
the King issued, on the twenty-sixth of December, 1662, 
while Parliament was not sitting, an important declara- 
tion as to the Act of Uniformity. He declared his 
desire to exempt from its penalties " those who, living 
peaceably, do not conform themselves thereunto through 
scruple and tenderness of misguided conscience, but 
modestly and without scandal perform their devotions 
in their own way," and, " without invading the freedom 
of Parliament, to incline their wisdom next approach- 

1 Burnet's Own Time, i. 331 ; Pepys's Diary, ii. 30, Sept. 3, 1662 ; 
Clarendon's Continuation of Life, i. 159. 



266 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

ing session to concur with him in making some such 
Act for that purpose as may enable him to exercise 
with a more universal satisfaction that power of dis- 
pensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." 
This was intended for the benefit of Eoman Catholics 
as well as Protestant Nonconformists, and so was pro- 
moted by Bristol, who had opposed the dispensing 
clause proposed to be inserted in the bill. Bennet 
wrote to the Duke of Ormond that this Declaration, 
before it was published, was read twice over to Claren- 
don, who not only approved, but applauded it. Claren- 
don, however, also wrote to Ormond to deny this 
statement. 1 It was not his act, he said, and he would 
have nothing to do with it. 

On the meeting of Parliament in February 1663, a 
bill was immediately presented to the House of Lords, 
not by Clarendon, but by Lord Koberts, the Lord Privy 
Seal, bearing the title, " An Act concerning His Majesty's 
Power in Ecclesiastical Affairs," which was to enable 
the King by letters patent under the Great Seal, or in 
such other way as he might think fit, to dispense with 
the Act of Uniformity, and " with any other laws or 
statutes concerning the same or requiring oaths or 
subscriptions, or which do enjoin conformity to the 
order, discipline, and worship established in the Church 
of England, and the penalties in the said laws imposed, 
or any of them." 2 The High Church party in the 
House of Commons were no less eager to denounce 

1 See the two letters of Bennet and Clarendon in vol. iii. of Lister's 
Life of Clarendon, pp. 231 233. 

2 The bill is printed for the first time in the Appendix VI. from 
the Bolls of the House of Lords. 



1663. LORD EOBERTS'S DISPENSING BILL. 267 

the Declaration of December ; and on the very day on 
which Lord Eoberts's bill was read a second time in 
the House of Lords, the Commons voted an address to 
the King, strongly deprecating the passage in his 
Declaration which proposed indulgence to Noncon- 
formists. The Lords, having procured a list of all eccle- 
siastical laws which might be dispensed with under 
the measure introduced by Lord Koberts, adopted, on 
the fifth of March, a resolution restricting the opera- 
tion of the bill to the Act of Uniformity. The bill was 
ultimately dropped. It was opposed by Southampton 
and Clarendon, and zealously supported by Lord Ashley. 
The account given by Clarendon in his " Life," of the 
proceedings in the House of Lords with reference to 
this bill, is inaccurate ; and, though there is no doubt 
that he was against the bill, his opposition in the 
House of Lords does not appear to have been nearly so 
strong as he represents it. The correspondence of the 
French ambassador, the Count de Comminges, contains 
some reliable particular information. The Count wrote, 
on March 9, that Clarendon had excused himself from 
attending the House of Lords on account of illness, 
that it was thought he would not go again until 
matters were satisfactorily arranged, and that he had 
wished to be absent from deference to the King's 
opinions in favour of the bill, which he could not 
advocate without injury to his conscience. On March 
12, Comminges writes that the Chancellor had been 
that day to the House of Lords and obtained a month's 
delay for the bill, which would give time for the 
arrangement of the matter. " He appeared," says the 



268 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

Count, " to take no side in the matter ; lie managed 
well his master's reputation, the designs of the Parlia- 
ment, and his own conscience, which he believes con- 
cerned." 1 On this day, the twelfth, the Lords went 
into committee on the bill ; and also on the day follow- 
ing, when the Grand Committee, or Committee of the 
whole House, appointed a sub-committee, after which 
there is no further mention of the bill. This tallies well 
enough with the statement of Comminges. Clarendon 
most incorrectly says, in his "Life," that the bill was 
never committed ; that indeed " it was agreed there 
should be no question put for the commitment, which 
was the most civil way of rejecting it, and left it to be 
no more called for." The bill had been ordered to 
be committed on the twenty-fifth of February; the 
Lords went into Committee of the whole House upon it, 
the Lord Chamberlain (Manchester) being appointed 
Chairman, on the twenty-seventh, and again on March 
5, 6, 12, and 13. On April 9 Comminges wrote that 
" Clarendon, who had acquired great credit in the 
House of Commons at the beginning of the session by 
his opposition to the bill, has now almost quite lost 
it by the ambiguous manner in which he has twice 
lately spoken: his friends lose heart, and his enemies 
decry him to the King." 

Of Lord Ashley's vigorous support of the bill there 
is no doubt. Mr. Martyn gives a short account of his 
arguments : 

" Lord Ashley took notice of the fatal consequences 

1 Archives of French Foreign Office. 



1603. SUPPORTS DISPENSING BILL. 269 

of the Act of Uniformity ; that by it great numbers of 
ministers were reduced to beggary ; that many Pro- 
testants were running into other countries, to the pre- 
judice of trade and the dishonour of the kingdom; 
that the Reformers in King Edward the Sixth's reign 
had acted in a different manner ; for they had, like wise 
and good men, contrived the doctrine and discipline of 
the Church so as to enlarge the terms of communion ; 
that they had set open the doors, and by gentle means 
persuaded and invited all they could into the Church, 
thinking that the enlargement of their body would 
redound to the honour of their religion." 1 

Clarendon represents Lord Ashley as the keenest and 
ablest supporter of the bill. 

" The Lord Privy Seal," he says, " either upon the 
observation of the countenance of the House or adver- 
tisement of his friends, or unwilling to venture his 
reputation in the enterprise, had given over the game 
the first day, and now spoke not at all ; but the Lord 
Ashley adhered firmly to his point, spake often and 
with great sharpness of wit, and had a cadence in his 
words and pronunciation that drew attention. He said, 
it was the King's misfortune that a matter of so great 
concernment to him, and such a prerogative as it may 
be would be found to be inherent in him without any 
declaration of Parliament, should be supported only by 
such weak men as himself, who served his Majesty at a 
distance, while the great officers of the Crown thought 
fit to oppose it; which he more wondered at because 
nobody knew more than they the King's unshakeable 
firmness in his religion, that had resisted and vanquished 
so many great temptations, and therefore he could not 

, * Martyn's Life, i. 285. 



270 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

be thought unworthy of a greater trust with reference 
to it than he would have by this bill." 1 

The bill, as has been said, was shelved in Committee, 
and this fresh endeavour of the King to procure tolera- 
tion led to fresh measures of severity. The two Houses 
voted an Address to the King for a proclamation for the 
banishment of Jesuits and Eoman Catholic priests, and 
the King assented to their prayer. A severe measure 
against Dissenters' meetings for prayers was introduced, 
and became a law in the following session of 1664. 
This Act, commonly known as the Conventicle Act, 
declared all meetings of more than five, besides members 
of the family, for any religious purpose not according to 
the Book of Common Prayer, to be seditious and un- 
lawful conventicles, and punished attendance at such 
meetings by a fine of five pounds or three months' 
imprisonment for the first offence, a fine of ten pounds 
or six months' imprisonment for the second, a fine of 
a hundred pounds or transportation for seven years for 
the third, and added a hundred pounds to the fine for 
every offence after the third. One of Clarendon's many 
inaccuracies is a statement that the Conventicle Act 
was one of the reasons why Bennet and Ashley urged 
the bill for indulgence brought in by Lord Eoberts. 2 
This Conventicle Act was a subsequent measure, passed 
a year later. 

The failure of the bill which Lord Eoberts had in- 
troduced by the King's desire caused Charles much 
disappointment, and sensibly estranged him from Cla- 

i Clarendon's Continuation of Life, p. 247. 2 Ibid. p. 245. 



1663. LOKD ASHLEY'S FAVOUR AND REPUTE. 271 

rendon and the bishops. Lord Ashley rose in favour 
and influence with the King. Clarendon mentions that 
Lord Ashley and Lord Eoberts were now called to attend 
the meetings of the Cabinet. Pepys, whose political 
gossip is always valuable, records on May 15, 1663 : 
" It seems the present favourites now are my Lord 
Bristol, Duke of Buckingham, Sir H. Bennet, my Lord 
Ashley, and Sir Charles Berkeley, who among them 
have cast my Lord Chancellor upon his back, past ever 
getting up again." And he goes on to speak of Lord 
Ashley in particular. " Strange to hear how my Lord 
Ashley, by my Lord Bristol's means (he being brought 
over to the Catholic party against the bishops, whom he 
hates to the death, and publicly rails against them, not 
that he is become a Catholic, but merely opposes the 
bishops), is got into favour, so much that, being a man 
of great business and yet of pleasure and drolling too, 
he, it is thought, will be made Lord Treasurer on the 
death or removal of the good old man." The " good old 
man" was Southampton. Clarendon was not yet fallen 
past rising again, and it will be seen that he and Ashley 
came to be on cordial terms before Clarendon's fall, more 
than four years afterwards. The Count de Comminges 
also notices Lord Ashley's growing reputation, and his 
present antagonism to Clarendon. He thus wrote, April 
9, 1663 : " Lord Ashley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
who was formerly of Cromwell's Council, and who in my 
opinion is the only man who can be set against Cla- 
rendon for talent and firmness, does not shrink from 
speaking his opinions of Clarendon with freedom, and 
contradicting him to his face. He has gone so far that 



272 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

he has made the King perceive that Clarendon's alliance 
with the Duke of York was very prejudicial to him, and 
as he is very acute and a very good courtier, and is 
perfectly well in the King's graces, it is suspected with 
sufficient probability that Lord Bristol and Secretary 
Bennet and Morrice and all the rest of that clique may 
well give trouble to the Chancellor, and place him in a 
disagreeable position." 

A foolish and violent attempt of Bristol to impeach 
Clarendon for high treason, made in the House of Lords 
towards the close of the session of 1663, tended to 
Bristol's own injury, and to the revival for a time of 
Clarendon's influence. Bristol's charges were referred 
by the Lords to the Judges, who advised that his pro- 
ceeding was irregular, and that the charges did not 
involve treason. The King sent a message to the Lords, 
in which he stated that Bristol's charges against the 
Chancellor contained several statements which he knew 
of his own knowledge to be untrue, and many scan- 
dalous reflections on himself and his relations which he 
regarded as libels against his person and government. 
The King banished Bristol from his presence. Lord 
Ashley appears to have taken part in a discussion on 
the opinion given by the Judges in order to maintain 
that the Judges' opinion was not a law for the Lords, 
but only advice and information ; " and this," says 
Pepys (mentioning that Lord Ashley told him so), 
" the Lords did concur in." 1 This may have led to his 
being thought to favour Bristol's proceeding against the 
Chancellor, of which there is no direct or better evidence. 

1 Pepys's Diary, iv. 200. 



1664. OPPOSED TO CLAKENDON. 273 

As the next meeting of Parliament drew near, it was 
rumoured that Bristol intended to revive his charges, 
and Pepys was told that Lord Ashley and Lord Lauder- 
dale, the Secretary of State for Scotland, " open high 
against the Chancellor." 1 But the matter was not again 
brought forward. 

M. de Euvigny, who had succeeded the Count de 
Comminges as Trench Ambassador, wrote on February 
4, 1664, that the great enemies of Clarendon were 
Bristol, Lauderdale, and Ashley ; and he adds that Cla- 
rendon's old friend Ormond is joined to them, though 
Clarendon cannot believe it. In a later letter from 
Euvigny it is mentioned that Clarendon had persuaded 
Ormond to come over to London from Ireland, that he 
might converse with him and receive his confidence 
as against " the cabal of Lord Lauderdale, which has 
swindled him (escroque) out of knowledge of all the affairs 
of the kingdom." Euvigny proceeds to say that Lauder- 
dale is " united with Ashley, Lord Eoberts, and some 
others, who spare no pains to ruin Clarendon in the free 
convivial entertainments which are of daily occurrence. 
They do not scruple to speak of him with freedom in 
the presence of the King, who has had his own witticism 
(mot) like the rest in the excitement of conviviality, 
thus giving free scope to all his guests, each of whom 
has spoken part of what was on his mind." 2 

Pepys's description of Lord Ashley as "a man of 
great business, and yet of pleasure and drolling too," 
has been quoted ; and some other notices of him occur 



1 Pepys's Diary, ii. 279, Feb. 1, 1664. 

2 Archives of French Foreign Office. 



VOL. I. 



274 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. IX. 

in Pepys's Diary. Pepys went to him on business on 
the twenty-seventh of May, 1663, and wrote down : " I 
find my Lord, as he is reported, a very ready, quiet, and 
diligent person." The Kussian Minister Eesident took 
as high a measure of him as the French Ambassador, 
Comminges. Pepys writes, June 6, 1663 : " Sir John 
Hebden, the Eussia Eesident, did tell me how he is 
vexed to see things at Court ordered as they are by 
nobody that attends to business, but every man himself 
or his own pleasures. He cries up my Lord Ashley 
to be almost the only man that he sees to look after 
business, and with the ease and mastery that he wonders 
at him." 1 

Lord Ashley had now thrown himself, heart and soul, 
with all the ardour of his nature, into administrative 
duties. His latest biographer, Lord Campbell, unable now 
to taunt him with turbulence, ridicules him for diligence 
and regularity in public business. " After the Eestora- 
tion," says Lord Campbell, "his conduct for the next 
seven 'years seems wholly inexplicable, for he remained 
quite regular, and seemingly contented. He had a little 
excitement by sitting as a Judge on the trial of the regi- 
cides, and joining in the sentence on some of his old 
associates. These trials being over, he seemed to sink 
down into a Treasury drudge." The duties of a 
Chancellor of the Exchequer two hundred years ago 
may not have been so numerous and arduous as now ; 
but the office was a high office of state, and the station 
of Privy Councillor was one of greater responsibility 
and dignity than it is in the present day. To speak 

1 Pepys's Diary, ii. 169. 



16G4. DILIGENCE IN OFFICE. 275 

contumeliously of Shaftesbury as a mere Treasury 
drudge, because, with brilliant talents, he was a 
laborious Chancellor of the Exchequer, is unworthy of 
a serious biographer. 1 

1 Two letters of this period written to Lord Ashley, preserved 
among Lord Shaftesbury's papers, may be printed here. The first is 
from the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, soliciting his good offices for 
a pension : her mother, the ex-Queen of Bohemia, aunt of Charles II., 
had died in London in February 1662. The Princess had entered the 
Protestant nunnery of Herfort or Herworden in Prussia, and she became 
ultimately its Abbess. 

"Herf&rt, Sept. 13, 1662. 

"MY LORD, The kindness you have expressed to the Queen my 
mother, and my brothers, since their being in England, makes me hope 
you will continue the like to me, in reference of the pension which his 
Majesty has been pleased to confirm upon me, there being none of her 
Majesty's children at the present more in need of this benefit than 
myself, nor anybody in the world that shall be more sensible of your 
goodness and more desirous to appear, 

"My Lord, 
"Your affectionate friend to serve you, 

"ELISABETH. 
" For the Lord Ashley Cooper, 

Chancellor of the Exchequer to His Majesty at London." 

The other letter is from the Secretary, Sir Henry Bennet, soon to be 
made Lord Arlington, praying Lord Ashley's aid for confirmation of a 
possession, the King having, it appears, been bribed with a share in 
the property ; and Shaftesbury has docketed this letter, " Papers for my 
justification." Shaftesbury declared always that he had never jobbed for 
grants for himself ; and this declaration has never been discredited. 

" MY LOKD, I have sought your Lordship this day to beseech you 
to move in the House of Lords the obtaining an order for the quiet 
possession of Wildmore Fen to the proprietors, wherein his Majesty 
hath accepted of a share, and upon the same account to procure my 
Lord Treasurer to be favourable to it ; and this to be done to-morrow, 
if Mr. Attorney be present, otherwise that your Lordship would defer 
it till another day. 

" I am, my Lord, 
" Your Lordship's most humble servant, 

" HENRY BENNET. 
"May 11, 1663." 



CHAPTEE X. 

16641667. 

Lord Ashley's position at the beginning of 1664 Attention to revenue 
and trade Dutch war Opposed by Clarendon, Southampton, and 
Ormond and supported probably by Ashley Appointed Treasurer 
of Prizes Clarendon's hostility to the appointment Affectionate 
letter to his wife, February 26, 1665 Grant of Carolina to Lord 
Ashley and seven others The Plague The King visits Lord Ashley 
at Wimborne St. Giles's Session of Parliament at Oxford, Oct- 
ober 1665 Appropriation Clause in Supply Bill unsuccessfully 
opposed by Clarendon and Ashley The Five Mile Act Opposed 
strongly by Southampton and Ashley but prosecuted by Clarendon 
Bill for general imposition of oath against endeavouring change 
in Church or State opposed by Ashley Letter to his wife from 
Oxford, November 23, 1665 Beginning of acquaintance with Locke 
Friendship of Locke and Shaftesbury Session of 1666-67 
Complaints of expenditure and misappropriation Act against 
importation of Irish cattle Supported by Ashley Earl of Ossory's 
insult and apology Discussion with Viscount Conway Rumoured 
possible Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Secret treaty between Louis 
XIV. and Charles II. Dutch fleet enters the Thames and burns three 
men-of-war at Chatham Peace of Breda Death of Earl of South- 
ampton Office of Lord High Treasurer put in commission and Lord 
Ashley one of the Commissioners Clarendon's account of the 
appointment of the Commission Proceedings of the Commis- 
, sioners Sir William Temple and Lady Fanshawe blame Shaftesbury 
for their economies Clarendon removed from the Chancellorship 
Lord Ashley unjustly accused of conspiring against Clarendon 
Opposes the impeachment of Clarendon without specific treason 
assigned and falls into disgrace with the King for supporting 
Clarendon Clarendon's exile Lord Campbell's misstatements 
Charge of licentiousness against Shaftesbury. 

THE end of the last chapter has brought us to the 
beginning of 1664. The subject of this biography is 
now Lord Ashley, a Peer, a Privy Councillor, and Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. His abilities and independence, 



1664. ATTENTION TO REVENUE AND TEADE. 277 

the favour of the King and his intimacy with Arlington, 
Lauderdale, Bristol, and others, who in various ways 
thwarted Clarendon and menaced his ascendancy, have 
made him already formidable to the too jealous and 
imperious Chancellor. In the House of Lords he has 
distinguished himself by strenuous and eloquent oppo- 
sition to all the measures of Church exclusiveness and 
oppression of Protestant Dissenters which were enacted 
after the Eestoration. He was very diligent as a 
Minister, and gave the greatest attention to all matters 
of revenue and trade. Papers of his have been pre- 
served which show his minute care and industry in 
collecting details as to the Exchequer, the customs and 
excise, the navy, the merchant companies, and all 
branches of our trade, manufactures and revenue. 1 In 
the study of details he did not lose sight of principles, 
and some of his views were in advance of the time. 
He was an enemy of monopoly, and said that "the 
restraining of a general trade was like the damming 
of increasing waters, which must either swell them to 
force their boundaries, or cause them to putrefy where 
they are circumscribed." 2 

In the session of Parliament from March 16 to 
May 17, 1664, the Conventicle Act, already men- 
tioned, was passed, 3 the famous Triennial Act of the 
Long Parliament, making a new parliament every three 
years compulsory on the King, was repealed, to please 

1 Martyn's Life, 289293. 

2 Ibid. 292 ; and see in Appendix I. of the second volume Shaftes- 
bury's memorial addressed to the King, probably in 1669, and Mr. 
Martyn's account of his recommendations in 1672 for a Council of 
Trade, paraphrased from a paper of Shaftesbury's. 

3 Seep. 270. 



278 LIFE OP SHAFTESBUKY. CHAP. X. 

Charles, and a report of a Committee on the complaints 
of our merchants against the Dutch, followed by an 
address of both Houses to the King couched in very 
strong language, gave a sanction and intensity to 
national jealousy and irritation, which paved the way 
for the war with the Dutch declared by England in 
the following year. 

It is well ascertained that Clarendon, Southampton, 
Ormond, and other old advisers of Charles were against 
this war, and were overborne by, the popular feeling 
and the warlike animosities of the Duke of York and 
of Monk, Duke of Albemarle. 1 Bristol, Arlington, and 
others, with whom Ashley was latterly more or less 
associated, were promoters of the war; and Sir William 
Coventry, the Secretary of the Duke of York as Lord 
High Admiral, and Clifford, the future Lord Treasurer, 
were conspicuous in the House of Commons for hostility 
to the Dutch. There is no authentic information of 
Ashley's sentiments or line of action. But it may be 
inferred from the opinions of those with whom he was 
now most friendly, and from his zealous attention to 

i M. de Kuvigny wrote, September 12/22, 1664 : " The King, Chan- 
cellor, and Treasurer are against making war, but allow themselves 
to be carried away by the crowd." (Archives of French Foreign Office.) 
In an anonymous memoir on the origin of the war in the same archives, 
which was furnished from England, the Earl of Bristol is said to have 
first recommended the war. It is there said that Bristol having no 
office or hope of any, formed intimate relations with Thurloe, Ashley, 
Trevor and other Cromwellites, the most skilful men in England, and 
that Trmrloe showed Bristol Cromwell's papers, and told him that 
Cromwell had had two great objects, one to make himself King, and 
the other to destroy the power of Holland. Later, it is said in this 
memoir, the Parliament, the City of London, and the Council were for 
the war, but Clarendon, Southampton, and Ormond kept the King in 
suspense ; he was, however, at last carried away, yielding to the im- 
portunities of the Duke of York and of Monk, and goaded by libels 
and insolent discourses of the Dutch. 






1665. APPOINTED TREASURER OF PRIZES. 279 

English trade, that he was, like all the younger 
statesmen, on the side of war. The war, indeed, was 
regarded by the nation, which had become infuriated 
by Dutch insults, injuries, and cruelties to English 
merchants in all parts of the globe, as necessary for 
upholding the honour and preserving the commerce of 
England. 

In a session which began on November 24, 1664, and 
ended on March 2, 1665, the House of Commons 
enthusiastically voted a very liberal supply of two 
millions and a half sterling, and war was declared 
against Holland on February 22, 1665. 

It is the more probable that Lord Ashley was a sup- 
porter of the war with Holland, as, when war was deter- 
mined on, he was appointed by the King, and evidently 
to the great annoyance of Clarendon, Treasurer of Prizes. 
Clarendon says that Ashley's appointment contained a 
proviso that he was to be accountable to the King and 
to no one else, and was to make payments in obedience 
to the King's warrant under his sign manual and by 
no other warrant, and was to be exempt from accounting 
into the Exchequer. To this arrangement Clarendon 
says that he made great opposition, desiring that the 
proceeds of prizes should go into the Exchequer and be 
available solely for the expenses of the war ; but the 
King was immoveable, and Lord Ashley's appointment 
was made as originally proposed. 1 Clarendon's narrative 
of this incident is so obviously tinged by asperity 
towards Ashley, that many of its details must be re- 
garded with distrust ; but his substantial statement 
1 Continuation of Life of Clarendon, 575 581. 



280 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

that the King reserved power over the distribution of 
the proceeds of prizes is correct. 

The following is the substance of what regards Lord 
Ashley in Clarendon's statement about this appoint- 
ment. A servant of Lord Ashley came to him one 
evening with the appointment signed, and desired from 
his master that the Chancellor's seal might be put to it 
that night. Clarendon bade the messenger tell Lord 
Ashley " that he would speak with the King before he 
would seal that grant, and that he desired much to 
speak with himself." The next morning Clarendon 
saw the King, and remonstrated ; he represented the 
proposed proceeding as unprecedented, and as opening 
the way to frauds on the King himself, who would have 
no check if the receivers of prizes were exempted from 
accounting to the Exchequer ; he further described it 
as a slight to the Lord Treasurer, " there being another 
Treasurer much more absolute than himself, and without 
dependence on him." The remonstrance produced no 
effect. "He [Clarendon] found that the King had not 
been surprised in what he had done, which, he said, 
was absolutely in his own power to do, and that it 
would bring prejudice only to himself, which he had 
sufficiently guarded against. However, he seemed 
willing to decline anything that looked like an affront 
to the Treasurer, and therefore was content that the 
sealing it might be suspended till he had further con- 
sidered." Lord Ashley now went to Clarendon, and 
" seemed to take it unkindly that his patent was not 
sealed." Clarendon answered "that he had suspended 
the immediate sealing it for three reasons, whereof one 



1665. TREASUREKSHIP OF PRIZES. 281 

was that he might first speak with the King, who, he 
believed, would receive much prejudice by it; another 
that it would not consist with the respect he owed to 
the Lord Treasurer, who was much affronted in it, to 
seal it before he was made acquainted with it ; and in 
the last place, that he had stopped it for his, the Lord 
Ashley's, own sake ; and that he believed he had neither 
enough considered the indignity that was offered to the 
Lord Treasurer, to whom he professed so much respect, 
and by whose favour and powerful interposition he 
enjoyed the office he held, nor his own true interest, in 
submitting his estate to those incumbrances which such 
a receipt would inevitably expose it to ; and that the 
exemption from making any account but to the King 
himself would deceive him ; and as it was an unusual 
and unnatural privilege, so it would never be allowed in 
any court of justice, which would exact both the 
account and the payment or lawful discharge of what 
money he should receive, and if he depended upon the 
exemption he would live to repent it." Lord Ashley, 
according to Clarendon, sullenly replied " that the King 
had given him the office, and knew best what was good 
for his own service, and that except his Majesty re- 
stricted his grant, he would look to enjoy the benefit of 
it ; that he did not desire to put an affront upon the 
Lord Treasurer, and if there were any expressions in his 
Commission which reflected upon him, he was content 
they should be mended or left out ; in all other respects 
he was resolved to run the hazard." Southampton, the 
Lord Treasurer, whom Clarendon describes as much 
hurt, would not interfere, " but sat unconcerned, and 



282 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

took no notice of anything." It is not improbable that 
Clarendon misrepresented or exaggerated Southampton's 
feeling. The end of it was that " within a short time 
the King sent a positive order to the Chancellor to seal 
the Commission, which he could no longer refuse, and 
did it with the more trouble, because he very well knew 
that few men knew the Lord Ashley better than the 
King himself did, or had a worse opinion of his 
integrity." 

The question here at issue was one like several others 
that arose during this reign, a question of power and 
old prerogative against reason and public advantage. 
That Clarendon was right in his view of this matter, so 
far as concerns public expediency, we who live in days 
when prerogative has long since been wholesomely re- 
duced and regulated, can have no doubt. But the King 
cannot be unreservedly blamed for insisting on the 
exercise of a power which he thought rightfully his. 
Personal bias and irritation probably made Clarendon on 
this occasion the opponent of royal prerogative, which 
in other similar instances he upheld. Lord Ashley 
was doubtless stimulated by his own advantage in his 
resistance to Clarendon's opposition to the proposed 
arrangement. The dangers to Ashley himself, pictured 
by Clarendon's imagination, were never in the least 
realized. 

During this war, and in the straits of the Govern- 
ment for money, the question of the justice and neces- 
sity of appropriation of prize-moneys to the needs of 
the war was often raised. There was a body of Com- 
missioners of Prizes, and one of these was Sir William 



1665. WAR PRIZES. 283 

Coventry, Lord Ashley's brother-in law, who was Secre- 
tary to the Lord High Admiral, and one of his Council, 
a man of great ability, and the real administrator of the 
Admiralty for the first eight years of the reign of 
Charles the Second. Pepys mentions a proposal by Sir 
W. Coventry to the Duke of York, April 3, 1667, to 
devote 3,700. worth of prize goods to payment of a 
debt for the war, when "the Duke of York, Sir George 
Carteret, and Lord Berkeley saying, all of them, that 
my Lord Ashley would not be got to yield it, who is 
Treasurer of the Prizes, Sir W. Coventry did plainly 
desire that it might be declared whether the proceeds of 
the prizes were to go to the helping on of the war or no, 
and, if it were, how then they could be denied." 1 Another 
entry of Pepys in his Diary shows the worthy Secretary 
of the Admiralty astonished at Lord Ashley's not 
quailing before the great man of his office. " With 
Sir W. Warren, who tells me that, at the Committee of 
the Lords for the Prizes to-day, there passed very high 
words between my Lord Ashley and Sir W. Coventry 
about our business of the prize ships, and that my 
Lord Ashley did snuff and talk as high to him as he 
used to do to any ordinary man, and that Sir W. 
Coventry did take it very quietly ; but yet for all did 
speak his mind soberly and with reason, and went 
away saying he had done "his duty therein." 2 An order 

1 Pepys's Diary, iv. 4. 

2 Ibid. iii. 173, March 21, 1666. These statements by Pepys of 
differences between Ashley and Coventry are the more interesting, 
as Clarendon, in his story of Ashley's appointment to be Treasurer of 
Prizes, speaks of him as "fast linked to Sir Harry Bennet and Mr. 
Coventry in a league offensive and defensive, the same friends and the 
t>ume enemies." 



284 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

from the King to stop the sale of some prize goods 
asked for by the Duke of York for the use of the navy, 
is stated by Pepys to have made Lord Ashley very 
angry. 1 Pepys dined with Lord Ashley on the twenty- 
third of September, 1667, and took an opportunity before 
dinner of looking over his prize accounts. " We were 
put in my Lord's room before he could come to us, and 
there had an opportunity to look over the state of his 
account of the prizes, and there saw how bountiful the 
King hath been to several people ; and hardly any man 
almost, commander of the navy of any note, but hath 
some reward or other out of them ; and many sums to 
the Privy Purse, but not so many, I see, as I thought 
there had been ; but we could not look quite through it. 
But several bedchamber men and people about the 
Court had good sums, and, among others, Sir John 
Minnes and Lord Brounker have 200L a-piece for 
looking to the' East India prizes, while I did the work 
for them." 2 No imputation was ever made against 
Lord Ashley himself for misappropriation of funds ; the 
distribution was under the King's orders. The accounts 
of the prizes were inspected by the Commission ap- 
pointed in 166.8 for examination of public accounts, 
and no charge of any sort was made against Lord 
Ashley. 

A letter written by Lord Ashley a few days before 
the close of the session of 1664-5, to his wife in the 
country, gives a pleasing glimpse of him in his family 

1 Pepys's Diary, iii. 376-8, January 16 and 19, 1667. 

2 Ibid. iv. 201. The proceedings of the Commissioners of Prizes, 
in three folio volumes, are preserved in the British Museum. (Harl. 
MSS. 1509-11.) 



1665. LETTER TO HIS WIFE. 285 

relations. His only son, who had just completed his 
thirteenth year, was now going to Oxford to begin his 
studies there, it being then customary to enter the 
Universities at so early an age. The son was entered 
at Trinity College. " My brother Eobert," mentioned 
in the following letter, was Lady Ashley's brother, 
Eobert Spenser 1 and " My lady " is the widow Lady 
Spenser of Wormleighton, the mother of Lady Ashley, 
whom her son Eobert would be going to fetch away 
from St. Giles's. " My Lord Northumberland " was one 
of the survivors of the leaders of the Presbyterian party 
at the beginning of the Civil War, who had concurred as 
a venerable member of that party in the Eestoration. 
The Earl of Northumberland recovered from the ill- 
ness here spoken of; he died in October 1668. Lady 
Ashley's nephew, the Earl of Sunderland, had lately 
married a niece of Lord Northumberland; and Lord 
Northumberland's eldest son was married to a cousin 
of Lady Ashley, a daughter of the Earl of Southampton, 
the Lord Treasurer, and Lord Ashley's intimate friend. 
"My brother Chicheley" was Mr., afterwards Sir 
Thomas, Chicheley, of Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, 

1 Robert Spenser, brother of the Earl of Sunderland who fell at Edge- 
hill, and uncle of the Sunderland who was minister to Charles II. and 
James II., was created a Scotch peer, with the title of Viscount Teviot, 
by James II. in 1686. A mention of him in one of the Countess of 
Sunderland's, his sister-in-law's, charming letters to Lord Halifax, shows 
him in strong opposition to Shaftesburv's politics in the days of the 
Popish Plot and Exclusion Bill. "My brother Spenser," says Lady 
Sunderland, " was yesterday in town ; he had a mind to see his sister 
[Lady Shaftesbury], and sent her to meet him at Southampton House 
[Lord Russell's], He would not go to my Lord Shaftesbury's, because 
of his proceedings against the Duke [of York]. My Lord Russell asked 
him why he would come to his. He might have told him, ' You are but 
a blind follower.'" (July 8, 1680. Lady Russell's Life and Letters, 
edited by Miss Berry, 1819, p. 354.) 



286 LIFE OF SHAFTESBUEY. CHAP. X. 

who had married a sister of Shaftesbury's first wife, 
one of the daughters of Lord Keeper Coventry, who 
had previously been the wife of Sir William Savile, 
and who by this first marriage was mother of the 
celebrated George Savile, Lord Halifax. The affec- 
tionate tone of this letter is very pleasant. 1 

" LONDON, February 26, 1665. 

" MY DEAREST, I received yours of the 23rd instant 
just now and write this by James Percivall. I have 
some hopes of seeing you Wednesday sevennight and 
coming the Monday after away with you for London. My 
brother Eobert goes this week for Petworth, where he is 
like to find a sad house, for my Lord Northumberland is 
reported in great danger, but I hope he will be with you 
so as my lady will remove next week, for it will be not 
only inconvenient but dangerous to remove too great a 
company. 2 The safest road is Winchester and Guild- 
ford. If my lady be not well or able to travel, I beg 
she will not think of removing until she be well. My 
dearest, you gave my child the best thing that could be, 
but his extreme wilful disorders taken in eating always 
gives me great fears until he be removed to a place of 
other discipline. I have provided all things Teady for 
him at Oxford, and desire you will borrow Sir Edward 
Hooper's or any other of my neighbours' coaches and 

1 This letter is printed from the papers at St. Giles's. 

2 The danger and inconvenience of too great a company was probably 
from the badness of the roads. Lady Russell, describing her journey in 
1678 from London to Tunbridge "Wells, writes : " I do really think if I 
could have imagined the illness of the journey, it would have dis- 
couraged me ; it is not to be expressed how bad the way is from Seven- 
oaks ; but our horses did exceeding well, and Spenser very diligent, 
often off his horse to lay hold of the coach." (Lady Russell's Letters, 
i. 38, ed. 1853.) 



1665. LETTER TO HIS WIFE. 287 

four horses who may in three days carry him and Mr. 
Craven to Oxford. Mr. Bergen shall not go with him, 
but to London with us. You may acquaint Laurence 
that I shall desire him to go along and see him settled. 
I intend his journey the same day with ours on this 
day fortnight; he may lodge at Clarendon the first 
night, at Hungerford the next, and at Oxford the third, 
no journey above twenty mile. I hope my niece's 
toothache is breeding, but pray tell her I beg she will 
resolve not to leave her son less than her husband was 
left. I hear she has taken a waiting woman, a house- 
keeper, and a chambermaid. If so, I am sorry for it, 
Mr. Constantine is my author. A chambermaid and a 
washraaid had been enough ; let her not think I 
fiddlingly disturb her, but I love to speak early, as 
knowing what things will come to ; and I rely so much 
on her kindness to me that she will lay down all 
romance and take up discretion. I am extremely 
joyed with her behaviour towards her husband as you 
describe it. My brother Chichely 1 has given Colonel 
Fagg ten thousand pound for his place of Lieutenant 
of the Ordnance, and 'tis said he owes twice that sum 
before. We hear no more of that ill news of my Lord 
Berkley. 2 I had rather you had found treasure than 



1 Mr. Chicheley was appointed Commissioner of the Ordnance in 
November 1664, with Sir John Minnes, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, and 
Sir John Duncombe for colleagues. (Pepys's Diary, ii. 396.) He appears 
to have been extravagant ; and Lord Ashley speaks of him as in debt. 
Pepys mentions his dining with him in Queen Street, Covent Garden, 
March 11, 1668. "A very fine house, and a man that lives in mighty 
great fashion, with all things in a most extraordinary manner noble 
and rich about him, and eats in the French fashion all ; and mighty 
nobly served with his servants, and very civilly ; so that I was 
mightily pleased with it ; and good discourse. He is a great defender 
of the Church of England, and against the Act for Comprehension." 
(Diary, iv. 387.) 

2 This was probably Lord Berkeley of Stratton, so created in 1658, 
formerly Sir John Berkeley, whose account of his negotiations in 1647 



288 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

pictures, but I satisfy myself in the portion I have in this 
world, and that treasure God has given me in so faithful 
and affectionate a wife, to whom I ever vow myself, 
" A most sincere and truly affectionate husband, 

" ASHLEY." 

In the year 1663 a grant had been made by the King 
of the province of Carolina, now part of another mighty 
dominion, to nine individuals, of whom one was Lord 
Ashley. The other eight were the Duke of Albemaiie, 
the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Craven, Lord Berkeley, 
Sir George Carteret, Sir John Colleton, and Sir William 
Berkeley. The grant was renewed in June of this year, 
1665, to all the original grantees, except Sir John 
Colleton. Lord Ashley took a leading part in the 
management of this grant. Locke, at his request, drew 
up a constitution for the colony, which is dated 1669. 
In 1670 another grant was made by the King of the 
Bahama or Lucayo Islands, to the second Duke of 
,Albemarle (the famous Monk having died in the in- 
terval), Earl of Craven, Lord Berkeley, Lord Ashley, 
Sir George Carteret, and Sir Peter Colleton. A large 
volume of letters written by Shaftesbury about the 
affairs of the two colonies of Carolina and the Bahamas, 
showing his very great attention to them, is preserved 
at St. Giles's. 2 

for Charles I. with Cromwell is published under the title of Sir John 
Berkeley's Memoirs. He was now one of the Lord High Admiral's 
Council and a Commissioner of the Ordnance, and was afterwards Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland. I do not know what ill news is here referred to. 

1 See "The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" in Locke's 
Works, x. 175, ed. 1812. 

2 Two of these many letters are printed in Mr. Martyn's life, vol. ii. 
p. 95. The letters are too numerous to insert in this work, and they 
Lave no general interest. 



1665. OXFOBD SESSION. 289 

The degree of Lord Ashley's favour at this period 
with the King is shown by the King's visiting him 
in September of this year, at his country house at 
Wimborne St. Giles. The plague was now raging 
in London, and the King and Court had been stay- 
ing for some time at Salisbury. The only known 
notice of this royal visit to Lord Ashley is contained 
in a letter from Lord Arlington, who was with the 
King, to the Duke of Ormond in Ireland, written 
from Salisbury, September 11, 1665. " His Majesty 
is, God be thanked, perfectly well recovered, and is 
now in his coach gone to divert himself at my Lord 
Ashley's, whither I am following him, and from whence 
I shall be to send your Grace such a present as this 
the next week." 1 

On -account of the plague, the Parliament was called 
to meet at Oxford in October, and there a short session 
was held, beginning on the ninth and ending on the 
thirty-first of October. In this short session, however, 
much business was got through. An additional supply 
of a million and a quarter for the war was granted, 
and a present of 120,OOOZ. was voted to the Duke of 
York, whose valour and success in the first naval 
battle of the war, off Lowestoft, on June 3, had made 
him a popular hero. Clarendon gives a long account 
of a proviso introduced into the Supply Bill of this 
session, at the suggestion of Sir George Downing, 
and with the approval of the King, " to make all the 
money that was to be raised by this bill to be supplied 
only to those ends to which it was given, which was the 

1 Miscellanea Aulica, p. 361. 
VOL. I. U 



290 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

carrying on the war, and to no other purpose whatsoever, 
by what authority soever." Though the object of this 
clause seems to be very much the same as Clarendon 
says he had in view when he opposed the conditions of 
Lord Ashley's appointment of Treasurer of Prizes, he 
now strongly opposed Sir George Downing' s clause as 
an encroachment on the King's prerogative, as well 
as an impediment to the administration of finances. 
Ashley, who at first had favoured the clause, was also an 
opponent. The bill had passed the Commons and was 
in the Lords, when, at the instance, Clarendon says, of 
Lord Ashley, the King summoned a few of his chief 
advisers to a meeting at Clarendon's lodgings, for the 
reconsideration of the proviso. There were present with 
the King the Duke of York, the Chancellor (who was 
in bed with the gout, wherefore the meeting was in 
his bedroom), Lord Southampton, Lord Ashley, Lord 
Arlington, and Sir W. Coventry ; also the Attorney and 
Solicitor- General to draft any amendments which might 
be approved of, and Sir George Downing to defend his 
proposal. " The Chancellor had never seen the proviso 
which contained all the novelty (for all the other parts 
of the bill were according to the course), and the 
Treasurer had read it only an hour or two before the 
meeting ; the Lord Ashley, therefore, who had heard it 
read in the House of Peers, and observed what that 
House thought of it, opened the whole business with 
the novelty and the ill consequence that must inevitably 
attend it, all which he enforced with great clearness and 
evidence of reason, and would have enlarged with some 
sharpness on the advisers of it. But the King himself 



1665. APPROPRIATION CLAUSE OP SUPPLY BILL. 291 

stopped that by declaring that whatsoever had been done 
in the whole transaction of it had been with his privity 
and approbation, and the whole blame must be laid to his 
own charge, who, it seems, was like to suffer most by it." 
The end of it was that the bill passed the House of 
Lords with the proviso unaltered. 1 Clarendon inac- 
curately says that the King agreed to some " small 
amendments, which would be as soon consented to in 
both Houses as read/' and that with such amendments 
the bill was passed. The Lords made no alteration 
whatever, and the amount of opposition made in the 
House of Lords is probably much exaggerated by 
Clarendon, for the bill, which was only sent up to the 
House of Lords on the twenty-first of October, was 
passed without any alteration, and without a division 
at any stage, on the twenty-third. This is another 
instance of conflict in this reign between prerogative 
and public interest, and the influences and traditions 
of office made Lord Ashley an opponent, as is still 
frequently the case with parliamentary officials, of a 
change which in an independent position he would 
probably have supported. The King's need of money 
and desire to conciliate Parliament induced him to 
admit, in spite of Clarendon and Ashley, and contrary 
to his own high notions of prerogative, the principle 
of parliamentary appropriation of money voted, which 
is now an uncontested and highly prized part of our 
constitution. 

The agreement of Clarendon and Ashley on the sub- 
ject of this proviso for the Supply Bill may have helped 

1 Continuation of Life of Clarendon, 792 803. 

u2 



292 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

to improve their relations and bring them to friendship 
for a time, for in the following January, Euvigny writes 
that fhQj were on the most confidential terms. " Bennet 
and Ashley," he wrote, " appear to be the two chief con- 
fidents of the Chancellor, which last year would have 
been incredible; so great is the force of ambition and 
interest." 1 

During the October session at Oxford, another Act, 
on which Clarendon and Ashley widely differed, was 
added to the list of persecuting measures against Dis- 
senters. This is the Act known by the name of the 
Five Mile Act. By it Dissenting ministers were pro- 
hibited, under a penalty of forty pounds for every 
offence, from going, unless only in passing on the road, 
within five miles of any city, corporation, borough, 
town, or place where they had been ministers, or had 
preached, after the Act of Oblivion, unless they first 
took the following oath: "I do swear that it is not 
lawful, under any pretence whatever, to take up arms 
against the King, and that I do abhor the traitorous 
position of taking up arms by his authority against his 
person, or against those that are commissioned by him 
in pursuance of such commissions, and that I will not 
at any time endeavour any alteration of government 
either in Church or State." The Earl of Southampton, 
Lord Ashley, and Lord Wharton strongly opposed this 
measure in the House of Lords. 2 The courageous labours 

1 Ruvigny to De Lionne, January 9/19, 1666, in Archives of French 
Foreign Office. Euvigny says of Bennet in the same passage that he 
" has as great a share in the King's pleasures as in business." He does 
not say the same of Ashley. 

2 Letter from a Person, of Quality in Locke's Works, r. 203 ; 



1665. NON-RESISTANCE OATH. 293 

of Dissenting ministers at this very time, amid the 
ravages of the plague in London, should, now at least, 
have procured for them consideration, instead of 
increased severity; and policy strongly counselled 
measures for uniting the nation, instead of increasing 
heartburnings, when England was at war with Holland, 
and expecting that France would immediately declare 
war as Holland's ally. 

But not content with the Five Mile Act, some of its 
supporters introduced into the Commons during this 
session a bill for imposing on the whole nation the oath 
not to take up arms against the King or endeavour to 
make any alteration of government either in Church or 
State. The bill was rejected, but only by the small 
majority of six. It is a singular circumstance, which 
has been noted, that in the majority were three members 
who had appeared in the House that day for the first 
time, Mr. Peregrine Bertie, a younger son of the Earl of 
Lindsey, who took his seat that day as a new member, 
and the two members who introduced him, his eldest 
brother, Lord Bertie, and Sir Thomas Osborne, who soon 
afterwards became celebrated as Lord Treasurer and 
Earl of Danby. 1 Had these three voted the other way, 
the numbers would have been equal ; and it is extra- 
ordinary that ten years later the same bill was proposed 
and pressed by Lord Danby, and introduced into the 

Martyn's Life ii. 302. Bishop Btirnet dwells on Lord Southampton's 
vigorous opposition (Own Time, i. 390-1). 

1 Letter from a Person of Quality in Locke's "Works, x. 204 ; Hallam's 
Constitutional History, ii. 475. Mr. Martyn has erroneously repre- 
sented the bill of 1665 as having been defeated in the Lords, and has 
indeed altogether misapprehended the story told by the " Person of 
Quality." (Life, i. 302.) 



294 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

House of Lords by the same Lord Bertie, who was then 
Earl of Lindsey and Lord Chamberlain. 

Lord Ashley stayed a few weeks at Oxford after the 
prorogation, as appears from the folfowing letter to his 
wife, who was at Wimborne St. Giles. He may have 
stayed there to be with his son. " My sister Cooper " is 
of course the wife of his brother George. The postscript 
shows fear of the plague at Oxford. 

"OXFORD, Nov. 23, 1665. 

" MY DEAREST DEAR, I received a letter last night from 
my sister Cooper, which brought me the sad news of your 
being ill, and that you had sent for no advice. She very 
kindly and discreetly gave me a punctual account of the 
manner of your disease, which I have consulted Dr. 
Willis upon ; he is one of the learnedest and most famed 
physicians in the world ; he has given me the enclosed 
directions, and fearing you might not get the things so 
suddenly or well made, I have caused his apothecary to 
make them and have sent them to you by this bearer, my 
groom, with your oil of almonds and spirits of hartshorn. 
All this I have done lest Dr. Hurst be not in the country 
near you, for else I wonder you would not send for him, 
which I require you upon all the love you bear me 
immediately to do, and show him these directions, but 
I would not have you stay from using these things as 
soon as they come to your hand. Pray show them and 
this letter to my good lady your mother, who, I doubt 
not, will have care of you, for it very much adds to my 
affliction that 'tis not possible for me to come to you 
this week ; but if you continue ill, I have Dr. Willis 
his promise to go with me to you. The Lord in mercy 

1 From Lord Shaftesbury's papers at St. Giles. 



1666. LOCKE'S FRIENDSHIP. 295 

preserve my dear, and restore your health, is the most 
hearty and humble prayer of, 

" My dearest, 
" Your most truly affectionate husband, 

" ASHLEY. 

" Pray, my dear, send up somebody that can purify 
our linen, for the concourse of people frights us all 
more than ever, though it abates well at London." 

In June, 1666, Lord Ashley was again at Oxford, and 
he, on this occasion, accidentally made an acquaintance 
with John Locke, which rapidly ripened into an intimate 
friendship. Lord Ashley was now suffering much from 
an internal swelling, the consequence of the accident 
which befel him when he went over to Breda on the 
eve of the Eestoration, and he had been advised to 
drink the mineral waters of Astrop. Before arriving at 
Oxford, he had written to a physician there, Dr. Thomas, 
requesting him to procure some of these waters for him. 
Dr. Thomas, being obliged to leave Oxford at this time, 
entrusted the commission to Locke, who had lately 
returned to Oxford from diplomatic employment in 
Germany, and was now residing as a Student of Christ 
Church and studying medicine. Locke waited on Lord 
Ashley, who was greatly pleased with his visitor ; and 
this visit was the origin of a life-long friendship between 
these two celebrated men. Lord Ashley went from 
Oxford to stay at Sunning Hill and there drink the 
Astrop waters, and Locke accompanied him. Locke 
was again his companion at Sunning Hill, in the year 
following. Afterwards he became an inmate of Lord 



296 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

Ashley's house, and one of his family, and his constant 
medical adviser. Eecommended by Lord Ashley to the 
young Earl and Countess of Northumberland, he went 
with them to France in 1669. 1 When in November, 
1672, Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor, he ap- 
pointed Locke one of his Secretaries ; and soon after 
he made Locke Secretary of the Council of Trade and 
Plantations, of which he was President from September 
1672 to April 1676. In the year 1674, Shaftesbury 
gave Locke a life annuity of a hundred pounds on easy 
terms. 2 The eager and restless politician and the calm 
and high-minded philosopher remained on terms of 
affectionate intimacy till Shaftesbury's death. Then, in 
a time of arbitrary rule, came grief and injury to Locke 
on account of his close connexion with the deceased 
Shaftesbury. While in Holland, whither he had gone 
from fear perhaps of staying in England, he was, in 
1684, deprived of his Studentship at Christ Church, by 
an order of Charles the Second, servilely obeyed by 
the Dean and Chapter of that cathedral College. In 
a letter to his friend, the Earl of Pembroke, at the 
close of 1684, part of which has been before quoted, 3 
Locke, writing in a tone of depression, describes his 
connexion with Shaftesbury, saying that it had been 
much misunderstood, and that he had unjustly suffered 
in consequence. He describes himself as having lived 

1 The old Earl of Northumberland had died in 1668. His son and 
successor, with idiom Locke travelled, died abroad in May 1670. His 
widow, a daughter of the Earl of Southampton, and cousin of Lady 
Shaftesbury, afterwards married Ealph Montagu, ambassador at Paris, 
who became in time Duke of Montagu. 

2 See Shaftesbury's letter to Locke of November 23, 1674, printed 
in the second volume, and Martyn's Life of Shaftesbury, i. 5. 

3 See note at p. 261. 



1666. LOCKE'S FRIENDSHIP. 297 

in Shaftesbury's house as his medical adviser rather 
than in any other capacity, and he says that, though 
always treated kindly by Shaftesbury, he improved his 
fortune but little, and found himself at Shaftesbury's 
death without the means which he would probably have 
acquired had he practised as a physician. 1 He goes on to 
deny in the strongest and most unqualified language that 
he had ever published any political or other pamphlet or 
treatise whatsoever. This was in December 1684. He had 
then published, he says, nothing but two or three copies 
of verses, which had not gained him the reputation of a 
poet. 2 And now, remaining in exile in Holland during the 
whole of the reign of James the Second, he laboured at 
his great work on the Human Understanding, which has 
given him with posterity a rank very far above that 
of any king or minion who in worldly power and pride 
trampled on his living worth and intellect. After the 
Revolution of 1688 Locke returned to England, and he 
lived for sixteen years afterwards in ease of circum- 
stances, honoured and famous. It is gratifying to read 
authentic testimonies of his respect for the memory 
of Shaftesbury. Le Clerc says that Locke " remembered 
all his life with great pleasure the satisfaction which he 
had in intercourse with Lord Shaftesbury, and when he 
spoke of his good qualities did so not only with esteem, 

1 See Dr. John Brown's notices of Locke as a medical man in his 
interesting Essay on Locke and Sydenham in "Horae Subsecivse. " 

2 There are two poems by Locke, a short one in Latin with transla- 
tion and a longer English poem, on Cromwell and his conclusion of the 
war with the Dutch, printed in the State Poems (vol. i. part 2) from 
an Oxford collection. Mr. Martyn prints some verses written by 
Locke in 1672, addressed to Greenhill, the painter (Life, ii. 13), but 
these were probably not published before 1684. There can be no 
doubt that Locke had not the gift of poetry. 



298 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

but even with admiration." Mr. Coste, who had been 
an amanuensis to Locke, and was long a fellow inmate 
with him of Sir Francis Masham's house at Gates, in 
Essex, where Locke lived for the last fourteen years of 
his life, says that Locke "loved to confirm his opinion 
on any subject by that of the famous Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, to whom he took a delight to give the honour of 
all the things which he thought he had learnt from 
his conversation." " I wish/' also says Mr. Coste, " I 
could give a- full notion of the idea which Mr. Locke 
had of that nobleman's merit. He lost no opportunity 
of speaking of it, and that in a manner which suffi- 
ciently showed he spoke from his heart." 1 

The Dutch war, in which France and Denmark had 
joined as the allies of Holland, the Plague which, lasting 
fifteen months, caused a hundred thousand deaths, and 
the Great Eire, which, as the Plague was dying out, 
destroyed two thirds of London, were an accumulation of 
misfortunes for England in the year 1666. The Parlia- 
ment assembled in London in September of that year, and 
the session lasted till February 8, 1667. There were now 
great complaints of mismanagement, extravagance, and 
misappropriation of funds voted for the war, and the 
House of Commons insisted on a close examination of 
accounts. 2 There was a calculation that rather more than 
five millions and a half sterling had been at the* dis- 
posal of Government for the war, and only 3,200,000. 
was accounted for. The Commons voted a supply of 

1 "The Character of Mr. Locke" by Mr. Peter Coste, printed in 
Locke's Works, vol. x. 

Pepys's Diary, Sept. 21 and Oct. 10, 1666. The proceeds of prizes 
were estimated at 300, OOOZ. 



1667. IRISH CATTLE BILL. 299 

l,800,000/. ; and endeavoured, first by a proviso in 
a money-bill, and then by a separate bill, to obtain 
a Commission to inspect the accounts of the war. 
Such an inquiry was averted for the present; but an 
Act for appointing such a Commission was passed a 
year later. 

Lord Ashley made himself conspicuous during this 
session by eager support of a bill for prohibiting im- 
portation of Irish cattle into England. An attempt to 
pass such a bill had failed in the Oxford session of the 
previous year ; but now the bill became an Act. Lord 
Clarendon, who opposed the bill, describes Ashley as 
second only to the Duke of Buckingham in violent 
support of it, and against probability, attributes the 
eagerness of both Ashley and Buckingham to per- 
sonal hostility to the Duke of Ormond, a great 
Irish proprietor. "It grew quickly evident," says 
Clarendon, "that there were other reasons which 
caused so earnest a prosecution of it above the en- 
couragement of the breed of cattle in England; inso- 
much as the Lord Ashley, who, next the Duke, appeared 
the most violent supporter of the bill, could not forbear 
to urge it as an argument for the prosecuting it, that, if 
this bill did not pass, all the rents in Ireland would rise 
in a vast proportion, and those in England fall as much, 
so that in a year or two the Duke of Ormond would 
have a greater revenue than the Earl of Northumber- 
land, which made a visible impression on many as a 
thing not to be endured. Whereas the Duke had indeed 
at least four times the proportion of land in Ireland that 
descended to him from his ancestors that the Earl had in 



300 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY, CHAP. X. 

England, and the revenue of it before the Eebellion was 
not inferior to the others. But nothing was more mani- 
fest than that the warmth of that prosecution in the 
House of Peers in many Lords did proceed from the 
envy they had of the Duke's station in one kingdom 
and of his fortune in the other." l It is enough that in a 
period of great depression of the value of land in England 
English proprietors, and especially those of the western 
counties, were anxious to obtain protection against com- 
petition of Irish cattle. The great fall of English rents 
was a sufficient moving principle for Ashley ; and if 
the bias of self-interest sharpened his zeal, it is by no 
means clear that special circumstances did not counsel 
an exception to general rules of political economy, then 
indeed little understood or appreciated. 2 The opponents 
of the measure feared that the passing of it might inflame 
the Irish to rebellion ; and Irish content was of greater 
importance, when England was at war with France, and a 
French invasion of Ireland was even a probability. The 
debates on this bill in the House of Lords were marked 
by very great acrimony. The Earl of Ossory, the Duke of 
Ormond's gallant but impetuous son, quarrelled during 
these debates both with the Duke of Buckingham and 

1 Clarendon's Continuation of Life, 967. 

2 Some notices in Pepys's Diary show very forcibly the depression of 
the agricultural interest in England. April 9, 1667: "Several do 

lain 



complain of abundance of land flung up by tenants out of their hands 
for want of ability to 
Buckingham hath 6,O 



for want of ability to pay their rents, and by name that the Duke of 
,OOOZ. so flung up." Jan. 1, 1668 : Pepys dined 
with Lord Crewe, when "they did talk much of the present cheapness 



of corn, even to a miracle, so as their farmers can pay no rent, but do 
fling up their lands." Jan. 31, 1668 : Colonel Birch told Pepys of " the 
general want of money in the country, that land sold for nothing, and 
the many pennyworths he knows of lands and houses upon them with 
good titles in his county at sixteen years' purchase." See Lord Ashley's 
memorial to the King of 1669 in Appendix I. of the next volume. 



1667. DISCUSSION WITH LORD CONWAY. 301 

with Lord Ashley, and he was on both occasions repri- 
manded and ordered to make an apology. 1 Lord Ossory, 
replying to Lord Ashley, said that he had spoken like 
one of Cromwell's councillors. Lord Ashley complained 
of this language, and the House required Lord Ossory 
to stand up in his place and say " that he is very sorry 
for the great offence he hath given to the House, and 
humbly desires their pardon ; and that he is very sorry 
that any words of his should reflect on the Lord Ashley, 
for which he desires the Lord Ashley's pardon." 

Carte, in his Life of the Duke of Ormond, relates a 
lively altercation in private between Lord Ashley and 
Lord Conway, an Irish proprietor, who became Secretary 
of State near the end of Charles the Second's reign, 
during the discussions of the same bill. 

" Upon the news of a French invasion and a powerful 
army embarking at Brest, which was all the subject of 
discourse, Lord Corrway coming in before the House sat, 
Lord Ashley asked him in the presence of twenty lords 
how they would do to defend themselves in case the 
invasion fell on Ireland. Conway replied they should 
not so much as think of it, for when they had repre- 
sented to the House that they should be disabled by the 
bill from doing so, he [Lord Ashley] had answered they 
never had been able to defend themselves, and when 
they were in danger England ever had and ever must 
defend them, and therefore they should leave that matter 
to him, who had said those words, and to the Parliament 
which believed him. Ashley replied with a very super- 
cilious air : ' They knew better where to lay the blame, 
and that was on those lords that had driven the English 

1 Lords' Journals, Nov. 19, 1666. Pepys's Diary, ame date, iii. 339. 



302 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

out of the seaports and corporate towns and filled them 
with Irish.' Conway' s answer was as resolute, ' that 
there were no such lords in Ireland, nor was the matter 
of fact true, for the Irish in all their seaports and towns 
put together would not make up one reasonable street.'" 

Carte goes on to say that Lord Conway, suspecting 
Lord Ashley of an ambition to be Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland, took occasion, a few days after the passing of 
the Irish Cattle Bill, to say to him " that he wondered 
exceedingly to see his Lordship so injurious to Ireland, 
since no man was so likely in a short time to be Lord 
Lieutenant of that kingdom as himself, but he had now 
contracted an incapacity which was not usual ; for the 
violence he had so lately shown would make the whole 
country believe he came to destroy them totally, so that 
they would be tempted to rebel and tear him to pieces." 
Ashley seemed, said Lord Conway, pleased with the in- 
sinuation, and vindicated himself from the charge of 
ill-will to Ireland. " He said that it was true they had 
done an unnatural act, but the fault was in the present 
governors of that country, who by their settlement, their 
book of rates, and other principles of government, en- 
deavoured to divide the two kingdoms; whereas he desired 
they should be united and sit in one Parliament, and then 
all these acts would fall to the ground ; and though he 
had exclaimed in the last session at Oxford against 
granting a liberty of conscience in Ireland, yet as he 
found it for the good of the kingdom in its present 
situation, he would befriend the country particularly in 
that point, and in all others as occasions offered." Carte 
proceeds, writing of course on Lord Conway's autho- 



1667. CLOSE OF DUTCH WAR. 303 

rity : " He [Lord Ashley] was so fond of the subject 
that he kept on the discourse and renewed his pro- 
fessions for an hour together, thereby convincing Lord 
Conway, who only proposed the matter in raillery, of 
his inclination to be at the head of that kingdom ; for 
men of great parts and cunning are seldom bit in that 
way, unless they are betrayed by some passion or other." 1 
The close of the year 1666 found both England and 
France anxious to terminate the war. When the war 
began between England and Holland, Louis XIV. had 
at first viewed it with complacency, as likely, by giving 
to both occupation and impairing the resources of both, 
to prevent both from obstructing his designs on Spanish 
Flanders. Later, France was brought into the war as 
the ally of Holland under a clause in a treaty made 
between France and Holland in 1662. Tardily and 
ungraciously had France consented to fulfil the obliga- 
tions of this treaty, in contracting which she had acted 
faithlessly towards England ; and when at last she had 
declared war against England, she gave Holland no 
cordial or effective co-operation. Louis then soon be- 
came anxious to conclude the war, get rid of obligations 
which he was unwilling to fulfil, and be free to invade 
Spanish Flanders. At the close of the campaign of 
1666, Louis found the King of England ready to treat 
for peace, while the States General made difficulties, 
hoping on their part to prevent Louis from embroiling 
himself with Spain and invading Spanish Flanders by 
keeping him engaged in war with England. In the 
spring of 1667, Louis succeeded in making a secret 

1 Carte's Life of Onnond, ii. 338. 



304 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

arrangement with the King of England, by which the 
latter promised to make no alliance, during the period 
of one year, with any nation against France, or which 
might possibly prejudice French interests, and to 
make during the year a close alliance with France, 
Louis promised in return to restore to England the 
French conquests in the West Indies made in the 
course of the war. This .secret arrangement was 
made by letters written by the two Kings to Hen- 
rietta Maria, the Queen Dowager of England, the 
mother of Charles and the aunt of Louis. 1 Shortly 
after, negotiations for peace were opened at Breda 
between England and Holland, but the Dutch refused 
an armistice during the progress of negotiations. The 
poverty of the English exchequer had led to premature 
reductions in the English navy, and De Witt, with a 
strong Dutch fleet fully prepared, saw his advantage 
and determined to strike, while he yet could, a heavy 
blow. The Dutch fleet under De Euyter, in June, 
entered the Thames, proceeded as far as Chatham, and, 
there destroyed by fire three of our men-of-war. This 
was a humiliating disaster for England. Peace now 
soon followed. Louis XIV., secured by his secret 
arrangement with Charles, had in the month of May 
entered Flanders with an army of seventy thousand 
men; and his rapid conquests terrified Holland into 
acquiescence in a treaty of peace. Peace was con- 
cluded at Breda on the thirty-first of July, 1667. 

The Earl of Southampton, the Lord High Treasurer, 
had died in May, and that office was now put into Com- 
1 Mignet, Negotiations relatives & la Succession d'Espagne, iii. 58. 



1667. TREASURY PUT IN COMMISSION. 305 

mission, at the King's instance and against the opinion 
of Clarendon. The Commissioners were the Duke of 
Albemarle (George Monk), Lord Ashley, who continued to 
be Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Coventry, 
Sir John Buncombe, and Sir Thomas Clifford, Claren- 
don has given an account of this arrangement, in which 
he describes the King at the time as being dissatisfied 
with Ashley and unwilling to include him in the Com- 
mission, and further represents it as a humiliation for 
Ashley that, being Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was 
not made an indispensable member of the quorum. It 
is clear from Clarendon's account that the King had 
made up his mind to appoint a small number of Com- 
missioners who should all be men of business, and not 
to follow the custom of appointing a number of high 
officials of state who would only give dignity to the 
Oommission and leave the work to the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer. Clarendon, who was strongly opposed 
to a Commission for the Treasury, but saw that the 
King had made up his mind to it, perceived also that 
the King "would not approve the old course in the 
choice of Commissioners, who had always been the 
Keeper of the Great Seal, and the two Secretaries of 
State, and two other of .the principal persons of the 
Council, besides the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 
used to be the sole person of the quorum." The Duke 
of York agreed with the King in opinion, cited the case 
o the Ordnance which had shortly before been placed 
in Commission on the death of Sir William Compton, 
and contended that, as in the Ordnance so in the 
Treasury, business would be better done, " if fit persons 
VOL. I. x. 



306 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

were chosen for it, who might have nothing else to do." 
The King proposed Sir Thomas Clifford, who, being a 
member of Parliament of small fortune, had been much 
befriended by Arlington, and was now Comptroller of 
the Household and a Privy Councillor, Sir William 
Cpventry, and Sir John Buncombe. The King thought 
that these three would be enough for despatch of 
business. Clarendon then suggested the necessity of 
naming Ashley, because he was Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, and urged the appointment also of the Duke 
of Albemarle and some other person of high rank to 
give lustre to the Commission. The King said, accord- 
ing to Clarendon, that " he did not care if he added the 
General to them. The Lord Ashley gave him some 
trouble, and he said enough to make it manifest that he 
thought him not fit to be amongst them ; yet he knew 
not how to put him out of his place ; but gave direction 
for preparing the Commission for the Treasury to the 
persons named before, and made the Lord Ashley only 
one of the Commissioners, and a major part to make a 
quorum ; which would quickly bring the government of 
the whole business into the hands of those three who 
were designed for it, and Ashley rather chose to be de- 
graded than to dispute it." l Such is Clarendon's story ; 
but he is commonly so [inaccurate in details, and he is 
clearly so carried away by prejudice against Shaftesbury, 
that the true story probably is that the King's desire 
Was to associate working Commissioners, and not mere 
ornamental cyphers, with Lord Ashley, Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, of whom it is very likely that he at the 

1 Continuation of Clarendon's Life, 1082-8. 



1667. TREASURY COMMISSIONERS. 307 

same time, from some recent irritation, spoke words of 
disrespect, which would not displease Clarendon. 

The animosity of Clarendon against Shaftesbury is 
clear in every allusion which he makes to him ; but 
it is not easy, in any case, to extract from this narra- 
tive anything to Shaftesbury's prejudice. The alleged 
degradation disappears when it is seen that the King 
designed to depart from the old precedents in the 
formation of the Commission. That the King, whose 
inclinations and affections were ever varying, and who 
was soon to treat his old and faithful servant Clarendon 
himself with heartless cruelty and ingratitude, was 
at the moment indisposed towards Shaftesbury and 
found him troublesome, may be taken as proof that 
Lord Ashley had shown independence of character 
and had not been the King's servile instrument either 
in politics or as Treasurer of Prizes. Pepys records 
Lord Ashley's unwillingness to obey orders of the King 
as to the disposal of prize goods ; his motives may have 
been good or bad, regard for the public or self-interest, 
or perhaps even mere self-will. 1 It also appears that 
Lord Ashley was not quite pleased with the new 
arrangement ; it was not in human nature that he 
should be so. Sir George Carteret, who was Treasurer 
of the Navy, and was himself much displeased with the 
new Commission, (" and he hath reason," says Pepys, 
" for it will eclipse him,") told Pepys that " my Lord 
Ashley says they understand nothing, and he says he 
believes the King do not intend they shall sit long." 2 

1 Diary, iii. 376-8, January 16, 19, 1667. 

2 Ibid. May 31, 1667, iv. 58. 

x 2 



308 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

Pepys however himself thought otherwise, and, being 
a man of business, he thought the Commission a good 
measure. A few days later, Pepys had to attend the 
Commissioners, and was much struck with their busi- 
ness-like way of proceeding. Lord Ashley, Clifford, 
and Buncombe were the only three present, with their 
Secretary, Sir George Downing. " I do like the way of 
these Lords, that they admit nobody to use many words, 
nor do they spend many words themselves, but in great 
state do hear what they see necessary, and say little 
themselves, but bid withdraw." l Later, Mr. Pepys is of 
opinion that Sir William Coventry is the leading man 
in the Commission. " I perceive Sir W. Coventry is 
the man, and nothing done till he comes." 2 But Lord 
Ashley was not likely to allow himself to be led by 
Coventry, and we may be sure, with his active and 
eager character, his official experience, and his habits 
of business, that he took a prominent part in the Com- 
mission. All, indeed, were active, as it had been 
designed they should be. Clifford's activity was after- 
wards shown in the memorable Stop of the Exchequer. 
Some, indeed, regarded Ashley as the governing spirit 
of the Commission. Sir William Temple visited on 
Shaftesbury his wrath for the refusal by the Com- 
missioners of the customary gift of his plate when he 
returned in 1671 from his embassy to Holland. 3 The 
charming Lady Fanshawe denounces Shaftesbury with 

all an amiable woman's anger, as "the worst of men," 

* 

1 Diary, June 3, 1667, iv. 61. 

2 August 23, 1667, iv. Ifc4. 

* Le Clerc, Bibliotheque Choisie, vi. 364 ; Stringer's Fragment of 
Memoir in Appendix III. ; Mr. Wyche'sMS. Vindication of Shaftesbury. 



1667. CLARENDON'S FALL. 309 

for a similar refusal by the Commissioners of his plate 
to her husband, who had been ambassador to Spain. 1 
There is no doubt that this new Commission began by 
endeavouring to introduce economy and order into the 
finances ; but this was a task beyond their strength. 

A few months after this change at the Treasury 
Clarendon ceased to be Chancellor. The great seal was 
rudely taken from this illustrious and virtuous states- 
man on the thirty-first of August, 1667. The war with 
Holland, which less than three years before had been 
begun in national excitement against the judgment of 
Clarendon, and which had lately brought disaster and 
humiliation on England, had been terminated by treaties 
with Holland and with France, concluded at Breda in 
the previous month of July. It was necessary, the 
King found, to do something to appease the general 
discontent, and Clarendon was made scapegoat. In the 
course of his administration he had, both in the exercise 
of duty and by haughty and imperious ways, made 
many enemies. Among the foremost of his adversaries 
were Arlington and Coventry ; they zealously urged his 
removal, and were seconded by one still more powerful 
v, ith the King, the " lady," Lady Castlemaine. At this 
time the King was deeply enamoured of another lady 
at Court, the beautiful Miss Stuart, who firmly refused 
his dishonourable proposals, and whom in the violence 
of his passion he is said to have conceived the idea of 
enabling himself to marry by divorcing himself on some 
or other pretext from his Queen. She married the Duke 
of Pdchniond ; and among all the causes of Clarendon's 

1 Lady Fanskawe's Memoirs, p. 297. 



310 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

fall none appears to have "been more potent with Charles 
than his belief that Clarendon had hastened this mar- 
riage to foil his own designs on Miss Stuart. The 
subsequent persecution of Clarendon in Parliament was 
fanned by the King with spiteful eagerness, notwith- 
standing the Duke of York's most zealous efforts in his 
behalf. 

There is no pretence whatever for accusing Shaftes- 
bury, as has been done by Lord Campbell and others, 
of actively contributing to the fall of Clarendon. 
Clarendon has himself given a long and circumstantial 
account of his removal from the Chancellorship ; he 
had no love for Shaftesbury when he wrote this narra- 
tive in exile ; he mentions Arlington, Sir W. Coventry, 
Lady Castlemaine, and others as his enemies : he does 
not so mention Lord Ashley. Nor is Ashley mentioned 
by any other historian as having a share in this event. 
It is true that Ashley had on various occasions opposed 
Clarendon's policy and opinions, and especially in 1663 
had actively concurred with Arlington, Bristol, and 
Eoberts in promoting a bill for indulgence to Dissenters 
which Clarendon disapproved. The dislike manifested 
by Clarendon for Shaftesbury is not greater than that 
which he manifests for all the younger statesmen who 
came forward during his Chancellorship, and did not 
owe their positions to himself, and exercised an 
independent judgment; and the warmest admirers of 
Clarendon's character, which on the whole merits 
admiration, must allow that he was jealous, irritable, 
and imperious. It is also true that Ashley, like most 
of Charles's ministers and friends, attended the evening 



1667. ASHLEY SIDES WITH CLARENDON. 311 

receptions in Lady Castlemaine's apartment, which 
Clarendon viewed with jealousy, and where Clarendon 
and Southampton never appeared. The age and long 
devotion of these two venerable statesmen, both to 
Charles and to his father, empowered them to frown 
on the mistress ; their course deserves commendation, 
and, had they acted otherwise, they would have de- 
served blame. But Ashley's was a very different 
position. From an early period of his reign it was 
Charles's custom to pass the evening in Lady Castle- 
maine's apartment, and there hold what Clarendon 
always calls "the nightly conversation." All who 
attended Charles in that apartment which custom 
sanctioned were not debauchees nor lovers of Lady 
Castlemaine nor unprincipled statesmen nor unscru- 
pulous enemies of Clarendon. It has been seen that 
in the beginning of the year 1666, the French Am- 
bassador reported that both Ashley and Arlington were 
on the best terms with Clarendon. And so far is it 
from being true that Ashley was Clarendon's enemy 
at the moment of his fall, that he really incurred the 
displeasure of Charles and risked disgrace, and came 
to be accounted a " Clarendonian " by opposition to 
the proposed impeachment. There is a remarkable 
entry on this subject in the Diary of Pepys, on Decem- 
ber 30, 1667 : " Sir G. Carteret and I alone did talk 
of the ruinous condition we are in, the King being 
going to put out of the Council so many able men, 
such as my Lord Anglesey, Ashley, Hollis, Secretary 
Morrice (to bring in Mr. Trevor), and the Archbishop 
of Canterbury and my Lord Bridgewater. He tells 



312 LIFE OF SHAFTESEURY. CHAP. X. 

me that this is true, only the "Duke of York do en- 
deavour to hinder it, and the Duke of York himself 
did tell him so : that the King and the Duke of York 
do not in company disagree, but are friendly; .but that 
there is a core in their hearts, he doubts, which is not 
to be easily removed ; for these men so suffer only for 
their constancy to the Chancellor, or at least from the 
King's ill-will against him." 1 A few days later, on 
January 5, 1668, Pepys mentions that the plan of dis- 
missing a certain number of privy councillors is laid 
aside. 2 Ashley is mentioned in a despatch of Colbert 
to Louis XIV., of November 15, 1668, as one of 
Clarendon's party whom Buckingham had gained to 
himself against Arlington. 3 Clarendon himself men- 
tions Ashley once in the narrative of his fall and per- 
secution in such a manner as to imply that he was 
an opponent of the measures of the House of Com- 
mons against him. 4 Mr. Seymour, one of Clarendon's 
opponents, the future Sir Edward Seymour, Speaker of 
the House of Commons, " told the Lord Ashley," says 
Clarendon, "that the people would pull down the Chan- 
cellor's house first, and then those of all the Lords who 
adhered to him." Mr. Martyn states that Clarendon's 
son, Laurence Earl of Eochester, acknowledged to the 
grandson of Shaftesbury that his grandfather had 
opposed the motion for sequestering and imprisoning 
Clarendon on the impeachment by the Commons. 5 

i Diary, iv. 302. 2 Id. iv. 314. 

3 Mignet, Negotiations relatives a la Succession d'Espagne, iii. 58. 

* Continuation of Life, 1189. 

5 Life, i. 329, note. This is stated doubtless by Martyn on Stringer's 
authority. The statement is made also in Mr. Wyche's MS. Vindica- 
tion of Shaftesbury. 



1667. CLARENDON'S FORCED EXILE. 313 

Lord Ashley's name is not to be found among the 
signatures to the protest entered on November 20, 
1667, signed by twenty-eight peers, including Buck- 
ingham, Arlington, Albemarle, Bristol, and Carlisle, 
against the vote of the House of Lords refusing to 
commit Clarendon on an impeachment without par- 
ticular treason assigned. It may be taken for granted, 
then, that Lord Ashley was an opponent of the 
endeavour of the House of Commons to obtain the 
co-operation of the Lords for an impeachment on a 
general allegation of treason, and that his opposition 
was so conducted as to displease the King, bent on 
the ruin of his old and faithful minister. 

The last years of Clarendon were passed in forced 
exile in France, and chiefly at Montpelier. In Novem- 
ber 1667, he fled from England, in obedience to an 
order from the King, but leaving behind a manly vin- 
dication addressed to the House of Lords, which provoked 
an Act requiring him to surrender for trial before 
February 1,1668, and dooming him, on failure of appear- 
ance, to banishment for life, to the penalties of high 
treason if he should return to England, and impossi- 
bility of pardon except by Act of Parliament. Claren- 
don was at Rouen when he heard of this Act ; he 
started in haste for England to accept the trial to 
which he was dared ; but a dangerous illness seized him 
at Calais, and the time prescribed by the Act had 
expired before he was able to leave his bed. There was 
nothing now for him but exile till death. He died 
seven years after at Eouen, in December 1674. The 
base ingratitude of Charles and the injustice of Claren- 



314 LIFE OF SHAFTE3BURY. CHAP. X. 

don's contemporaries have been the gain of posterity ; 
for the fallen statesman beguiled the weariness of his 
exile by the composition of those memoirs of the great 
transactions in which he had borne so laborious a part, 
which, with all their inaccuracies, natural enough in 
one writing at a distance from his books and papers, 
and with all their partisanship, from which no con- 
temporary writer can escape, and even with their 
vanities and weaknesses, easy to be forgiven in one 
smarting in old age and in lonely exile under the 
world's cruellest injustice, will continue to delight, as 
they have long delighted, as a narrative of a most 
eventful period of English history, written in a style 
fascinating by its freshness, and constantly elevated 
by noble sentiments and principles. 

It is unnecessary, after the preceding detailed state- 
ment, to go through the wearisome labour of exposing 
all the fanciful misstatements of Lord Campbell in his 
representation that Lord Ashley was prime mover of 
Clarendon's disgrace. At the close of the last chapter 
I commented on Lord Campbell's singular sneer at 
Lord Ashley as being during the seven years which fol- 
lowed the Restoration a mere " Treasury drudge." Lord 
Campbell writes, in the same passage : " Strange to say, 
it was some years before he began seriously to try to 
undermine Clarendon." He adds that Ashley relieved 
the dulness of Treasury drudgery by deliberate dissi- 
pation. " He considered himself bound regularly to 
attend the King at Whitehall, to pay court to Lady 
Castlemaine, and to cultivate with unwearied assiduity 
his reputation for licentiousness, which he did so sue- 



1667. CHARGE OF LICENTIOUSNESS. 315 

cessfully as even to rival that of his master. But he 
became tired of routine business and the life of a mere 
rou, and, seeing with satisfaction the King's growing 
dislike to Clarendon, he took every opportunity of 
widening the breach between them." All these specific 
statements are creations of the biographer's fancy ; and 
he further imagines that Ashley " spirited Lady Castle- 
maine to seek revenge" on Lord Clarendon because 
he had forbidden his wife to visit her, and that his 
zeal was whetted by hope of being made Chancellor. 
Shaftesbury's supposed dissolute morals and imagined 
long dream of the Chancellorship were pressed by Lord 
Campbell into his service to explain by conjecture why 
Cromwell refused him a daughter in marriage, which he 
may or may not have done, and why he quarrelled with 
Cromwell. 1 

There is no authority whatever for Lord Campbell's 
precise statements about Ashley's court to Lady Castle- 
maine and dissipated life. It is a remarkable fact, 
that in Grammont's minute scandalous chronicle of 
Charles's court from 1662 to 1669, Lord Ashley's name 
never appears. His letters to his wife, printed in this 
chapter, show a degree of conjugal affection and hap- 
piness certainly inconsistent with that character of 
extreme licentiousness which malicious, coarse, and 
shameless libellers have foisted on careless, copying 
biographers. I believe that a main cause of the repu- 
tation of licentiousness, which, once given, has stuck to 
Shaftesbury, is the good story, which may be true or 
false, of Charles having one day said to him, " Shaftes- 
1 See pp. 104 and 120. 



316 LIFE OF SHAFTESBURY. CHAP. X. 

bury, you are the wickedest dog in England." 1 The 
story is to the credit of Shaftesbury's wit, for he is said 
to have replied, "Of a subject, Sir, I believe I am." 
Charles's joking accusation, even if true, proves nothing. 
In a clever bitter tract, written against Shaftesbury 
towards the close of his career, when he was the mark 
of all eyes and the theme of every tongue, it is written 
that he is " temperate by nature and habit," but " rather 
chooses to invert nature itself than suffer a disappoint- 
ment in his designs of revenge ;" and that " he accom- 
panies, and carouses, and contracts intimacy and amity 
with the lewdest debauchees in all the nation that he 
thinks will anyways help to forward his private in- 
trigues." 2 This is the casual testimony of an enemy 
bearing all the appearance of truth. 3 

1 This story is variously told. Lord Campbell tells it more suitably 
for his purpose, but I do not know 011 what authority : " Shaftesbury, 
you are the most profligate man in my dominions." The story is told 
by Lord Chesterfield with the words, " the greatest rogue in England." 
(Chesterfield's Works, ii. 334, Lord Mahon's edition.) 

2 " The Character of a Disbanded Courtier," printed in Martyn's Life, 
ii. 362. 

3 Two letters to Lord Ashley of the period covered by this chapter 
may be printed here. The first is from Lauderdale about payment of 
a sum of money granted by the King, written to Ashley as Treasurer 
of Prizes. The letter is interesting as referring to one of those grants 
to statesmen and favourites, of which it is believed that Shaftesbury 
never received one. The journey alluded to was doubtless Lord Ash- 
ley's visit to Oxford, when he made Locke's acquaintance. 

" WHITEHALL, May 30, 1666. 

" MY LOUD, I have moved his Majesty this evening concerning pay- 
ment of my privy seal of 17507., which the King granted for my use a 
year ago, and which you know is not assigned nor paid. I desired that 
it might be paid out of the discoveries of prize wool and other goods, 
which is no part of Mr. Killigrew's discovery. This his Majesty was 
pleased very readily to grant at first word. I then asked his Majesty if 
he would allow me to signify so much to your Lordship, and the King 
commanded me to let your Lordship know so much from, him, which I 
am sure he will tell you when he sees you. I do heartily wish you 



1667. LETTEE OF DOWAGER QUEEN. 317 

a good journey and a happy return. You will please to order Mr. 
Kingdon to come and speak with 

" Your Lordship's faithfullest servant, 

" LAUDERDAILL. " 

The other letter is from the Dowager Queen of England, Henrietta 
Maria, about the payment of her pension, and it is printed literatim. 

"CoLOMBE ce 14 August, 1667. 

"My Lord Ashley, 1'estime que je fais de vre peraonne me persuade 
que je reccuere dans les choses qui regardent mes affaires et assigna- 
tions pour ma pention toutes les facilitations qui depandront de vos 
offices et ministere ce dont je vous en prie et en mesme temps de 
vous assurer que je rechercheray de mon coste les occations de vous 
temoygner mes ressentiments avec les mesme soings et que je suis 
avec toute sorte de verite 

" Vfe bien bonne amie 

"HENRIETTE MABIB R. 
" Pour milord Ashley." 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDICES 

TO VOL. I. 

PAGE 

APPENDIX I. ' iii 

Fragment of Autobiography, from birth (1621) to 1639. 

APPENDIX II xxv 

Autobiographical Sketch from birth (1621) to end of 1645, 
followed by a Diary from January 1, 1646, to July 10, 
1650. 

APPENDIX III Ivi 

Suppressed Passages of Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs, re- 
ferring to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, collected by John 
Locke, 16531660. 

APPENDIX IV. Ixiii 

Speech in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, March 28, 1659. 

APPENDIX V Ixxiv 

A Letter from Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Thomas Scot, 
Josias Berners, and John Weaver, Esquires, delivered to 
the Lord Fleetwood, owning their late actions, in 
endeavouring to secure the Tower of London for the 
better service of the City and Commonwealth, December 
16, 1659. 

APPENDIX VI Ixxviii 

A Proviso for the Bill of Uniformity, presented to the 
House of Peers from the King by the Lord Chancellor, 
March 17, 1662 ; and a Bill, entitled "An Act concerning 
His Majesty's power in Ecclesiastical Affairs," presented 
to the House of Peers, February 23, 1663, by Lord 
Roberts, Lord Privy Seal. 



VOL. I. 



APPENDIX I. 

Fragment of Autobiography, from birth (1621) to 1639. 1 



"WHOEVER considers the number and the power of the adver- 
saries I have met with, and how studiously they have, under 
the authority of both Church and State, dispersed the most 
villanous slanders of me, will think it necessary that I in this 
follow the French fashion, and write my own Memoirs, that 
it may appear to the world on what ground or motives they 
came to be my enemies, and with what truth and justice they 
have prosecuted their quarrel ; 2 and if in this whole narration 

1 This fragment is printed from a copy at St. Giles's. "With the 
copy are two pages of the original in Shaftesbury's handwriting, reach- 
ing only to the top of p. vi. So far the copy entirely agrees with the 
original. The rest of the original has -not been found. There are 
possibly a few mistakes in the copy. 

2 The opening passage of this fragment makes it clear that Shaftes- 
bury composed it in his old age. Mr. Martyii states that -a work, of 
which this fragment was only the beginning, was entrusted by 
Shaftesbury, when he fled to Holland, to the care of Locke, who, after 
Shaftesbury's death and Algernon Sydney's execution, burnt it from 
fear of the court (Life, i. 3,10). He gives no authority for these 
statements, and I am not aware of any. The story is probably a fable. 
There is no reference to any part of this story in any Life of Locke, 
nor in any of his published correspondence, nor in his letters existing 
at St. Giles's (among which, besides many to the grandson, the author 
of the "Characteristics," are some written shortly after Shaftesbury's 
death to his widow and his son), nor in any of the Shaftesbury 
papers, nor in the Locke papers which I have examined at the 
Earl of Lovelace's. It is not probable that Shaftesbury had regularly 
composed the work much beyond where this fragment ends. The only 
other possible parts of the work in existence are the two short notes 
for the year 1640, printed in Chapter II., the fragment of a narrative of 
events in 1659, printed in Chapter VII., and an account of the state 

a 2 



IV APPENDIX I. 1621. 

they find me false or partial in any particular, I give up the 
whole to whatever censure they will make. 

My birth was at Wimbom St. Gyles 1 in the county of 
Dorsett, on the 22d day of July, 1621, early in the morning ; 
my parents on both sides of a noble stock, being of the first 
rank of gentry in those countries where they lived. My 
mother's name was Anne, the sole daughter and heir of Sir 
Anthony Ashley, knight and baronet, lord of the manor and 
place where I was born : my father, Sir John Cooper, knight 
and baronet, son of Sir John Cooper, of Kockborn in the 
county of Hamshyre. I was christened by the name of 
Anthony Ashley, for, notwithstanding my grandfather had 
articled with my father and his guardians that he should 
change his name to Ashley, yet, to make all sure in the 
eldest, he resolved to add his name, so that it should not be 
parted with. 

Sir Anthony Ashley was of great age, but of strong sense 
and health; he had been for wisdom, courage, experience, 
skill in weapon, agility, and strength of body scarce paralleled 
in his age, of a large mind in all his actions, his person of the 
lowest. His daughter was of the same stature, a modest and 
a virtuous woman, of a weaker mould, and not so stirring a 
mind as her father. Sir John Cooper was very lovely and 
graceful both in face and person, of a moderate stature, 
neither too high nor too low, of an easy and an affable nature, 
fair and just in all affairs. 

Sir Anthony Ashley, although near fourscore, had married 
a young lady that was under twenty years of age, near of kin 
to the then great favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, from 



of affairs on the opening of the parliament in March 1679, which 
appears in the second volume. But these were all possibly separate 
snatches of composition. The following short paper of "Queries," 
relating to this fragment, is among the papers at St. Giles's in Shaftes- 
bury's handwriting ; there is no trace of other similar notes or queries. 
" Queries : 1. Dr. Olivian was of the Palatinate or Bohemia. 
2. The time of my grandfather's death ; 3. of my mother's ; 4. of my 
father's; 5. of Sir Francis Ashley's; 6. of Sir Daniel Norton's; 7. of 
my going to Oxford; 8. "When Dr. Reynolds and Mr. Carvill were 
preachers at Lincoln's Inn. 9. The time of tucking freshmen." 

1 1 generally follow the manuscript for the spelling of names. The 
same names are sometimes differently spelt in the same manuscript. 
For ordinary words 1 have thought it would be more agreeable to the 
reader that I should adopt modern spelling, but I have here and there 
retained or mentioned an old form which seemed worthy of note. 



1629. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. V 

whom he expected great preferment, and from her children; 1 
"but he failed of his expectation in the first, and his age, with 
virtue of the young lady, could not 'help him to the latter, so 
that recollecting himself he resolved, and did accordingly 
settle all his fortunes in his lifetime, that they should come 
after his decease to my mother and father for their lives, and 
after that to me, without his own or their power to alter it, 
for he grew every day more and more fond -of me, being a 
prating boy and very observant of him. 

It ought not to be forgotten that at my birth there was 
Doctor Olivian, a German, a very learned physician and 
greatly skilled in nativities, who took the minute of my birth 
and foretold great things from it, which he told several people 
then of, and me very often since, for he lived till I was past 
twenty and was always particularly kind and conversant 
with me. 

I continued at Wimborn St. Gyles until my grandfather's 
death, which was in 1627, January 13th, 2 and so likewise 
until my mother's sickness, who falling ill of the small- pox, 
whereof she died in July, 1628, myself, one brother, and one 
sister, which were all the children my parents had, were 
removed for some months for fear of the infection to Eock- 
born and Whichbury; 3 the disease fallowing us causing our 
change of places. From thence afterwards we returned to 
Wimborn St. Gyles, and continued there until my father 
married a second time *the widow of Sir Charles Moryson and 
daughter and co-heir of the Lord Viscount Caniden, a lady 
beautiful and of great fortune, a discreet woman of a large 
soul, who, if she had not given some jealousy to both her 
husbands and confirmed it after by marrying the person, 
mought 4 have been numbered amongst the excellent. 5 This 
marriage caused our remove to Cashiobury, in Hertfordshyre, 
the jointure house of this lady by her: first husband, living 

1 The name of this lady was Philippa Sheldon. 

2 January 13, 1628, according to the present mode of counting the 
year. It was then reckoned to begin on March 25. 

3 Rockborne is a parish in the hundred of Eordingbridge in Hamp- 
shire, close to the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. Whichbury, 
where Sir J. Cooper also had a house, .is in Wiltshire, -close to Rock- 
borne ; and Wimborne St. Giles in Dorsetshire is a few miles distant 
from Rockborne and Whichbury. 

4 The form mought is always. used.by Shaftesbury for might. 

5 Her third husband was Sir Richard Alford, knight. 



VI APPENDIX L 1631. 

there and at Wimborn St. Gyles by turns, as their business 
or their fancy required until March 1630, 1 when my father 
died at Cashiobury, where all his family then was. 

From a little before my grandfather's death to this time, i 
had been under the instruction of one Mr. Guerden 2 as my 
tutor, who has since taken the degree of a doctor of physic, 
and has been of great practice in the city of London. Old 
Sir Anthony chose him for his being a noted Puritan, saying 
youth could not have too deep a dye of religion, business and 
conversation in the world would wear it to a just moderation. 
This man was moderately learned, a great lover of money, 
had neither piety proportionable to the great profession he 
made nor judgment and parts to support the good opinion he 
had of himself ; but he served well enough for what he was 
designed for, being formal and not vicious. Upon the death 
of my father, the Easter term following, I made my first 
journey to London. I lodged at Sir Daniel Norton's lodging 
in Three Cranes Court, in Fleet Street, he being one of my 
guardians by my father's will, and after the term went down 
with him to Southwick, his house near Portsmouth in Ham- 
shyre. Here Mr. Guerden left me and went not down ; but 
I was then taught by Mr. Fletcher, who was tutor in tne 
house to four sons of Sir Daniel's, a very excellent teacher of 
grammar. 

My father's debts, which were very great, contracted by 
his loss at play his only fault, and a very fatal one to our 
family 3 had raised so many suits, and given the then Court 
of Wards and some near relations and neighbours hopes to 

1 Sir J. Cooper died March 23, 1631. 

2 There is a blank in the manuscript for this name. I supply it 
from the next autobiography. 

3 He was also generally extravagant. In a letter from Lady 
Elizabeth Harris (November 1734) to the Countess of Shaftesbury, 
wife of the fourth Earl, preserved among Lord Shaftesbury' s papers, 
occurs this passage : " Why, when mention is made of Sir John 
Cooper's great debts from play, should not his very great hospitality, 
which was conspicuous (some old servants of the family have oft times 
told me he had no less than three houses, viz. St. Giles's, Bockborne, 
and, if my memory fails me not, Lediard, all furnished with servants, 
&c., and kept open house whenever he was at any of them), be re- 
marked ?" Lady Elizabeth Harris was a granddaughter of Shaftesbury, 
sister of the third Earl, the author of the " Characteristics;" she was 
mother of James Harris, the author of "Hermes." She took great 
interest in the biography of her grandfather, which the fourth Earl 
had engaged Mr. Martyn to prepare, endeavoured to procure materials, 
and wrote suggestions to the Countess, 



1632. FEAGMENT OP AUTOBIOGEAPHY. Vll 

advantage themselves in the confusion and disorder of so 
great an estate, insomuch that my grandfather's own brother, 
Sir Francis Ashley, the King's serjeant-at-law, one of more 
elocution, learning, and abilities than gratitude or piety to his 
elder brother's family ; old Mr. Tregonwell, a near neighbour 
but no good Samaritan, one that never knew generosity or 
kindness but for himself, his horse, or his dog ; Sir William 
Button, a miserable wretch ; the Earl of Danby, 1 and others, 
on pretence of being creditors or sureties, but in truth having 
an eye on several parts of the estate which, if sold in haste, 
must become good pennyworths ; these having by the help of 
Sir Francis Ashley found the way to engage to their party 
Sir Walter Pye, Attorney of the Court of Wards, a corrupt 
man who then swayed that Court, the Master, Sir Eobert 
Naunton, being not the activest man, they quickly took the 
estate by order of the Court out of my father's trustees' hands 
and appointed these very men (except the Earl of Danby) 
and their friends commissioners to sell the land, who speedily 
despatched the matter, selling the most part to one another at 
their own rates : Rockborn, my father's seat, to Mr. Tregon- 
well; Damerham, Martin, and Lodyrs, the two first very near 
me, goodly manors, to Sir Francis, my uncle. This occasioned 
Sir Daniel Norton to go constantly to London every term, 
and he very often took me with him as thinking my presence, 
though very young, might work some compassion on the 
Court or those that should have been my friends. My father 
had appointed three trustees for me and my estate, Sir Daniel 
Norton, Mr. Edward Tooker that had married my father's 
sister, and Mr. Hannam, of Wimborn, a near kinsman ; but 
Mr. Hannam, finding trouble, gave up the trust, not having 
kindness for our family to undergo either hazard or trouble 
for us. Sir Daniel and my uncle, Mr. Tooker, undertook it, 
and refused to convey the lands to such purchasers as the 
Court of Wards sold the land to by those commissioners of 

1 Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, son of Sir John Danvers who 
had married, in the reign of Elizabeth, onp of the daughters and co- 
heiresses of the last Lord Latimer ; he was created by James I. Baron 
Danvers, and by Charles I. Earl of Danby. He died unmarried, 20th 
January, 1644. He was a soldier, and was the founder of the medical 
garden at Oxford. (Banks's Extinct and Dormant Peerages, iii. 225. ) 
The title of Earl of Danby, which became extinct on his death, was 
revived in 1674 in the person of the famous Lord Treasurer Osborne, 
afterwards Duke of Leeds, whose mother was another co-heiress of 
Lord Latimer. 



Vlll APPENDIX I. 1633. 

their own appointing, excluding them my father had only 
trusted, and desired time to sell the land at better rates ; and 
in particular that I might be allowed to be a purchaser of 
Rockborn, Pawlett, and the manors of Damerham, Martin, 
and Lodyrs ; I having an estate of my own from Sir Anthony 
Ashley, my mother's father, for which I was not in ward. 
This was pressed in open court, I being then present ; the 
Court refused, unless the purchasers, who were also present, 
would consent. The argument for Pawlett 1 was that it was 
ancient land of my family ; for Rockborn that it was the seat 
of the Coopers, near my other house, as also was Damerham 
and Martin, and that they were all too good bargains to be 
sold from the family. Mr. Blanchflower, a gentleman that 
was esteemed very near and knew how to make the best of 
his money, yet thought this so reasonable that he readily 
consented, and declared that he aimed at no other advantage 
but his debt and interest to be forthwith paid. 2 My uncle, 
Sir Francis Ashley, who had bought Damerham, Martin, and 
Lodyrs, and my neighbour, Mr. Tregonwell, who had con- 
tracted for Rockborn, positively refused, though very much 
urged, to part with their bargains. Whereupon my trustees 
were required by the Court to convey the estates to them, 
which they refusing, the Court committed them to the Fleet, 
and they were forced to convey before released. 

Thus was my estate torn and rent from me before my face 
by the injustice and oppression of that Court, near relations 
and neighbours who, I may truly say, have been twenty 
thousand pound damage to me ; yet Mr. Tregonwell had not 
good success in his hard dealing, for he was so greedy of a 
good bargain that he looked not into his title, and this manor 
proved entailed on my father's marriage with my mother, my 
father having left this out of the fine he passed on all his 
other lands when he conveyed them for the discharge of his 
debts, not intending to sell the place of his father's bones, 
especially when his other land would more than serve to pay 
all. This blot was soon hit when I came to manage my own 
matters ; and Mr. TregonwelTs grandchild and myself came 



1 Pawlett or Paulett had been acquired by Shaftesbury's great 
grandfather, Richard Cooper, part by purchase from Sir Amias Paulett, 
and part by- grant from Henry VIII., who took the manor from 
Gaunt's Hospital at Bristol. (Collinson's Hist, of Somerset, iii. 100.) 

2 Mr. Blanchflower would be the purchaser of Pawlett 



1634. FEAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. IX 

to an agreement, I suffering Mm to enjoy his own and his 
lady's life in the manor, in which I designed to bury all 
animosity or ill will as well as lawsuits betwixt the families. 
My trustees, notwithstanding their forced conveyance, yet 
preferred a bill against my uncle, they having sold the manors 
of Damerhani and Lodyrs before to one for my use, and my 
uncle having bought it by a particular that now he endea- 
voured to avoid ; for-it consisting all of old rents, my trustees, 
to make it the easier purchase for me^had granted all the 
estates untilled to friends in waste to the value of some two 
thousand pounds, and my uncle, Sir Francis, bought it by the 
same particular as full stated, yet afterwards endeavoured to 
overthrow this trust, and to improve his great bargain in yet 
two thousand pounds more. Sir 'Francis Ashley, being op- 
posed by my trustees in this design, and finding my separate 
estate, which came to me from his brother my grandfather 
and was not liable "to wardship, to be the fund by which my 
trustees were enabled to give him this opposition, he most 
wickedly designs the total ruin of my fortune, and desires to 
be heard on behalf of the King to prove that the deed by 
which I claimed was not valid to preserve -that land from 
wardship, and accordingly a day was set down for hearing the 
debate of this deed. Mr. Noy was then the King's Attorney, 
who, being a very intimate 'friend of my grandfather's, had 
drawn that settlement ; my friends advised that I was in 
great danger if he would not undertake my cause, and yet, it 
being against the King, it was neither proper nor probable he 
would meddle in it for me ; but weighing the temper of the 
man, the kindness he had for my grandfather, and his honour 
so concerned if a deed of that consequence should fail of his 
drawing, they advised that I must be my own solicitor, and 
carry the deed myself alone to him, which, -being but thirteen 1 
years old, I undertook and performed with that pertness that 
he told me he would defend my cause though he lost his 
place. I was at the Court, and he made good his word to the 
full without taking one penny fees. My Lord Cottington 
was then Master of the Wards, who, sitting with his hat over 
his eyes, and having heard Sir Francis make a long and 
elegant speech for the overthrowing of my deed, said openly, 
" Sir Francis, you have spoke like a good uncle." Mr. 
Attorney Noj argued for me, and my uncle rising up to reply 

1 A blank in the manuscript for the age. This trial was in 1634. 



X APPENDIX I. 1637. 

(I being then present in court), before he could speak two 
words, he was taken with a sudden convulsion fit, his mouth 
drawn to his ear, was carried out of the court, and never 
spoke more. 

I continued under the care of Sir Daniel Norton for several 
years until his death, which happened in 1635. He was a 
worthy and an honest gentleman, and had been in his younger 
days a very valiant, experienced, and fortunate sea-com- 
mander ; he had Southwick by my lady, who was heir of the 
Whites : she was a worthy and a shining woman, an excellent 
housewife, and mother of many deserving children, and was 
my godmother. Sir Daniel being dead, and I of that age as 
now to choose my own guardian, being above fourteen, my 
Lady Norton was desirous to continue me with her, and the 
rather because she might reasonably expect I might prove a 
husband for one of her daughters, there being a great friendship 
between her youngest daughter Elizabeth and me : and truly, if 
the condition of my litigious fortune had not necessitated me 
to other thoughts for support and protection, the sweetness of 
the disposition of that young lady had made me look no 
further for a wife. My uncle Tooker and Sir Walter Erie 
both also pretended to the care of me ; Sir Walter Erie's son, 
Mr. Thomas Erie, being of the same age with me, and there 
being the nearest friendship betwixt us was imaginable in our 
years, which increased as we grew older and never to expire 
but in both our deaths. But my being so very young was 
assisted with the troubles I had already undergone in my own 
affairs, having now for several years been inured to the com- 
plaints of miseries from near relations and oppressions from 
men in power, being forced to learn the world faster than my 
book, and in that I was no ill proficient : yet I had for my 
diversion both hounds and hawks of my own. I chose my 
uncle Tooker, my surviving trustee, for my guardian, he being 
most versed in my affairs, my nearest relation, and had the 
reputation of a worthy man, as indeed he proved ; he was a 
very honest, industrious man, an hospitable, prudent person, 
much valued and esteemed, dead and alive, by all that knew 
him. To his house in Salisbury my brother George, my 
sister Philippa, and myself removed from Southwick, where, 
and at Madington, a country house of my uncle's eight miles 
from Salisbury, we continued until, in the year 1637, I went 
to Oxford to Exeter College, under the immediate tuition of 
Dr. Prideaux. 



1638. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XI 

During my residing with my uncle and my being at Oxford, 
my business often called me to London in the terms, where I 
was entered of Lincoln's Inn. Thus the condition of my 
affairs gave me better education than any steady, designed 
course could have done : my business called me early to the 
thoughts and considerations of a man, my studies enabled me 
better to master those thoughts and try to understand my 
learning, and my intermixed pleasures supported me and kept 
my mind from being dulled with the cares of one or the 
intentness I had for the other. 

I kept both horses and servants in Oxford, and was allowed 
what expense or recreation I desired, which liberty I never 
much abused ; but it gave me the opportunity of obliging by 
entertainments the better sort and supporting divers of the 
activest of the lower rank with giving them leave to eat when 
in distress upon my expense, it being no small honour 
amongst those sort of men, that my name in the buttery 
book willingly owned twice the expense of any in the Uni- 
versity. This expense, my quality, proficiency in learning, 
and natural affability easily not only obtained the goodwill 
of the wiser and older sort, but made me the leader. even of 
all the rough young men of that college, famous for the 
courage and strength of tall, raw-boned Cornish and Devon- 
shire gentlemen, which in great numbers yearly came to that 
college, and did then maintain in the schools coursing against 
Christ Church, the largest and most numerous college in the 
University. This coursing was in older' times, I believe, 
intended for a fair trial of. learning and skill in logic, meta- 
physics, and school divinity, but for some ages that had been 
the least part of it, the dispute quickly ending in affronts, 
confusion, and very often blows, when they went most gravely 
to work. They forbore striking, but making a great noise 
with their feet, they hissed and shoved with their shoulders, 
and the stronger in that disorderly order drove the other out 
before them, and, if the schools were above stairs, with all 
violence hurrying the contrary party down, the proctors were 
forced either to give way to their violence or suffer in the 
throng. Nay, the Vice-Chancellor, though it seldom has 
begun when he was present, yet being begun, he has some- 
times unfortunately been so near as to be called in, and has 
been overcome in their fury once up in these adventures. I 
was often one of the disputants, and gave the sign and order 
for their beginning, but being not strong of body was always 



Xll APPENDIX I. 

guarded from violence by two or three of the sturdiest youths, 
as their chief and one who always relieved them when in 
prison and procured their release, and very often was forced 
to pay the neighbouring farmers, when they of our party that 
wanted money were taken in the fact, for more geese, turkeys, 
and poultry than either they had stole or he had lost, it being 
very fair dealing if he made the scholar when taken pay no 
more than he had lost since his last reimbursement. 

Two things I had also a principal hand in when I was at 
the college. The one, I caused that ill custom of tucking 
freshmen to be left off- the other, when the senior fellows 
designed to alter the beer of the ^college, which was stronger 
than other colleges, I hindered their design. This had put 
all the younger sort into a mutiny ; they resorting to me, 
I advised all those were intended by their friends to get their 
livelihood by their studies to rest quiet and not appear, and 
that myself and all the others that were elder brothers or 
unconcerned in their angers should go in a body and strike 
our names out of the buttery book, which was accordingly 
done, and had the effect that the senior fellows, seeing their 
pupils going that yielded them most profit, presently struck 
sail and articled with us never to alter the size of our beer, 
which remains so to this day. 

The first was a harder work, it having been a foolish custom 
of great antiquity that one of the seniors in the evening 
called the freshmen (which are such as came since that time 
twelvemonth) to the fire and made them hold out their chin> 
and they with the nail of their right thumb, left long for that 
purpose, grate off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and 
then cause them to drink a beer glass of water and salt. The 
time approaching when I should be thus used, I considered 
that it had happened in that year more and lustier young 
gentlemen had come to the college than had done in several 
years before, so that the freshmen were a very strong body. 
Upon this I consulted my two cousin-germans, the Tookers, 1 
my aunt's sons, both freshmen, both stout and very strong, 
and several others, and at last the whole party were cheer- 
fully engaged to stand stoutly to defence of their chins. We 
all appeared at the fires in the hall, and my Lord of Pern- 
brook's son calling me first, as we knew by custom it would 

1 There is here a blank in the manuscript ; the name is supplied 
by conjecture. | 



1638. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Xlll 

begin with me, I- according . to agreement gave the signal, 
striking him a box on the ear, and immediately the freshmen 
fell on, and we easily cleared the buttery and the hall, but 
bachelors and young masters coming in to assist the seniors, 
we were compelled to retreat to a ground chamber in the 
quadrangle. They pressing at the door, some of the stoutest 
and strongest of our freshmen, giant-like boys, opened the 
doors, let in as mamy as they pleased, and shut the door by 
main strength against the rest ; those let in they fell upon 
and had- beaten very severely, but that my authority with 
them stopped them, some of them being considerable enough 
to make terms -for us, which they did, for Dr. Prideaux being 
called out to suppress the mutiny, the old Doctor, always 
favourable to youth offending, out of courage, wishing with 
the fears of those we had within, gave us articles of pardon 
for what had passed, -and an utter abolition in that college of 
that foolish custom. 

Being now* grown up towards a man, several marriages 
were proposed, and amongst others a half-sister of Mr. Kogers, 
daughter of Sir Robert Banister by Mr. Rogers his mother. 
Mr. Rogers w r as of the same county, a near neighbour, of a 
noble family and estate, a proper handsome man, and indeed 
a very worthy noble gentleman, and one that thought so well 
of himself as -gave him a value with others.. The Earls of 
Hertford had married into his family, which filled his sails 
with no small vanity. This match Dr. Olivian, my great 
friend, earnestly pressed me to, not only as it was every way 
suitable and fit for me, but, as he positively affirmed, he saw 
by his art there would be feuds and great danger to me if it 
was not a match, and, if it were, he could assure me she 
would prove a vast fortune, professing he had no concern in 
it above mine ; and I did truly believe so, but I told him I 
could not see a possibility of her being so great a fortune or 
having considerable addition to her present portion, since her 
father had divers sons, and some married. He replied he 
was sure of the thing, but could not tell me how it should be; 
and this lady, after marrying my Lord Maynard, by the death 
of her brothers and strange unequal humour of her father, 
came to be a very great fortune indeed. But my uncle 
Tooker, considering the great use I had of powerful friends, 
advised me to make address to one of my Lord Keeper 
Coventry's daughters ; which with his assistance I did, and 
was kindly received by my lord and his lady. And notwith- 



XIV APPENDIX I. 1639. 

standing I was very young and unexperienced in love affairs, 
yet the prudence and affection of the lady I addressed to 
overlooked that and made a judgment what I was like to be 
for a man or a husband rather than how good love-speeches 
I then made ; for I did that very ill, was very talkative and 
good company to her sisters, but my love to her gave me that 
desire to seern excellent that I could say nothing, insomuch 
that her mother and they suspected that I was more inclined 
to one of them, but, that being cleared, all matters went 
successfully on, and we were married in February 1638. 1 
But before our marriage the first part of Dr. Olivian's pre- 
dictions began to have their effect ; for Mr. Rogers, hearing 
where my address was, did, by the favour of my Lord Cot- 
tington, then a suitor to the elder sister, earnestly press to 
be admitted a servant to my mistress, but neither she nor 
her friends would admit it, but yet the offer and attempt was 
so open and avowed that it began a never reconciled feud 
betwixt us, he having offered me the highest injury, and 
merely out of malice. 

My wife and I lived with my Lord Keeper at Durham 
House and Canbury, 2 and I very often went to my own 
house in the country, where, though young, I made it one 
part of my business to show Mr. Eogers in his stately and 
ambitious humour, which did easily disoblige those of best 
quality, and by degrees make others not so fond of him. The 
eastern part of Dorsetshire had a bowling-green at Hanley, 3 
where the gentlemen went constantly once a week, though 
neither the green nor accommodation was inviting, yet it was 
well placed for to continue the correspondence of the gentry 
of those parts. Thither resorted Mr. Hastings of Woodland, 

1 February 1639. 

2 Durham House was in the Strand, overlooking the river. Caubury 
is Canonbury, in Islington, where there was a mansion at this time 
rented by the Lord Keeper from the Earl of Northampton. This 
mansion had been built in 1432 for the Prior of the Canons of St. 
Bartholomew. It was bought in the sixteenth century by Sir John 
Spenser, whose daughter and heir married the first Earl of Northamp- 
ton. There \*jas a tradition that the old house had been built for the 
Prior for a penny a day ; this and the salubrity of Canbury are alluded 
to in a poem published in 1743 in the " Gentleman's Magazine : " 

" Now Canbury's numerous turrets rise to view, 
No costly structure, if the tale be true ; 
Here city doctors bid the sick repair 
Only too oft to die in better air." 

3 Hanley or Handley, near Cranborne and Wimborne St. Giles. 



1639. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XV 

Sir Gerard Nappeir, Mr. Kogers, Sir William Uvedall, Mr. 
Carent of Woodyats, Mr. Okeden, Mr. Butler, father and son, 
and Mr. Edward Hooper of Boryds, 1 Mr. Eyves of Raynston, 
Mr. Holies, Mr. Chafin of Chettle, Mr. Hussey of Edmonds- 
ham, Mr. Ernley, Mr. Arney, Sir George Moreton, and my- 
self, with several others. Here I omitted no opportunity, 
and it was often given, to show Mr. Rogers, where his coach 
and six horses did not a little contribute to their envy. His 
garb, his discourse, all spoke him one that thought himself 
above them, which when observed to them they easily agreed 
to. My family, alliance, fortune being not prejudiced either 
by nature or education, gave me the juster grounds to take 
exceptions ; besides my affable, easy temper, now with care 
improved, rendered the stiffness of his demeanour morp 
visible. 

Mr. Hastings, by his quality, being the son, brother, and 
uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon, and his way of living, had 
the first place amongst us. He was peradventure an original 
in our age, or rather the copy of our nobility in ancient days 
in hunting and not warlike times ; he was low, very strong 
and very active, of a reddish flaxen hair, his clothes always 
green cloth, and never all worth when new five pounds. His 
house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a large 
park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to 
serve his kitchen, many fish-ponds, and great store of wood 
and timber ; a bowling-green in it, long but narrow, full of 
high ridges, it being never levelled since it was ploughed ; 
they used round sand bowls, and it had a baiiqueting-house 
like a stand, a large one built in a tree. He kept all manner 
of sport-hounds that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger, 
and hawks long and short winged ; he had all sorts of nets 
for fishing ; he had a walk in the New Eorest and the manor 
of Christ Church. This last supplied him with red deer, sea 
and river fish ; and indeed all his neighbours' grounds and 
royalties were free to him, who bestowed all his time in 
such sports, but what he borrowed to caress his neighbours' 
wives and daughters, there being not a woman in all his 
walks of the degree of a yeoman's wife or under, and under 
the age of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he were not 
intimately acquainted with her. This made him very popular, 
always speaking kindly to the husband, brother, or father, 

1 Boryds, Boridge, or Boveridge. 



XVI APPENDIX I. 

who was to Loot very welcome to his house whenever he 
came. There he found beef pudding and small beer in great 
plenty, a house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his 
dirty shoes, the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of 
hawks* perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, the upper 
sides of the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last 
year's skinning, here and there a polecat intermixed, guns 
and keepers' and huntsmen's poles in abundance. The 
parlour was a large long room, as properly furnished ; on a 
great hearth paved- with brick lay some terriers and the 
choicest hounds and spaniels ; seldom but two of the great 
chairs and litters of young cats in ther% which were not to be 
disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at 
dinner, and a little white round 'stick of fourteen inches long 
lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he 
had no- mind to part with to them. The windows, which 
were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows, 
stonebows, and other such like accoutrements; the corners 
of the room -full of the best chose hunting and hawking poles; 
an oyster-table at the lower end, which was of constant use 
twice a day all the year round, for he never failed to eat 
oysters before dinner and supper through all seasons : the 
neighbouring town of Poole supplied him with them. The 
upper part of this room had two small tables and a desk, on 
the one side of which was a church Bible, on the other the 
Book of Martyrs ; on the tables were hawks' hoods, bells, 
and such like, two or three old green hats with their crowns 
thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a 
pheasant kind of poultry he took much care of and fed himself; 
tables, dice, cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of 
the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used. On 
one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, 
wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never 
came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the 
house exactly observed, for he never' exceeded in drink or 
permitted it. On the other side was a door into an old 
chapel not used for devotion ; the pulpit, as the safest place, 
was never wanting of a cold chine of beef, pasty of venison, 
gammon of bacon, or great apple-pie, with thick crust ex- 
tremely baked. His table cost him not much, though it was 
very good to eat at, his sports supplying all but beef and 
mutton, except Friday, when he had the best sea-fish as well 
as other fish he could get, and was the day that his neigh- 



163f FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XV11 

bours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a 
London pudding, and always sung it in with " niy part lies 
therein-a." He drank a glass of wine or two at meals, very 
often syrup of gilliflower in his sack, and had always a tun 
glass without feet stood by him. holding a pint of small beer, 
which he often stirred with a great sprig of rosemary. He 
was well natured, but soon angry, called his servants bastard 
and cuckoldy knaves, in one of which he often spoke truth to 
his own knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the same 
man. He lived to a hundred, never lost his eyesight, but 
always writ and read without spectacles, and got to horse 
without help. Until past fourscore he rode to the death of a 
stag as well as any. 1 

Sir Gerard Nappeir had one of the best estates in the 
county, was a deputy-lieutenant, colonel of the western 
regiment, a good housekeeper, well versed in all his country 
business and employments, but had not a genius above that, 
and of a temper inclined to envy, not obliging, and to speak 
as ill as he could of the absent. Sir George Moreton, of the 
noble family of Cardinal Moreton, that wise and worthy 
statesman in Henry the Seventh's days ; he was of the shape 
and temper of his family, large, strong, stout, generous and 
plain-hearted, but wanting conduct had much worsted his 
estate, which from the Cardinal's time had always been one 
of the very best of the county. Sir William Uvedall was of 
a good family and fortune, and would have had a considerable 
regard in his country, had not those things which were good 
in him been drowned in his excessive covetousness ; he had 
got together and hid in house many thousand pounds, which 
were afterwards stolen from him by some that got intelligence 

1 This racy sketch of Mr. Hastings has been often separately printed, 
and is in the "Connoisseur," No. 81, August 14, 1755. It has been 
hitherto printed with some few inaccuracies and variations. The " my 
part lies therein-a" has been wrongly printed " my pert eyes," &c. and 
so written in the copy at St. Giles's. This is part of an old catch, 

" There lies a pudding in the fire, 

And my part lies therein-a. 
When shall I call in, ! 

Thy good follows and niine-a ? " 

I owe this piece of information to "Notes and Queries," 2d Series, 
vol. vii. p. 323. There is a portrait of this Hon. Henry Hastings at 
St. Giles's, and an engraving from the portrait in Hutchins's Hist, of 
Dorset, ii. 510. 

VOL. I. I 



XV111 APPENDIX I. 1639. 

of it. Mr. Carent was of a good estate, and of a very ancient 
family, a lean, tall old man, very worthy and honest. Mr. 
Hooper was a judicious, discreet country gentleman, of a 
good estate. Mr. Chafin was a personable, well-carriaged 
man of a good estate, wanted neither understanding nor value 
for himself, was an enemy to the Puritan party. 

These were the men of most consideration and sway that 
resorted to that meeting; hut in that eastern part of the 
county there were other men of power that came not to the 
meeting, Sir Walter Earl of Charhorow, Mr. Hannam of 
Wimborn, both worthy and honest gentlemen, lovers of their 
country, and no admirers of Mr. Eogers his way. Sir Walter 
had been a Low Country soldier, valued himself upon the 
sieges and service he had been in ; his garden was cut into 
redoubts and works representing these places, his house hung 
with the maps of those sieges and fights had been most famous 
in those parts. They were both inclined to the Puritan. 
Sir Francis Fulford, Mr. John Tregonwell of Milton, and 
Mr. Thomas Tregonwell of Anderson, may be also reckoned 
among the eastern men, since their seats are much nearer 
Blandford than Dorchester. Sir Francis Fulford was of a 
very ancient and noble family in Devonshire, had an estate 
and lived most in our country. Colonel Bingham was of a 
very noble and ancient family that had been possessed, and 
left their names to many towns, in this county and Somerset ; 
he had now a good estate, and was a very honest, good man, 
and a Puritan. Mr. John Tregonwell enjoyed his nightcaps, 
his poached eggs, his chamber pleasures, and thought no 
further of the world. Mr. Thomas Tregonwell was perfectly 
his father's son. These two had the old man's estate almost 
equally divided, so that he that had least, which was the 
youngest, had near 1,700Z. per annum. 

The western side afforded several men of quality, the Earl 
of Bristol! at Sherborn and his son the Lord Digby, Sir John 
Strangwaies of Abotsbury, Sir John Heal of Clifton, Sir 
Thomas Trenchard of Woolton, Mr. Coker of Maypouder, 
Mr. Angell Gray, 1 and divers others. The Earl of Bristol 
was retired from all business, and lived privately to himself ; 
but his son, the Lord Digby, a very handsome young man, of 
great courage and learning, and of a quick wit, began to show 

1 Mr. Anchitell Grey, mentioned by Clarendon as a Dorsetshire 
royalist. (Hist, of Rebellion, ix. 17.) 



1639. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XIX 

himself to the world, and gave great expectations of himself, 
he being justly admired by all, and only gave himself dis- 
advantage with a pedantic stiffness and affectation he had 
contracted. 1 Sir John Strangwaies was very considerable 
both for estate and family, a wise, crafty, experienced man, 
but extremely narrow in expenses, a great enemy of the 
Puritans ; 2 Sir Thomas Trenchard, of a very noble family 
and good estate, a very honest, well-natured, worthy man, a 
favourer of the Puritans. 3 Sir John Heal had a very great 
estate, was a personable, well-natured, honest gentleman, very 
generous, kept a great house; his fault was only that he 
loved the cup, and that way of over-caressing his friends. 
Mr. Coker, of a very ancient family, and a most worthy, dis- 
creet gentleman, very knowing in the justice, government, 

1 Lord Digby, afterwards second Earl of Bristol, was now twenty- 
seven. In four years from this time he was Secretary of State to 
Charles the First. He succeeded to the title of Earl of Bristol in 
1653. He became a Roman Catholic before the Restoration. He was 
born in 1612, and died in 1677. Being an avowed Roman Catholic, he 
was not admitted to office in Charles II. 's reign ; but he from time to 
time exercised great influence over the King; and lie was at times out 
of favour and in opposition. In the violent debates of the House of 
Lords in 1675 Bristol made an attack on Shaftesbury ; the House 
interfered and ordered Bristol to beg pardon, and resolved that what 
lie had said had made no impression on them to Shaftesbury's prejudice 
(Lords' Journ. Nov. 20, 1675.) Shortly before, his son, Lord Digby, 
had made a violent speech against Shaftesbury at a public meeting in 
Dorsetshire (August 27, 1675), for which Shaftesbury brought an action 
and obtained a thousand pounds damages. 

2 In 1644 Sir A. A. Cooper at the head of a parliamentary force stormed 
and destroyed the house of Sir John Strangways, at Abbotsbury 
(chap. hi. p. 62). Sir John died in 1666. His heir, Colonel Giles 
Straugways, inherited Cavalier politics ; he was member for Dorsetshire 
in the Long Parliament of Charles the Second's reign, made himself con- 
spicuous in support of the Court and in opposition to the Protestant 
dissenters, and" was made a member of the Privy Council in 1675. 
Roger North in his "Examen" speaks of Strangways with great 
admiration as Shaftesbury's great opponent in Dorsetshire, and as 
having organized the opposition to Shaftesbury when Chancellor for 
his having issued writs for the House of Commons. 

8 The Trenchards had been long seated at Woolton, Wolveton or 
Wolverton, near Dorchester. This Sir Thomas was sixth in descent 
from the Sir Thomas Trenchard who, in 1506, entertained at Wol- 
verton Philip, king of Castile, driven by a storm into the port of 
Weymouth. A grandson of his, Sir John Trenchard, was accused 
with Russell and Sydney for the Rye House Plot, but escaped con- 
viction, had afterwards another narrow escape for his life, having 
joined Monmouth's rebellion, and ultimately became Secretary of 
State under William III. 

I 2 



XX APPENDIX I. 1639. 

and affairs of the country, of a good estate. Mr. Gray wanted 
neither discretion nor cunning, no friend to the Puritan, and 
by consequence not in love with his neighbours of Dorchester, 
who were totally devoted that way, being managed by their 
parson, Mr. White, one of the wisest and subtlest of that 
sort of men. 

This was the state of Dorsetshyre at that time. The neigh- 
bour county of Somersett was then divided into two warm 
factions, Sir John Stowel and my Lord Pawlett leading 
the one side, Sir Eobert Philips and Mr. John Coventry the 
other. Sir John was one of a very ancient family, very great 
estate, haughty and obstinate. 1 The Lord Pawlett was a 
cunning, crafty old fox. 2 Sir Eobert Philips was a very able, 
well accomplished man, and Mr. Coventry being eldest son by 
the last lady to my Lord Keeper, 8 had married a lady of the 
family of Coles, 4 who had a very good fortune in that county. 
He had besides the support of his father's greatness all that 
nature or education could do for him, and was every way an 
extraordinary person, and had continued so, if he had not 
drowned much of that and his health in sacrificing to Bacchus. 
This country evil began to spread itself into Dorsetshyre. 
Mr. Rogers his ambition and his ill-will to me gave me the 
alarm to provide against him and to prosecute my design to 
make him to be understood by his greatest and most potent 

1 Sir John Stowel or Stawel was a zealous royalist, and a chief 
promoter of the Western Counties' Association organized in 1645 for 
effecting peace, through the clubmen. (Clarendon's Hist, of Rebellion, 
viii. 258.) The part which he took in this Association is exactly 
such as is wrongly ascribed to Shaftesbury in Locke's fragment of a 
Memoir. 

2 The first Baron Pawlett, Paulett, or Poulett, created a peer by 
Charles I., grandson of Sir Amias Pawlett. 

3 Lord Coventry, the Lord Keeper, was twice married ; first to 
Sarah, daughter of Edward Sebright, esq. of Besford in Worcestershire, 
by whom he had a son, Thomas, who succeeded to his title, and a 
daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir John Hare of Stow-Bardolph in 
Norfolk ; and secondly to Elizabeth, daughter of John Aldersey, Esq. 
of Spenstow in Cheshire, by whom he had four sons, John, Francis, 
Henry, and William, and four daughters, Anne, married to Sir 
William Savile, bart, and mother of the Marquis of Halifax, Mary to 
Sir Henry Frederic Thynne, bart., Margaret to Sir A. A. Cooper, and 
Dorothy to Sir John Pakington, bart. Sir John Coventry, whose nose 
was slit by the courtiers in Charles the Second's reign, was the son of 
the Mr. Coventry described by Shaftesbury in the text, the eldest son 
of the Lord Keeper's second marriage. 

4 This name is usually spelt Colles : a known Somersetshire name. 



1(539. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XXI 

neighbours, Sir John Strangwaies, Sir Gerard Nappeir, and 
Sir John Heal, that all justly thought themselves at least his 
equals, and were easily brought to apprehend him as one who 
expected to command us all, and valued himself to the Court 
as already doing so. 

Matters thus standing in the West, my wife continuing at 
her father's house, my Lord Keeper's eldest son, Mr. Thomas 
Coventry, an honest fair direct man, carried me with him to 
see his house in Worcestershyre, where we stayed some time, 
and I grew in great respect in those parts for a pleasant easy 
humour, but especially in the town of Tewkesberry by an 
accident. They having invited their neighbour, my Lord 
Keeper's son, to a hunting in the chace near them and a 
dinner at their town after, all the neighbour gentry were 
called iii to grace the matter, who failed not to appear and 
pay a respect not only to the town, but so powerful a neigh- 
bour. At the hunting I was taken with one of my usual fits, 
which for divers years had hardly missed me one day, which 
lasted for an hour, betwixt eleven and one, sometimes begin- 
ning earlier and sometimes later betwixt those times. It was 
a violent pain of my left side, that I was often forced to lie 
down wherever I was ; at last it forced a working in my 
stomach, and I put up some spoonfuls of clear water, and I 
was well, if I may call that so, when I was never without a 
dull aching pain of that side. Yet this never abated the 
cheerfulness of my temper ; but, when in the greatest fits, I 
hated pitying and loved merry company, and, as they told me, 
was myself very pleasant when the drops fell from my face 
for pain ; but then, my servant near me always desired they 
would not take notice of it, but continue their diversions, 
which was more acceptable to me; and I had always the 
women and young people about me at those times, who 
thought me acceptable to them, and peradventure the more 
admired me because they saw the visible symptoms of my 
pain, which caused in all others so contrary an effect. At 
this hunting the Bailiffs 1 and chief of the town, being no hard 
riders, were easily led by their civility to keep me company, 
and being informed of my humour, we were very pleasant 
together, and they thought themselves obliged with my 
respect, as liking their company and being free with them. 

1 The chief officers of Tewkesbury were two Bailiffs, annually 
elected by the burgesses, twenty-four in number, from their own body. 



XX11 APPENDIX I. 1640. 

On the other hand, I was ready to make them any return of 
jbheir kindness, which quickly offered itself, for part of our 
discourse had been of an old knight in the field, a crafcy 
perverse rich man, in power as being of the Queen's Privy 
Council, a bitter enemy of the town and Puritans as rather 
inclined the Popish way. This man's character and all his 
story I had learnt of them. At dinner the Bailiffs sat at the 
table's end ; Sir Harry Spiller and myself, opposite to one 
another, sat near them, but one betwixt. Sir Harry began 
the dinner with all the affronts and dislikes he could put on 
the Bailiffs or their entertainment, which enraged and dis- 
countenanced them and the rest of the town that stood behind 
us ; and the more, it being in the face of the best gentlemen 
of the country, and when they resolved to appear in their 
best colours. When the first course was near spent, and he 
continued his rough raillery, I thought it my duty, eating 
their bread, to defend their cause the best I could, which I 
did with so good success, not sparing the bitterest retorts I 
could make him, which his way in the world afforded matter 
for, that I had a perfect victory over him. This gained the 
townsmen's hearts, and their wives to boot ; I was made free 
of the town, and the next parliament, though absent, without 
a penny charge, was chosen Burgess by an unanimous vote. 1 

During this time of my youthful days and pleasant humour 
I had one accommodation which was very agreeable, a servant 
that waited on me in my chamber, one Pyne, a younger 
brother of a good family, every way of my shape and limbs 
and height, only our faces and the colour and manner of our 
bair was not alike ; mine was then a flaxen inclined to brown, 
soft, and turning at the ends; his was dark brown, thick, 
bushy, hard, curled all over. My stockings, shoes, clothes, 
were all exactly fit for him; my hat, though my head was 
long and big and his round and little, yet he wore his hair so 
long and so thick that it served him reasonably well, that 
being the only part of my clothes that he could not buy and 
fit me by his own trial. His great felicity was to wear my 
clothes the next day after I had left them off, so very often 
appearing in the same suit of clothes I had worn the day 
before. He had a strong mechanic genius, he quickly learnt 

1 For the parliament which met April 13, 1640, the fourth parlia- 
ment of Charles I., which sat only three weeks, and is called the 
Short Parliament. 



3640. FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. XX111 

to trim me, and all the art of any tradesman I used, but 
especially he was an excellent sempster ; he sewed and cut 
out any linen for men or women, equal if not beyond any of 
the trade, and he never went without patterns of the newest 
fashions ; and, as soon as I alighted at any place, I was hardly 
in the parlour before my man had got to the nursery or 
laundry, and, though he was never there before, his confidence 
gave him entrance, and his science in that art they had most 
use of gave him welcome, and his readiness to teach and im- 
part his skill and to put them and their ladies into the new- 
est fashions gave him an intimacy especially with the most 
forward and prating wenches, those he expected his best 
return from, which was besides the usual traffic and commerce 
of kisses (the constant trade betwixt young men and women), 
the intelligence of all the intrigues of the family, which he 
with all haste conveyed to me, and I managed to the most 
mirth and jollity I could. My skill in palmistry and telling 
fortunes, which for my diversion I professed, was much assisted 
by this intelligence, and gave me choice of opportunities which 
some would have made worse use of than I did. 

Thus I have set down my youthful time. What follows is 
a time of business which overtook me early, and the rest of 
my life is not without great mixtures of the public concern, 
and must be much intermingled with the history of the times, 
and therefore it will be necessary to give you a state of them 
as they then stood in the beginning of the year 1639. 

Our Eeformation in England was begun by Henry the 
Eighth, a vigorous and haughty prince, who found himself 
affronted by the Pope, and, resolving to avenge it, cast off his 
power, and made himself head of the Church and was by act 
of parliament acknowledged to be so as of ancient right, and 
as annexed to his imperial crown and dignity, and that the 
names of spirituality and temporality were but terms that did 
distinguish his people, which under him made but one body ; 
and that the king might by his letters-patent nominate and 
present bishops without any other election : that all eccle- 
siastical laws, canons, and constitutions that are not expressly 
founded in God's word, are but human laws, and may be 
altered, enacted, or dispensed with as shall seem meet by the 
King and his two Houses of Parliament. The next thing he 
attempted was to pull down the abbeys and priories, wherein 
he disbanded the greatest and surest strength the Pope had, 
they being his creatures and vassals. Besides, with their 



XXIV APPENDIX I. , 1640. 

estates he secured the nobility and gentry to him and his 
design. Edward the Sixth, his son, reformed the doctrine ; 
his first act of Parliament introduces communion in both 
kinds, his second act enables the king without election to 
constitute archbishops and bishops. In his third year he 
establishes by act of parliament a new liturgy in the English 
tongue, which being drawn up by men of great moderation 
and prudence, they retain as much of the old service and 
mass-book as would agree with the true doctrine and the 
Scriptures, not affecting a departure from what was before 
without evident and convincing reason, that they might give 
just scandal to none, but invite all to embrace the truth now 
in following the footsteps of the Apostles amongst the Jews. 
The chief of them, being Archbishop Cranmer and other 
eminent divines, in answer to certain queries the King put to 
them at Windsor, declare under their hands and seals that 
bishops and priests were not two things, but both one office 
in the beginning of Christ's religion ; that there needeth no 
consecration by the Scriptures, for election or appointing 
thereunto is sufficient ; that Christian princes may make or 
appoint a bishop or a priest, and that the people formerly did 
elect or appoint them ; that the bishops or priests cannot 
excommunicate where the law forbids, and that such as be no 
priests may, when the law allows them thereunto. 

This glorious Eeformation was hardly settled when Queen 
Mary succeeds her brother, and makes a furious, bloody, and 
violent return of all things to the Eomish Church ; only the 
Church-lands were refused by the nobility and gentry to be 
restored notwithstanding. 1 

1 This fragment here ends abruptly. 



APPENDIX II. 



Autobiographical Sketch from birth (1621) to end of 1645, 
followed by a Diary from January 1, 1646, to July 10, 
1650. 1 

SIR ANTHONY ASTLEY 2 COOPER, baronet, was born at St. Giles 
Wimborne, in the county of Dorsett, A.D. 1621, on the 22d 
day of July, early in the morn, being the eldest child then 
living of his father and mother. 

He was nursed at Cranborne by one Persee, a tanner's wife. 

At six years old he lost his grandfather, Sir Anthony 
Astley. Presently after this, his father falling sick of the 
small-pox, he and his brother and sister, George and Philippa, 
he above four years younger and she just two years younger, 
were removed to Eockborne, a house of Sir John's in Hant- 
shyre. His father recovering, his mother fell sick of the same 
disease and died, upon which the children were again removed 
to Whitsbury, 2 a house of Sir John's in the same county. 
Within two months after they were again removed to Giles 
Wimborne, where they continued above a year, when Sir 

1 Almost the whole of this Life and Diary is printed from an 
original manuscript of Shaftesbury, which goes as far as December 29, 
1648. The small remainder to July 10, 1650, is printed from a copy 
at St. Giles's. The reader will see at p. xxxii. that the Autobiographical 
Sketch which precedes the Diary was written in January 1646. 

2 Spelt Astley always by Shaftesbury in this manuscript. The 
name of the Norfolk family of Astley is frequently spelt Ashley in 
books of the time, as in Ludlow and Clarendon. Hence confusion has 
in one instance arisen between Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir 
Jacob Astley. See p. xli. The name Cooper is once spelt Couper in 
this manuscript, and once Cowper ; and I have seen it spelt both ways 
in other papers. The Earls Cowper descend from an intimate friend of 
Shaftesbury in later life, but apparently no relative, Sir William 
Cooper, whose name was always spelt Cooper. 

3 Whitsbury, Whichbury, also often spelt Whitebury. 



XXVI APPENDIX II. 1640. 

John marrying the Lady Morrison, widow to Sir Charles, 
and eldest daughter and co-heir to the Lord Viscount Camb- 
den, they were removed to Cashiobery in Hartfordshyre, 
where they continued two years ; only one summer Sir John 
and his whole family dwelt at Giles Wimborne. 

Sir John Couper, at the two years' end dying of a con- 
sumption, left his eldest son to Sir Daniell Norton, a kinsman, 
and Mr. looker, his brother-in-law ; so that he was removed 
to Southwicke in Hampshyre, Sir Daniell's house, where he 
dwelt rive years, only divers times he went with Sir Daniell 
to London. 

Mr. Guerden, a fellow of Queen's College in Cambridge, 
since doctor of physic in London, was his tutor at Giles 
Wimborne and Cashiobery. But Mr. Fletcher was his tutor 
the first four years at Southwicke, and the last year one Mr. 

/ of Oriell College in Oxford, a master of arts. 

Sir Daniel Norton dying, he removed from thence to his 
uncle looker's house at Sarum, where, and at his said uncle's 
house at Madenton, he lived one year. 

Then, being sixteen years old, he went to Oxford, where he 
was of Exeter College ; Doctor Prideaux, then rector of the 
College and doctor of the chapel, since Bishop of Worcester, 
being his tutor, and Mr. Hussey, since minister of Hinton 
Martin, being his servitor. 

He went from Oxford but a little before his marriage, 
which was on Shrove Monday, being the 25th February, 
1638, 2 he being under the age of eighteen, to Margarett, the 
daughter of Thomas Lord Coventry, keeper of the Great Seal, 
a woman of excellent beauty, and incomparable in gifts of 
nature and virtue. 

After his marriage, he lived with the Lord Keeper at Dnrr- 
ham House and Canbury, till the Lord Keeper's death, which 
was in January, 1639, 3 after which my lady kept the house a 
year at these two places. 

In March 1640 he was by a general and free election of 
the town of Tewkesbury chosen their first burgess for the 
parliament, in which short parliament he served them faith- 
fully. 4 

1 There is a blank for the name in the manuscript. 

2 February 25, 1639. 

3 January 1640. 

4 By first burgess can only be meant first on the return of two 
members. This parliament met April 13, and was dissolved on 
May 5, 1640. 



1642. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXV11 

For this happy parliament, 1 which, was called the latter 
end of the same year, he was chosen a burgess for Downton 
in "Wiltshyre, in the place of Mr. William Herbert, second 
son to the Earl of Pembrooke, who was chosen knight also of 
a county in Wales ; Mr. Gorge, eldest son to the Lord Gorge, 2 
was also returned ; but at the Committee for Privileges it 
was clearly decided for Sir Anthony, yet no report yet made 
of it. 

My Lady Coventry leaving off the housekeeping, Lord 
Coventry and his brother Sir Anthony kept house together 
in Westminster, at Dorchester House. 3 

In 1641 he went to Stow to see his sister, the Lady Hare, 4 
and went through the most part of Norfolk. 

1642. He about the end of March removed his lady to 
Euiford in iSTotinghamshyre, 5 and returned to London, and so 
into the West, and stayed not there, but returned by Croome, 6 
in Worcestershyre, where the Lord Coventry then was, to 
Kufford. 

He was with the King at Notingham and Darby, but 
only as a spectator, having not as yet adhered against the 
Parliament. 

Only being named by ordinance a deputy-lieutenant for 
Dorsett, he returned from Rufford; the whole family removed 
to Thornehill in Yorkshyre, another house of Sir William 
Savile's. 

From Thornehill, the county being unquiet, Sir Anthony, 
his lady, the Lady Savile, and the Lady Packington, her 
sisters, removed to Bishop Aukland in Durrham, where they 
lived some months \ only for some weeks they were forced 

1 The famous Long Parliament ; and it is important to note this 
passage, written by Sir A. A. Cooper in January 1646, after he had 
retired from military service, as it shows his continued devotion to 
the Parliament. 

2 Lord George, Gorge, or Gorges, of a family anciently established 
in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and the first and last Baron. See 
Banks's Extinct and Dormant Peerages, i. 329, and Hutchins's Hist, of 
Dorset, iii. 30. The name is also spelt George ; Sir S. d'Ewes so 
spells it. 

3 Dorchester House was in Covent Garden. 

4 Elizabeth, daughter of first Lord Coventry, married to Sir John 
Hare, bart., of Stow Bardolph, Norfolk, and Sir A. A. Cooper's 
sister-in-law. 

5 The seat of Sir "William Savile, his brother-in-law, married to a 
daughter of Lord Coventry. 

6 Croome d'Abitot, the seat of Lord Coventry. 



XXV111 APPENDIX II. 1643. 

to retire to the city of Durrham and to Newcastle. They 
lived at Mr. Wren his house in Aukland parish. From 
hence, in the beginning of February, the county being much 
unquiet, the ladies with Sir Anthony took a journey through 
Stainmore and Westmoreland, Lancashyre, Chessyre, and 
North Wales to Shrewsbery ; by the way they went through 
the towns of Kendall, Lancaster, Preston, Lerpole, 1 Chester, 
Wrexlmm. 

At Shrewsbery they lived some weeks, and then removed 
to Upton Crescett, in the same county, Mr. Crescett's house, 
where the Lady Thynne, their eldur sister, was. From thence 
after some time they removed to Cause Castle, Sir Henry 
Thynne's house, in the same county. 

1643. Sir Anthony left the ladies, and went into Dorsett 
to his house at St. Giles Wimborne, where he continued 
generally till, the Lord Marquess Hertford 2 coming into the 
county, he was employed for the treating with the towns of 
Dorchester and AVeymouth to surrender, the commission 
being directed to him, Napper, Hele, 3 Ogle, which they 
effected, and Sir Anthony was by the gentlemen of the county 
desired to attend the King with their desires and the state of 
the county. 

Sir Anthony was by Marquess Hertford made governor 
of the towns of Weymouth and Melcombe and the Isle 
of Portland, and the castles of Sandesfoote and Portland, 
colonel of a regiment of foot, and captain of a troop of 
horse. 

1 Liverpool. 

2 William Seymour, Marquis of Hertford, so raised from the rank 
of Earl in 1640, great-grandson of the Protector Duke of Somerset. 
Hertford had incurred the anger of James I. by marrying Arabella 
Stuart of royal blood, and had been committed to the Tower, whence 
he effected his escape. His wife soon died, and he made a second 
marriage with a daughter of the Earl of Essex, sister of the first 
parliamentary General-in-chief. This is the lady mentioned in the 
later Diary. On the breaking out of the civil war, Hertford was 
appointed Commander-in-chief of the King's western army, but he was 
soon superseded by Prince Maurice. Hertford's constancy and services 
to the royal cause were rewarded immediately after the Restoration by 
his being created Duke of Somerset with a reversal of the Protector's 
attainder: but he lived only a few weeks to enjoy his new honours. 
He died in October 1660. There is no ground for Mr. Martyn's state- 
ment that Shaftesbury was a relation of the Marquis of Hertford 
(Life, i. 138, 141). 

3 Sir Gerard Napper, Nappeir, or Napier, and Sir John Hele or 
Heal. See Autobiography, p. xvii. 



1644. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXIX 

He raised a full regiment of foot and a troop of horse at 
his own charge. Some months after this, Marquess Hertford's 
commission was taken away, yet Sir Anthony had a con- 
tinuation of all his commands under the King's own hand, 
and he was made high sheriff of the county of Dorsett, and 
president of the council of war for those parts. 

Notwithstanding, he now plainly seeing the King's aim 
destructive to religion and the state, and though he had an 
assurance of the barony of Astley Castle, 1 which had formerly 
belonged to that family, and that but two days before he 
received a letter from the King's own hand of large promises 
and thanks for his service, yet in February he delivered up 
all his commissions to Ashburneham, and privately came 
away to the Parliament, leaving all his estate in the King's 
quarters, 500. a year full-stocked, two houses well furnished, 
to the mercy of the enemy, resolving to cast himself on God 
and to follow the dictates of a good conscience. Yet he 
never in the least betrayed the King's service, but while he 
was with him was always faithful. The first place he came 
to of the Parliament's quarters was Hurst Castle, where Captain 
Buchester was governor. From thence he went into the Isle 
of Wight, to Portsmouth, Chichester, and London, where he 
dwelt at Dorchester House in Westminster, and his lady came 
to him about the middle of March, whom he had not seen in 
a year before. 

1644. After Weymouth was taken in 2 by the Lord General 
Essex, the Committee for Dorsett, going into the country, 
desired Sir Anthony's company with them, which he did: 3 
and presently after they drawing in the forces of their county 
into a body, consisting of seven regiments of horse and 
foot, gave him a commission to command as Field Marshal 
General, with which they besieged Wareham, and having 
received an addition of a thousand horse and dragoons under 

1 In Wiltshire, whence the Ashleys of Wimborne St. Giles came. 
See Coker's Survey of Dorsetshire, p. 14. 

2 To " take in " a town was the usual phrase of the time for taking a 
town : it occurs again below in speaking of the taking of Abbotsbury. 
See note at p. 59 of the "Life." 

" 1 would say more, but death has taken in the outworks, 
And now assails the fort." 

DENHAM, The Sophy, act v. 

3 Leave was given by the Parliament to Sir A. A. Cooper to go down 
into Dorsetshire July 10, 1644. (Gomm. Journ.) 



XXX APPENDIX II. 1645. 

the command of Lieutenant- General Midleton, they starved 
the enemy out of bestall, and had the town delivered upon 
articles. 

Sir Anthony was employed by the Committee and Council 
of War to give the House a narrative of it, which he did at 
the House of Commons' bar, and was the same day by an 
ordinance of both Houses added to the Committee for 
Dorsett. 1 

About the end of September the Committee drew all the 
forces in Dorsett a second time into a body, consisting of ten 
regiments of horse and foot, and gave Sir Anthony a com- 
mission to command them in chief as general of that brigade, 
with which he took in Abotsbury by storm, and in it 
Colonel James Strangwais ; his whole regiment, all the 
officers and soldiers, one troop of horse, all prisoners at 
mercy. From thence he marched to Sturminster Castle, 
where Colonel Radford was governor for the enemy, but he 
quitted the garrison before he could get thither, so that he 
marched to Shaftesbury, where the enemy were erecting a 
new garrison, which he forced them to quit also. After this 
he received orders to attempt the relief of Taunton, and a 
commission from his Excellency the Earl of Essex to com- 
mand in chief for that design, which, having received the 
addition of some forces under the command of Major-General 
Holborn and Commissary-General Yaudniss, 2 was by the 
mercy of God happily effected, and in the way the enemy 
for fear quitted their garrisons of Shute and Coxum Houses 
in Devon. 3 This was in December. 

1645. In May he received divers commissions from the 
Committee of the West, the chief of which was to command 
in chief the forces they designed to beleaguer Corffe Castle, 

1 It is not mentioned in the Commons' Journals that Sir A. A. 
Cooper attended at the bar to make this statement ; but it is recorded 
that on the 14th August, 1644, he was added to the Committee for 
governing the army in Dorsetshire, and his case as regards sequestra- 
tion referred to the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall. The Committee 
reported in a few days, recommending that he should be permitted to 
compound by a payment of 500Z., and the House immediately adopted 
the report. See chapter III. of " Life," pp. 59-61. 

2 Called Vandruske by Clarendon. (Hist, of Rebellion, ix. 9.) 

3 Coxum House, spelt Cokam in Sir A. A. Cooper's letter from 
Taunton printed at p. 73 of the "Life," is Colcombe, where there had 
been a castle, an old seat of the Courtenays. It now belonged to Sir 
John Pole, owner also of the neighbouring house of Shute ; they 
were both near Colyton in Devonshire. 



1645. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXXI 

which, forces he was to receive from Colonel Welden, who 
then commanded in the West ; hut when Sir Anthony came 
into the country, he found Welden blocked up by Goring, 
so that being not supplied with men he was obliged to 
return. 1 

In June he went with his lady to Tunbridge, where he 
for six weeks drank the waters. In September his lady went 
to Oxsted in Surrey, to her aunt Capell's, 2 where her mother 
also was, and they both sojourned there. 3 In October he went 
down into the country, and sat with the Committee con- 
stantly, most commonly as chairman. 

In December he was employed by the Committee with 
Colonel Bingham to the General, who lay then at Autree in 
Devon, to obtain an assistance of force towards the besieging 
Corff Castle, which they obtained. 4 



1 Instructions from the Committee of Lords and Commons for the 
Associated Western Counties to Cooper for the blockade of Corfe Castle, 
dated May 17, 1645, are among the papers at St. Giles's. Mr. Martyn 
states, at variance with the facts, that Cooper successfully accom- 
plished the task, and adds : " Corfe soon surrendered, and received a 
strong garrison for the Parliament, and for the better preservation of 
the place Sir Anthony threw a troop of horse with a body of foot 
into Lulworth." (i. 148.) This is all misstatement. Corfe did not 
surrender till April 1646 : Sir A. A. Cooper was not there then ; it 
was surrendered to Colonel Bingham. Mr. Martyn's misstatement is 
probably owing to his having misunderstood the passage in Cooper's 
memoranda for the governor of Poole, printed at p. 68 of the "Life," 
where he says, " A few foot in Lulworth with a troop of horse will 
keep Corfe far better than Wareham. " But this means, keep Corfe in 
check, Corfe being still besieged. 

2 Lady Capel, a sister of the second Lady Coventry, wife of Sir 
Henry Capel, knight, of Hadham, Herts. She had been previously 
married to Sir Thomas Hoskins of Oxted. 

3 No mention is made by Cooper of an unsuccessful attempt made at 
this time to obtain a report on his election-petition for Downton. An 
order was made by the House of Commons, on September 1, 1645, for 
Sir Walter Erie to report on the subject ; but apparently no report 
was made. See chapter III. p. 76 of "Life." 

* See Bankes's "Story of Corfe Castle," p. 215. Sir Thomas 
Fairfax was now General in the place of the Earl of Essex, and was 
now at Ottery St. Mary, Autree, or Ottree, as it is variously written in 
books of that time, besieging Exeter. (Sprigge's Anglia Eediviva, 
p. 151 and seqq. ; Bell's Fairfax Correspondence, i. 257, 263 ; 
Clarendon's History of Rebellion, v. 288.) Cooper's mission to 
Fairfax on this occasion was probably exclusively civil. He probably 
ceased to act as a military commander after the new modelling of the 
army which had taken place in this year ; he was not included in the 
new model. See p. 75 of " Life." 



XXX11 APPENDIX II. 1646. 

In the end of this month he returned to Oxsted in 
Surrey. 

This was writ in January 1645. 1 



1646. January 1st. I was at Oxsted in Surrey, the 
Lady CapelTs, whither I came out of the West, 26th 
December. 

5th. I came to London; lodge at Mr. Tarver's in Holborn. 

9th. I sealed a new lease to John Bates, of his house in 
Ely Rents for five years more than the twenty- one he had in 
his former, so that his term is to 1670 ; this was granted in 
regard he had built a considerable part of his house new. 
His rent is 51. yearly. 

I sealed another lease to John Hancock, which makes his 
old term full twenty-one years in another house of the same 
liberty; his rent 81. yearly. This was freely granted him 
because he had been an old faithful servant to our family. 

15th. I went to Oxsted, where my wife has been this half- 
year. 

22^7. I came to London to Mr. Tarver's. I entertained 2 
Henry Shergall again. 

24:th. I paid Mr. John Collins 100. borrowed of him by a 
bond dated the 5th day of August, 1645, and had the bond 
delivered up, which was by me cancelled : and 4. for half a 
year's interest. 

The aforesaid 104Z. was paid the day above-said, by me for 
the use of my master, 

John Round. 

3lst. I went to my aunt Capell's at Oxsted, where my wife 
has been this half-year. 

February th. I came from Oxsted to London to Mr. 
Tarver's in Holborne. My cousin Norton came to my house 
at Holborne the 2nd day. 

6th. Mr. George Skutt the elder, of Poole, had a bill from 
me to James Percivall for 51. which he affirmed he lent me 
formerly, so that I owe him nor his sons nothing. 

1 January 1646. In printing the Diary which follows, I for con- 
venience print the years according to the present mode of reckoning. 

2 "Entertained," took into service. 



1646. DIARY. XXX111 

The 5th day I had a nerve and vein cut by Gell and 
two more, for which I was forced to keep my chamber 
twelve days. 

February Wi. Mr. Skutt had a bill of exchange on James 
Percival for 100., which I received. 

12lh. I had another nerve and vein cut. 

18th. I went to Aldgnham in Hertfordshyre, to Sir Job 
Harbye's. 

20th. I went to Northampton from Aldenham. 

2lst. I went to Warwicke to my Lady Rous 1 for my wife's 
jewels, which I had of her. 

24:th. I returned to Newport Pagnall; 

2Qth. I returned to Aldenham to Sir Job Harbye'si 

I went to see Latimers and Cheynes in Buckinghamshyre, 
but returned to Aldenham. 

March 2nd. I went from Aldenham to Kenton Park in 
Middlesex, Mr. Carre Eawleigh's house. 2 

1 The wife of Sir Thomas Rons, Bart., of Rous-Lench, "Worcester 
shire, and daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, Warwick- 
shire. 

2 Carew Raleigh, the son of Sir Walter, had married the widow of 
Sir A. A. Cooper's grandfather, Sir Anthony Ashley. He was a 
member of the Long Parliament; he began as a Royalist, but after- 
wards left that party ; he was a member of Richard Cromwell's parlia- 
ment 1658-9, and was appointed Governor of Jersey by Monk-. He 
was a man of no remarkable ability or reputation. He is lampooned 
with Cooper and Wallop in a Royalist satire on the Rump, printed in 
a "Collection of Loyal Songs, &c.," 1731, vol. ii. p. 57. 

"Ashley Cooper knew a reason 

That treachery was in season, 
When at first he turned his coat 

From loyalty to treason. 

And gouty Master Wallop 
Now thinks he hath the ballop, 
But though he trotted to the Rump, 
He'll run away a gallop. 

There's Carew Raleigh by him, 
All good men do defy him, 
And they that think him not a knave, 
I wish they would but try him. " 

( 'arcw Raleigh died in 1667, leaving no son. He was buried at West 
llorsly in Surrey with his father's head in his coffin. See Cayley's 
Lite of Sir Walter Raleigh, ii. 215. 
VOL. I. c 



XXXIV APPENDIX II. 1646. 

March 5th. I came from Kenton Park to London to 
Mr. Tarver's. 

7th. I went to Oxsted and delivered my wife her jewels. 

Wth. I came to London to Mrs. Tarver's. 

I4tth. I went to Oxsted to my wife. 

17 th. I came to London to Mrs. Tarver's. 

21 st. I came to Oxsted in Surrey. 

23rd. I came to London to Mrs. Tarver's. 

I and Mr. Matthew Hopkins signed and sealed inter- 
changeably articles concerning my plantation in the Bar- 
badoes, for which he is my agent. 

2Qth. I went to Guildford, being part of my journey into 
the West to the quarter sessions in Dorsettshyre. 

27th. To Winchester. 

28^. To Allhollowes Wimborne, Walter Goddard's. 

30th. To Salisbury, my uncle Tooker's, and in the way 
I was at Damerham Parva, at my court-keeping. 

3lst. I came to Walter Goddard's at Allholland. 

April 1st. I was at the Court at Hinton Martin, and 
viewed Holt forest inclosures. Henry Andrews of St. Giles 
Wimborne, and William Cutler of Gussage, two boys of 
fifteen years old, bound themselves to me for seven years for 
the Barbadoes, to give them 51. a piece at the term's 
end. 

I came to Wimborne to Mr. John Hannam's. 

2nd. I went to Rockborne to meet Mr. Carre Rawleigh, 
and came back to Allholland to Walter Goddard's. 

6th. I came to Dorchester to the quarter sessions, lodged 
at Will. Patye's house. 

1th. We began the quarter sessions, which was this time 
kept at Dorchester, and not at Sherborne, for security. The 
justices present were Mr. Whitaker who gave the charge, 
myself, Mr. Erie, Mr. Browne, Mr. Grove, Mr. Chettle, 
Colonel Sidenham, Mr. Robert Coker, Colonel Butler, Colonel 
Brodripp, Mr. Hussey, Mr. Floyre, Mr. Savadge. 

8th. We ended the sessions. Nine hanged, only three 
burnt in the hand. 

%tfi, 10th. We sat at the Committee. 

lltk. We sat in the Shire hall at Dorchester, by the ordi- 
nance for punishing pressed soldiers that run away of the 
15th of January last; when three were condemned to die, 
two to run the gantelope, two to be tied neck and heels, one 
to stand with a rope about his neck. The judges were Sir 



1646. DIAEY. XXXV 

A. A. Cooper, Mr. John Browne, Colonel Sidenham, Lieut. - 
Colonel Coker, Mr. Savage, Mr. Christopher Erie, Colonel 
Herbert, Lieut.-Colonel Cary, Major George Skutt, Major 
William Skutt, Major Jerdan, Colonel Butler, Captain Arney. 
Captain Gulson, Captain Woodward, Captain Gold, Captain 
Batten, Captain Henry Culliforcl, Captain William Culliford, 
Captain Feardly, Captain Wase, Captain Bachelor of the 
army ; Mr. Loder, Judge-advocate. 1 

April 13th. We sat at the Committee. 

I4:th. I and Mr. Thomas Erie went and dined with Mr. 
Churchill at Muston ; from thence we went to Grange to Sir 
Gerard Naper's. 

15^. I came to Allholland to Walter Goddard's. 

2lst. I went to Wimborne to a petty sessions, with Mr. 
Erie, Mr. Chettle, Mr. Hannam. 

22nd. I went to Grange, to Sir Gerard tapper's to meet 
my brother John. 2 

23rd. I came to Blandford, whither the Committee was 
adjourned from Dorchester, Mr. Sheriff, Mr. Erie, Colonel 
Butler, Mr. Elias Bond, Mr. Chettle, Mr. Joy. The seques- 
trators of Blandford were ordered to pay Mr. Chettle 201., 
Mr. Bond 101., which was borrowed of them by the Com- 
mittee, and for which Colonel Bingham and I gave our 
bills. 

24th. We sat at the Committee at Blandford. 

25th. I sat at the Committee in the morning, but in the 
afternoon I went to Allholland. 

27th. I went to Blandford to the Committee, and returned 
in the evening to Allholland. 

2Stk. I went to Tollard to Mr. Plott's, and met Mr. Erie 
and Mr. Grove. 

2Wi. We all went to Salisbury. 

30th. We all went to Farnham in Surrey. 

May 1st. I and Mr. John Ryves came to Oxsted in 
Surrey. 

4:th. I came to London to Mr. Tarver's. 

9th. I went to O.xsted. 

13th. I came to London to Master Brough's in the Strand. 
My Lady Coventry and my wife came with me. 

1 The names are sometimes very difficult to read in this manuscript, 
and I cannot be sure that they are always correctly given. 

2 John Coventry, the eldest son of the Lord Keeper by his second 
wife. 

e 2 



XXXvi APPENDIX II. 1646. 

May 1 6th. I sealed a bond of 1,000. to Xoell the scrivener, 
to pay the bills of exchange of Hopkins from the Barbadoes 
to the value of 500/. 

1 8^. I gave my servant, James Percivall, two bonds where- 
in he owed me 70/.; this for his losses in coming in with me 
to the Parliament. 

28th. I removed .my lodging to my cousin Day's in Axe 
Yard, Westminster, my wife and her mother being gone out 
of the town. 

30th. I went to Oxsted. 

This month I borrowed WOl. on interest of Mr. Browne, 
Mr. Collins and myself bound. 

I borrowed this month another 100?. of Mr. Strong, with- 
out bond. But he has bond since. 

June 8th. I came from Oxsted to London, to my cousin 
Day's house. 

12th. I went to Oxsted. 

IQth. I came to London to my cousin' Day's house. 

20th. I went in a coach with Sir John Packington and my 
brother, John Coventry, to Oxstedj 

22nd. I came to London with them, and lodged at Mr. 
.Bowes his house near Strand 'bridge. 

26th. I went to Oxsted, 

July 1st. I and my wife came to London to our own house 
in Holborne. 

7th. I and my wife went to Oxsted. 

9th. I dined at Limsfield with Sir Edward Gresham ; 
there dined Sir John Eveling 1 of Godstone and his lady. 

10th. I went to Somerhill to see my Lady Marquess 
Hertford, and lay that night at Tunbridge. 

lllh. I returned to Oxsted. 

I4:th. I came to London to my house. 

16^. I returned to Oxsted., 

20th. In the afternoon I went with my Lady Capell, my 
cousin Edmund Hoskins and his wife, to Limsfield, to Sir 
Edward Gresham's, and to Titsey to my Lady Gresham ; 
but we all returned at night. 

22nd. In the afternoon I and my cousin Charles Hoskins 
went to Crauherst to Mr. Angell's, but returned at night. 

27th. My wife miscarried of a boy. She had gone twenty 

i Sir John Evelyn, cousin of John Evelyn of Wotton, whose Diary 
and other writings are well known. 



1646. DIARY. . XXX Vll 

weeks ; her brother John in jest threw her against a bed- 
staff, which hurt her so, that it caused this. 

July 3Qth. I went to -my house in London. 

31st. I returned to Oxsted. 

August 6th. I went from Oxsted to Farneham, being my 
first day's journey westward. 

7th. I went from Farneham to Salisbury. 

8th. I went with Mr. Thistlethwait, the High Sheriff, to 
meet the Judges, Judge Roles 1 and Serjeant Godbolt, 2 who 
were the two Judges for this circuit. 

10^. I sat with Judge Godbolt on the Crown side, being 
the only justice there besides the Judge and clerk of assize in 
the commission of oyer and terminer. I was sworn this day 
a justice of the peace for the county of Wilts before Mr. 
Turner. The justices present this day were Mr. William 
Eyre the younger, Mr. Edward Tooker, Mr. Bennett, Mr. 
Joy, Mr. Hussey, Mr, Giles Eyre, Mr. Turner, Mr. Dove, Mr. 
Barnaby Coles, Mr. Francis Swanton. I am in commission 
for oyer and terminer this whole circuit. 

llth. Sir John Danvers 3 oanre and sat with us. Seven 
condemned to die, four for horse stealing, two for robbery, 
one for killing his wife ; he broke her neck with his hands, 
it was proved that, he touching her body the day after, her 
nose bled fresh; four burnt in the hand, one for felony, 

1 Judge Rolle, as the name is usually spelt, had been made a Judge 
of the King's Bench in 1645, and was made Chief Justice of the ,same 
court in 1648. He was a zealous Parliamentarian, and was one of the 
six Judges who accepted a commission from the Commonwealth, after 
the King's execution. He was one of the two Judges seized in ttheir 
beds at Salisbury, in the Royalist rising headed by Penruddock in 
1655, and had then a narrow escape for his life. He resigned his chief 
justiceship in 1655, to avoid a conflict with Cromwell. He died July 
30th, 1656, at the age of sixty-seven. (Foss's Judges of England, vi. 
472, Noble's Cromwells, i. 430.) 

2 Serjeant Godbolt was made a Judge of the Court of Common 
Pleas, April 30, 1647. He died in 1648. He took no active part in 
politics. (Foss's Judges, vi. 318.) 

3 Brother of the Earl of Danby, mentioned in the Autobiography, 
p. vii. Though under obligations to Charles I., he from the first took 
a zealous part against him, and was ultimately one of those who 
sat in judgment and signed the warrant of death. Lord Danby, 
who died without children in 1644, had marked his anger against his 
brother by leaving his estate to his sister. Sir John Danvers obtained 
from the Parliament a reversal of this will. He died before the 
Restoration. (Noble's English Regicides, i. 163.) 



XXXviii APPENDIX II. 1646. 

three for manslaughter ; the same sign followed one of them, 
of the corpse bleeding. 

August 12th. I and the Sheriff of Wilts begged the life 
of one Prichett, one of those seven condemned, because he 
had been a parliament soldier. I waited on the Judges to 
Dorchester. 

13th. I sat with the Judges at assizes. Judge Roles gave 
the charge. Justices present, myself, Sir Thomas Trenchard, 
Mr. Thomas Erie, in the commission of oyer and terminer ; 
Mr. John Trenchard, Colonel Bingham, Colonel Sidenham, 
Colonel Coker, Colonel Butler, Mr. Chettle, Mr. Hannam, 
Mr. Hussey, Mr. Gallop, Mr. Savadge. Mr. Brodrip. 

14:th. The assizes continued ; five condemned to die, two 
women for murdering their children, one of them a married 
woman; one for murder, one for robbery, one for horse 
stealing ; three burnt in the hand, one for manslaughter, two 
for felony. Chibbett condemned for horse stealing ; we the 
justices begged his reprieve, he having been a faithful soldier 
to the state. 

15th. I waited on the Judges out of Dorchester, swore two 
of the committee for accounts, being a commissioner nomi- 
nated for that purpose. I sat at the Committee ; we were a 
full Committee, Sir Thomas Trenchard, Mr. John Trenchard, 
Colonel Bingham, Colonel Sidenham, Mr. Chettle, all parlia- 
ment men, being present. I got the parsonage of Abers for 
the repair of Harnham bridge, at Salisbury. 

17th. I went to Wimborne to my cousin Hannam' s. 

I met my cousin Earle and divers other gentlemen at 
Brienston bowling green, where we bowled all day, and 
in the evening Mr. Earle and I went to Tollard, to Mr. 
Plott's. 

18th. We went to Cobley Walk to course. I lay at the 
Falcon in Blandford this night, being going to Grange. 

1 9th. I went to Grange and lay there. 

20th. 1 came to Allholland to Walter Goddard's. 

21th. 1 met at Brienston Bowling Green, and returned to 
Allholland. 

( 27th. I met my cousin John Hannam and Mr. John Tre- 
gonwell, jun., at the Vine against Framp ton's house, beyond 
the bridge at Blandford. I there declared to them and 
Frampton, who was sent to me from his mother, that I would 
not meddle in my cousin Frampton's trust as a trustee. 



1646. DIARY. XXxix 

August 2Sth. I came to Madenton in Wiltshire to see 
my uncle looker. 

3lst. I went to Stocketon to Mr. Topp's to dinner, but 
returned. I there sealed two bonds of 5001. each for my 
brother John Coventry, himself and Sir Gerard Napper bound 
with me, one bond to Mr. John Foyle, the other to Mr. 
William Whitaker of Shaftesbury, payable 1st of March 
next. 

September 1st. I came to Salisbury to a petty sessions ; my- 
self, Mr. looker, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Eyres of White parish, 
justices present. 

2nd. I came to Allholland to Walter Goddard's. 

3rd. I went to Dorchester and sat at the committee, lay at 
Will. Patye's. 

4:th. I sat at the committee in the morning, and went in 
the evening to Sir Gerard tapper's to Grange. 

6th. I met the Eastern committee at Blandford, and came 
to Allholland to Walter Goddard's at night. 

7th. I dined at Salisbury, and came to Winchester to bed. 

8th. I came to Guildford. 

9th. I came to Oxsted in Surrey. 

10th. I came to my house in Holborne, where my wife and 
her mother were. 

26th. I sealed a bond of 2001. for my brother John 
Coventry, payable the 1st of November, to one Mr. Eice, a 
woollen draper in Paul's Church Yard. For this and the 
two former bonds I have counter bonds from my brother. 

2Sth. I came to Hartford Bridge. 

29th. I came to Salisbury, by the way I went to Weyhill 
fair. 

30^. I came to Walter Goddard's at Allholland Wirn- 
borne. 

October 1st. I went to Shaftesbury to the council of war 
for Massey's brigade, and got them removed out of Dorset. 1 
I lay at Shafston, 

1 Compare Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 181. The Parliament had ordered 
that this brigade should be disbanded, and it was endeavoured to get 
as many of the men as possible to enlist to serve against the rebels in 
Ireland. Ludlow and Alderman Allen, members for Wiltshire, acted 
in that county to execute the Parliament's orders. Ludlow says, 
" Though many of that brigade were glad of the opportunity to return 
home to their several callings, having taken up arms and hazarded 
their lives purely to save the public, yet divers idle and debauched 



xl APPENDIX II. 1646. 

October 2nd. Colonel Eitzjames, Colonel Cooke, and I went 
a hunting in Rushmore Waste ; we dined at Tollard, at Mr. 
Plott's. I came home to Allholland. 

5th. I came to Salisbury. 

6th. I came to Maryborough to the quarter sessions, 
where Mr. Hussey, judge, 1 myself and Mr. William Eyre 
the younger, Edward looker, Francis Swanton, George Joy, 
Mr. Bennet of Norton, Mr. How of Berwick were justices. 

?th. We sat at the quarter sessions all the day. 

8th. I sat at the quarter sessions part of the morning and 
went afterwards to Purton. 

12th. I came from Purton to Marleborough, lay at the 
Bear. 

13^. I came to Salisbury, lay at my uncle Tooker's. 

17 th. I came to Allholland Wimborne, to Walter God- 
dard's. 

20th. I came to Salisbury, lay at my uncle's, being in my 
way to London with my sister Philippa Cowper. 

21st. I came from Salisbury to Basingstoke to Mr. 
Spittle's. 

22nd. I came to Stanes to the Vine at the bridge foot. 

23rd. I came to my house in London in Holborne, next 
Hatton house, where my wife was. 

This month I lent my dear friend and kinsman, Mr. 
Thomas Erie, 100/. on his note. 

November. Mem.: This month the bond I stood bound 
with my brother John Coventry for 200Z., borrowed in 
September last, to one Mr. Price is paid and cancelled. 

Mem.: The bond Mr. Collins stood bound with me for 
100Z., borrowed in May last, to one Mr. Browne, is paid and 
cancelled. 

Mem. : The note wherein Colonel Bingham and I stand 
engaged to Mr. Chettle for 201., which Colonel Bingham had 
for the service at Corfe, is acknowledged by Mr. Chettle to 
be satisfied. 



persons, especially the foreigners, amongst them, not knowing how to 
betake themselves to any honest employment, endeavoured to stir up 
the brigade to a meeting ; but not being able to effect that, some of 
them listed themselves to serve against the rebels in Ireland under Sir 
"William Fenton and others there present to receive them, for which we 
had instructions from the Parliament ; the rest dispersed themselves 
and returned home." 
1 By judge is meant chairman of the court of sessions. 



1647. DIARY. xli 

My coachman, Anthony, was entertained by me the middle 
of this month. 

I was bound with my brother John Coventry for 2001. to 
Mr. Browne. Mr. Collins was bound with us, who had my 
brother's and my counter bond, and I my brother's. 

December. I was by both houses of Parliament made High 
Sheriff of the county of Wilts. 1 

I was by ordinance of Parliament made one of the Com- 
mittee for Dorsett and Wilts for Sir Thomas Fairfaxe his 
army's contribution. 

Mr. William Ayres, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, died, a 
special friend of mine, and made me one of his executors in 
trust and gave me 101. in plate. 

16th. I and my wife and sister removed from my house at 
London towards Salisbury and came to Egham. 

17th. We went to Basingstoke. 

1 Sth. We came to my house at Salisbury. I rented Mr. 
Hyde his house in the Close next to the Deanery. 

1647. January 28th. I went towards London, lay at 
Basingstoke. 

29th. I came to London to my house in Holborne. 

February 17th. 1 came from London to Egham. 

18th. I came to Andover. 

19th. I came to my house in the Close at Sarum. 

This term I had up and cancelled my bond of 1,000. 
which I entered into to Mr. Noell the 16th of May last, for 
the payment of such bills of exchange as should be charged 
from Hopkins in the Barbadoes. 

22nd. I went to Giles Wymborne to my house, and came 
back at night. 

March 13th. The Judges came into Salisbury, Justice 
Eoles and Serjeant Godbolt. They went hence the 17th 
day. I had sixty men in liveries, and kept an ordinary for 
all gentlemen at Lawes his, 2 four shillings, and two shillings 
for blew men. I paid for all. There were sixteen con- 
demned to die, whereof fourteen suffered. George Philips 
condemned for stealing a horse ; I got his reprieve, and 

1 Leave was given him to reside out of Wiltshire during his shriev- 
alty. (See Commons' Journals, Dec. 1, 1646; Jan. 6, 1647.) In 
some biographies Sir A. A. Cooper is said to have been sheriff of 
Norfolk in 1646 ; but this is a confusion with Sir Jacob Astley, who 
was the King's sheriff of Norfolk in that year. 

2 So in the manuscript ; Lawes's. 



xlii APPENDIX II. 1647. 

another for the like offence was reprieved by the judge. 
There were more burnt in the hand than condemned. 

March 29 th. My wife miscarried of a child she was eleven 
weeks gone with. 

This month I raised the country twice, and beat out the 
soldiers designed for Ireland, who quartered on the county 
without order, and committed many robberies. 

April 5th. I went to Glastonbury in Somerset, in my way 
to Pawlett. 

6th. I came to Pawlett. 

1th and 8th. I kept my court there. 

9th. I came to More Critchell in Dorset, to Sir Gerard 
tapper's. 

10th. I came home to Salisbury. 

22nd. I went with Colonel Kern to More Critchell, Sir 
G. tapper's. 

23rd. I returned to Sarum. 

24:th. I was bound in three bonds for my brother, John 
Coventry : 1st. to Gyles Eyre of White parish in the county 
of Wilts esquire for 150/., we two only; 2nd, to Dorothy 
and Anne Aubery> daughters of William Aubery of Meer in 
Wilts esquire, for 390Z., we two alone; 3rd, to Henry 
Whitaker of Shafston in Dorset esquire for 500Z., we two 
and Sir Gerard Napper. For all these I have his counter 
bond. 

30th. I and my wife and sister went to Gyles Wymborne, 
and lay at Walter Goddard's at Allholland Wimborne. 

May 1st. We dined at More Critchell at Sir Gerard 
tapper's. 

2nd. We returned to Sarum. 

th. I lay at Hartford bridge on my way to London. 

5th. I came to London to my house in Holborne. 

This Easter term I acknowledged a judgment to Mr. Boes 1 
for 360/. which I borrowed of him. 

I likewise borrowed this term of my cousin Day 250, 
for which myself, my brother George, and my brother John 
Coventry stood bound. 

June 1st. Myself, Sir Gerard Napper, Mr. John Churchill 
of Glaiivills Wooton in the county of Dorsett, were bound 
with my brother John Coventry in two bonds of 2501. each, 
the one to the Lady Sarah Kempe, the other to Mr. Koger 

1 Elsewhere spelt Bowes, p. xlvi. 



1047. DIARY. xliii 

Draper, both of Islington. Both bonds payable the 4th of 
December next. I have my brother John Coventry's counter 
bond for both these. 

June 2nd. Myself and Sir Gerard Napper were bound with 
my brother John Coventry for 600Z. to Mr. John Warr, jun. 
of Didlington in the county of Somerset : this bond payable 
the 3rd of November next. For this I have my brother 
John Coventry's counter bond. 

I came to Bagshott this night. 

3rd. I came to my house at Sarum. 

I4:th. My wife, myself, and my sister began our journey to 
Bath, and came this night to Trubridge. 

1 5th. We came to Bath, where my wife made use of the 
Cross bath for to strengthen her against miscarriage. We 
lay at Mrs. Bedford's by that bath. 

1 7th. 1 came back to my house in Salisbury and dined 
at Madenton. 

18^. We met at Wilton at bowls. I went with my uncle 
Tooker to Madenton that night. 

22nd. I went to Bath to my wife. 

28th. I came back to my house in Salisbury and dined at 
Madenton. 

29th. I went to Walter Goddard's at AllhoUand. 

July 1st. I came back to niy house at Salisbury. 

3rd. I went and dined at Allholland, but came back to 
Salisbury at night. 

This month we had up the bond wherein myself was 
bound with my brother John Coventry to Mrs. Dorothy and 
Anne Aubery for 390., and we gave them two bonds, the 
one to Mrs. Dorothy for 150/., the other to Mrs. Anne for 
24:01.; for both these I have my brother's counter bond. 
The first bond was dated April 24th. 

IQth. I went to my uncle Tooker's to Madenton. 

17 th. I went to my wife at Bath. 

22nd. My wife and sister and myself came from Bath to 
my house at Salisbury. 

Vide de hoc mense in proximo. 

August 1st. My wife, sister j and myself went to Allholland 
in Dorset. 

4=th. We dined at Woodlands. 
5th. We came back to Sarum. 
I4:th. The judges came to Salisbury, Judge Godbolt and 



xliv APPENDIX II. 1647. 

Serjeant Wild. 1 They went -hence the 18th day. Four 
condemned to die, one for a robbery, two for horse-stealing, 
one for murder. Yorke that was for the robbery, I got his 
reprieve. The justices present were Sir Edward Hungerford, 
Mr. Edward Tooker, Mr, John Ashe, Mr. Whitehead. 
Colonel Ludlow, Mr. William Eyre, Mr. Giles Eyre, Mr. 
Bennet of Norton, Mr. Joy, Mr. Aubery, Mr. Sadler, Mr. 
Hippesley, Mr. How of Wishford, Mr. How of Berwick, 
Mr. Dove, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Coles, Mr. Swanton, Mr. 
Goddard of Upham. 

The last assize Sir John Danvers was present. 

I kept my ordinary at the Angel, four shillings for the 
gentlemen, two for their men, and a cellar. 

August 20th. I went to Hinton Martin, and lay at Walter 
Goddard's at Allholland. 

21st. I came back to Salisbury by Danierham. 

24th. I went a hunting to Cobley and from there to More 
Critchell to Sir Gerard Napper's. 

25th. I heard Mr. Strong preach, and in the evening 
returned to Salisbury. 

2Qth. I met the commissioners for the assessment for 
Sir Thomas Fairfax his army at the Devizes and came to 
Madenton at night The commissioners present were myself, 
Mr. Tooker, Mr. Jenner, Mr. Dove, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Sadler, 
Mr. Hippesley, Mr, Edward Martin, Mr. Gabriel Martin, 
Mr. Jesse, Mr. Thomas Bayly, Mr. Brown, Mr. John 
Stephens, Mr. William -Coles, Mr. Thomas Carter, Mr. 
Nicholas of Simley, Mr. Ditton, Mr. Read, Mr. Crouch. 

27th. I came back ;to Salisbury. 

In July last I settled my brother George's estate on him, 
who was some months since married to one of the co- 
heirs of Mr. Oldfield of London, sugar baker. I gave my 
brother freely 4,0001. for his preferment, and an annuity of 



1 John Wilde had taken an active part in the early proceedings of 
the Long Parliament, and had been recommended to the King for the 
appointment of Chief Baron of ->the Exchequer in the negotiations of 
February 1643. He was appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer by 
the Parliament in October 1648. After the execution of the King he 
was a member of the Council of State. When Cromwell became 
Protector he did not re-appoint Wilde Chief Baron. He was, however, 
restored to that high office in January 1660, by the restored Rump: 
but he necessarily lost the office again on the restoration of Charles 
the Second. He died in 1669. (JFoss's Judges of England, .yi. .519.) 



1647. DIA.RY.. xlv 

55. per annum for one life, and cleared it of my sister's 
portion. 1 

September 2nd. I went to Warniinster and sat on the Com- 
mission for Sir Thomas Fairfax his army's contribution. 
There were commissioners myself, Mr. Bennet of Norton, 
Mr. Carter, Mr. Crouch,. Mr. Jesse. I lay there that night. 

3rd. I came back to Salisbury. 

I4:th. I went to Madenton to my uncle Tooker's. 

15th. My uncle and I went to the Devizes, where we met 
the commissioners for Sit' Thomas Fairfax his army. There 
were commissioners present, myself, Mr. Tooker, Mr. Alexander 
Popham, Mr. Eeniiet, Mr, Crouch, Mr. Carter, Mr. Bayly, 
Mr. Jesse, Mr. Martin the elder, Mr. Ditton, Mr. Bead, Mr. 
Stokers, Mr. Brown, Mr. Manning. We came back to Maden- 
ton to bed* 

16th. I came home to Salisbury. 

llth. I wsnt to Mrs. Lee her house at Fishwood 2 in 
Hamshyre. 

18^. I came home to Salisbury. 

27th. I went to Warmister r and sat in the Commission 
for raising money for Sir Thomas his army. There were 
commissioners myself, Mr. Bennet of Norton, Mr. Carter, 
Mr. Jesse. I lay there that night; 

28th. I dined at Mr. Topp's at Stoketon, and came home to 
Salisbury. 

October 2nd. I went to Totnam- to Marquis Hertford, and 
lay there this night and the 3rd. 

th. I went to my own house at Purton<to keep my court 
there. 

Qth. I went to Malmsbury to return up my money. 

7th. I returned to Salisbury. 

i There is very little information to be found about Shaftesbury r s 
brother and sister, and very few- traces, in Shaftesbury's later life, of 
his intercourse with them. The sisteiy Philippa, married Sir Adam 
Brown, Bart. , of Betch worth Castle in Surrey, and died at a great ae 
in 1701. (Aubrey's Surrey, ii.. 307.) The brother, George, lived at 
Clarendon Park near Salisbury. He is probably the George Cooper 
who was made one of the commissioners of the- Admiralty by the 
Hump Parliament on its second restoration/ in December 1659, to 
which his elder brother prominently contributed. (Rennet's Chronicle, 
p. 35. ) He is also probably the George Cooper who was member for 
Poole in the Convention Parliament of 1660. (Willis. Not. Parl. 
ii. 411.) 

1J So apparently in the manuscript. 



xlvi APPENDIX II. 1647. 

October 8th. I came to Damerham and kept court there, 
and went that night to Allholland. 

9th. I kept court at St. Giles Wimborne. 

11 th. I kept court at Hinton Martin. 

12th. I returned to Salisbury. 

19^. I went from Salisbury to Farneham. 

20th. I came to Oxsted to my Lady Coventry's. 

25th. I came to my house in Holborne at London. 

30^. I went to Oxsted. 

November 1st. I came to Alton in Hamshyre. 

2nd. I came to Salisbury to my house. 

6th. The bond wherein I was bound with my brother 
John Coventry, the one to Mrs. Anne, the other to Mrs. 
Dorothy Aubery, both dated 15th July 1647, the one for 
1601,, the other for 240., were cancelled, and I delivered up 
my counter bonds. 

8^. I came to Hartford bridge in my way to London and 
fell sick there of a looseness, and was forced to stay there till 
the 12th. 

12th. I came to my house in Holborne at London. 

The little ship called the Rose, wherein I have a quarter part, 
which went for Guinea, came to town this term (blessed be 
God !). She has been out about a year, and we shall but 
make our money. 

27th. I went with my brother John Coventry to Oxsted, 
to see my Lady Coventry, and my sister Packington, who was 
lately delivered of her daughter Margarett. 

29th. We returned to London to my house in Holborne. 

This term I paid Mr. Bowes his 360/., which I borrowed 
of him in Easter term last. 

This term my cousin "Wallop conveyed Ely Rents to me 
which he had in trust, being boiight by me formerly of my 
father's estate for 1,800^. 

December 2nd. I came from London to Eagshot. 

3rd. I came to Andover. 

4:th. I came home to my house in Salisbury. 

20th. I went to Tollard to Mr. Plott's. 

21st. I went to Blandford and returned to Tollard. 

22nd. I returned to Salisbury. 

26th. My wife was delivered at seven o'clock in the even- 
ing of a dead maid child : she was within a fortnight of her 
time. 

1648. January :llth. I went to Blandford to the quarter 



1648. DIARY. xlvii 

sessions, where Mr. Hussey gave the charge. Sir A. A. 
Cooper, Sir Thomas Trenchard, Mr. Thomas Erie, Mr. John 
Tregunwell, Mr. Hannam, Colonel Sidenham, Colonel Coker, 
Colonel Brodrip, Mr. Hugh Windham, Mr. Chettle, Mr. 
Whitway, Mr. Arnold, Colonel Fitzjarnes, were justices. 

January \kth. We sat there in a committee, the High-sheriff, 
Sir A. A. Cooper, Sir Thomas Trenchard, Mr. Erie, Colonel 
Fitzjames, Colonel Coker, Mr. Chettle, Colonel Brodrip, Mr. 
Hussey, Mr. Whitway, Mr. Bury. 

15th. I returned to my house in Sarum. 

2lst. My brother John Coventry sealed a deed of all his 
lands to me, Sir Gerard Napper, Thomas Child, and Edmund 
Hoskins, Esqrs., for the payment of those debts we are 
engaged for him. 

I paid Sir Gerard tapper 5001. I owed him on bond, and 
burned the bond. 

I borrowed 5001. of Mr. William Hinton ; my brother 
Coventry and uncle Tooker were bound with me ; I gave 
them my counter bonds. 

This month I bought of one Jeffery some tenements in 
Gussage, which cost me sixty and odd pounds. 

This month, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hooper, feofees in trust 
for my father's estate, conveyed to me the manor of Pawlett, 
for which I paid formerly to the Court of Wards 2,5001. 

Mem. : I have purchased, not mentioned in this book, a 
tenement called Suddon Hill, which cost me 600, and a 
tenement in Staffordshyre in Ham, which cost me 2001. 

February St/i. I went to Hinton Martin, lay at Allholland 
at Goddard's. 

9th. I returned to Sarum. 

llth. I had my writ of discharge from being Sheriff of 
Wiltshyre delivered me by my uncle Tooker, who succeeded 
me in my office. 

14th. I fell sick of a tertian ague, whereof I had but five 
fits, through the mercy of the Lord. 

March. I went and waited on the Judges at their lodging ; 
the Judges were Judge Godbold and Serjeant Wilde. 

7th. I dined with the Judges, but I sat not on the bench 
all this assize for fear the cold might have made me relapse 
into an ague. 

April 4:th. Mr. S wanton and I kept a privy sessions at 
Salisbury. Mr. Gyles Eyres sat with us ibis day. 

5th. We continued our privy sessions. 



xlviii APPENDIX II. 1648. 

April 6th. I went to Marlborougb, in my way to Purton. 

1th, I came to Purton. 

Ibth. I returned to Chipenham by Malmesbury. 

llth. I came to Sarurn. 

\2th. I kept a court at Damerham Parva, and went to 
Walter Goddard's to All Saints Wimborne. 

1 3th. I dined at More Critchel at Sir Gerard tapper's. 

14^. I dined at Hinton Martin, where I kept a court, and 
came to Sarum. 

17 th. I and my wife and sister came from my house in 
Salisbury to Basingstoke, in our way to London. 

1 8th. We came to Stanes. 

19th. We came to London to my house in Holborne. 

22th. I fell sick of a tertian ague, whereof I had but two 
fits, through the mercy of the Lord. 

May 1 5th. My wife and I went to Oxsted in Surry, to see 
her mother, and stayed there till the 

19tfA, when we returned to our house in Holborne. 

June 22nd. I paid Mr. Strong the 1001. I borrowed of him 
on my bond in 1646. The bond was cancelled. 

24:th. My wife and I went to Stubbers 1 in Essex to my 
Lady CapelTs. 

27th. We returned to our house in Holborne. 

July. Mem. : The bond wherein I was bound to Mr. Gyles 
Eyre, with my brother Coventry, is paid and cancelled. This 
bond was for 150Z., dated April" 1647. 

I was this month made a commissioner of the ordinance of 
Parliament for the rate for Ireland, for Borsett. 

I was this month by ordinance of Parliament made one of 
the commissioners for the militia, which they settled in Dor- 
settshyre by that ordinance. 

August 1st. I went to Egham from London, on my journey 
westward. 

2nd. I went to Stoekbridge. 

3rd. I went to Salisbury, and from thence to Madenton, 
my uncle Tooker's, 

4:th. I came to Wimborne St. Giles. 

6th. I dined with Sir G. Napper at More Critchell, and 
heard Mr. Hussey preach. 

10th. I went to Dorchester to meet the commissioners of 

1 So in manuscript ; query Stebbing or Stubbing, where the Capels 
had property. (Morant's Essex, ii. 413.) 



1648. DIARY. xlix 

the militia, which was there settled. Present, Sir Thomas 
Trenchard, Mr. Erie, Mr. Trenchard, Mr. Dennis Bond, Mr. 
Chettle, Col. Sidenham, Col. Henley, Mr. Brown, Col. Buttler, 
Mr. Whit way, Col. Coker. 

Received of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper what was borroived 
of him at Poole for the great occasions of the garrisons and 
buildings, two hundred pound, which I paid unto him again 
ly two hundred pound he received of Mr. John Hoyle by my 
order. Witness my hand the IQth of August 1648. 

E. Burie, Treasurer}- 

This note was made to me the 10th of this month, when I 
had also delivered up and cancelled the bond Col. Bingham 
and I entered into for twenty pound for the State. 

August \\th. I went with my cousin Erie to his house at 
Axmouth in Devon shyre. 

13th. We went to church in the afternoon to Culliton, 
and visited Mr. Young there, but returned in the evening. 

15th. I came to my house at Wirnborne St. Gyles. 

23rd. I went to Salisbury to meet Mr. William Hussey, 
Mr. Norden, Mr. William Eyres ; we all met on commission 
directed to us out of Chancery, to hear and certify the cause 
betwixt Lowe and Sadler about Fisherton manors. We con- 
tinued there on the commission till the 26th, and adjourned 
till the 12th of September. 

26th. I returned to my house at St. Giles Wimborne. 

29th. I went to Salisbury to the assize. 

3Qth. The Judge, Mr. Serjeant Wilde, who came alone 
this circuit, came into Salisbury. 

31 st. We began the assize, where were present Sir John 
Eveline, Colonel Whitehead, myself, who were all three com- 
missioners of oyer and terminer, Mr. William Hussey, Mr. 
Yorke, Mr. Stephens, counsellors ; Mr. Norden, Mr. Joy, Mr. 
Bennet of Norton, Mr. William Eyres, Mr. Long, Mr. Coles, 
Mr. William Littleton, Mr. Dove, Mr. Sadler, Mr. Eivett. 
My uncle To ker, High-sheriff. 

September 2nd. I sealed an assignment of a mortgage 
belonging to my cousin Ernley, I being a trustee of his wife's 
jointure, together with my uncle Tooker, Mr. Swanton, 

1 This is the original note by Bury, written in the little book which 
contains the manuscript of this Diary. 
VOL. I. d 



1 APPENDIX II. 1648. 

and Mr. Topp. My uncle keeps the writings and accounts 
about it. 

I had a verdict against St. Johns for my common in 
Lydeard, myself the plaintiff, and SOI. damage given me. 
The last summer assize I had another verdict against him 
and Webb, myself the plaintiff. 

September 4Jh. I returned to my house at St. Giles Wim- 
borne. 

llth. I borrowed of my servant James Eerboons one hun- 
dred pound, myself and James Percivall bound to him for it. 
12th. I came to Salisbury. Myself, Mr. Hussey, Mr. 
William Eyres, Mr. Norden, Mr. Ernley met on the com- 
mission betwixt Low and Sadler, and at the desire of both 
parties adjourned to the llth day of December. 
13th. I came to Bagshott. 
I4:lk. I came to my house in Holborne. 
October 4th. My wife and I went to Oxsted in Surrey. 
Mem. : I borrowed on my own bond of my cousin Charles 
Hoskins 2001. 

10th. We came to Guildford. 
ll//i. We came to Winchester. 

12th. We came to our house in St. Giles Wimborne in the 
county of Dorsett. 

19th. I went to Salisbury to join with my uncle Tooker in 
putting in our answer to my aunt Sanderson. 
2lst. I came back to St. Giles Wimborne. 
2Qth. I went to Sutton on my way to London. 
27th. I went to Stanes. 

28th. I came to London and lodged at Mr. Guidett's house 
in Lincolnes inn fields. 

November. This term I borrowed of my aunt Mrs. Alice 
Coventry 1,1 001., for which I gave her my own bond. 

December 4th. My cousin Harbin, Mr. Chettle, and myself 
came from London in a hackney coach to Egham. 
November 5th. We came to Basingstoke. 
6th. We came to Stockbridge. 
7th. To Salisbury. 

8^. I came to my house at St. Giles Wimborne in Dorset- 
shy re. 

December llth. I went to Salisbury on the commission 
betwixt Lowe and Sadler. 

12th. There being but three commissioners, Mr. Hussey, 
Mr. Norden, and myself, we could not proceed, but adjourned 



1649. DIARY. 11 

by consent of both parties to the 20th of March next, we 
to meet the 19th at night there. Mr. Kelaway and Mrs. 
Sadler desired it might be put off till then ; Lowe pressed to 
hear it sooner. 

December 2lst. I went to Wimborne and dined with my 
cousin Hannam, and came home in the evening. 

27th. I went to Shaftesbury to sit on the commission for 
the contribution for the army. There met commissioners 
Mr. Hussey, Colonel Bingham, and Mr. Bury. 

28th. We sat on the business. 

29th. I returned home. 

1649. January 1st. I dined at my cousin Hannam's of 
Wimborne. 

4:th. I and my wife, my brother, and sister, dined at Sir 
Gerard tapper's at More Critchell. 

9th. I went to the quarter sessions at Blandford. The 
justices present this session were myself, Mr. Chettle, Colonel 
Butler, Colonel Bingham, Colonel Sidenham, Colonel Brodrip, 
Mr. Hussey, judge of the sessions, Mr. Savadge, Mr. White- 
way, Mr. Hannam, Mr. Arnold. 

IQth. We sat at sessions. 

ll^A. In the morning at sessions, in the afternoon myself, 
Colonel Bingham, Mr. Chettle, Mr. Whiteway, sat on rates. 

January 12th. I returned to my house at St. Giles. 

29th. I began my journey to London, and went to 
Andover. 

30th. I went to Bagshott. 1 

31 st. I came to London, and lodged at Mr. Guidett's in 
Lincoln's inne fields. 

February. I was made by the States a justice of peace of 
quorum for the counties of Wilts and Dorsett, and of oyer 
and terminer for the Western circuit. 

In Candlemas term I paid 200/, to my cousin, Charles 
Hoskins, which I had borrowed of him. 

I mortgaged my manor of Pawlett to my aunt Mrs. Alice 
Coventry for 1,1 00. I owed her. 

March 3rd. I went to Oxsted in Surrey to wait on my 
wife's mother. 

5th. I went to Guildford on my way home. 

i The day of the execution of Charles I. The ordinance for the 
trial had been passed by the House of Commons on January ,6th ; the 
trial began on the 20th ; on the 27th sentence was passed. 

d 2 



Hi APPENDIX II. 1649. 

March 6th. I came to Rumsey in Hamsliyre. 

1th. I came to my house at St. Giles Wimborne in 
Dorsettshyre. 

April 3rd. I went to Maryborough, in my way to Purton 
for my rents. 

4th. I came to Purton in North Wiltshire. 

6th. I came to the Devizes in my way home, having called 
at Malmsbury to return my money to London. 

7th. I came home to my house in St. Giles Wimborne. 

April Wth. I went to Salisbury. 

12th. I returned home. 

May 2nd. Mr. Plott and I went to Poole to buy sack, and 
returned at night. 

I was made by the States a commissioner in their act of 
contribution for the counties of Wilts and Dorsett. 

June 19th. I went to my cousin Whitehead's at Fillery 1 
in Hamshyre, in my way to London. 

25th. I came to Hartford bridge. 

21 st. I came to London to Mr. Guidett's. 

July 3rd. I came to Hartford bridge in my way home. 

4th. I came to Salisbury. 

oth. I came home. 

Wth. My wife, just as she was sitting down to supper, fell 
suddenly into an apoplectical convulsion fit. She recovered 
that fit after some time, and spake and kissed me, and com- 
plained only in her head, but fell again in a quarter of an hour, 
and then never came to speak again, but continued in fits and 
slumbers until next day. At noon she died ; she was with 
child the fourth time, and within six weeks of her time. 

She was a lovely beautiful fair woman, a religious devout 
Christian, of admirable wit and wisdom, beyond any I ever 
knew, yet the most sweet, affectionate, and observant wife in 
the world. Chaste without a suspicion of the most envious 
to the highest assurance of her husband, of a most noble and 
bountiful mind, yet very provident in the least things, ex- 
ceeding all in anything she undertook, housewifery, pre- 
serving, works with the needle, cookery, so that her wit and 
judgment were expressed in all things, free from any pride or 
forwardness. She was in discourse and counsel far beyond 
any woman. 

1 So apparently in the manuscript. 



1650. , DIARY. liii 

July 19^. I went to Madenton in Wiltshyre, to my uncle 
looker's. 

27th. I returned home. 

August IQth. I was sworn a justice of peace for the counties 
of Wilts and Dorsett by Mr. Swanton. This was the first 
time I acted since the late King's death. 

30th. I went to Andover in my way to London, with my 
uncle Tooker and sister. 

31st. We came to Bagshott. 

September 1st. I came to London to my cousin Day's house 
in Axe Yard, Westminster. 

11 tli. I sold my land at Finderne in Derbyshire for 
2,7001. 

September llth. I paid my uncle Tooker 200/. he had lent 
me in Easter term. 

15th. I paid my cousin Rogers, my aunt Coventry's exe- 
cutor, 1,100/., and cancelled my mortgage of Pawlet and 
bond for performance of covenants ; and I went to Oxsted in 
Surrey, to my wife's mother. 

17 r th. I came to Guildford. 

ISth. To Winchester. 

19th. To my house at St. Giles Wimborne. 

October 2nd. I went to Marlborough. 

3rd. I sat at sessions in the morning, where were present 
ten justices ; myself, Mr. Swanton, Mr. Littleton, Mr. Joy, 
Mr. Sadler, Mr. Hippesly, Colonel Ayres of Hurst, Lieut. - 
Colonel Read, Captain Martin, Mr. Shute. In the afternoon 
I went to Purton. 

4th. I went to Malmsbury. 

5th. I came to Salisbury. 

October Qth. I came home to my house. 

22v.d. I, my brother, and cousin Day went to Winchester, 
in our way to London. 

23rd. We came to Farnham. 

21th. We came to London. I lodged at my cousin 
Day's. 

27th. I went to my brother's house at Bow, and lay 

ere. 

2$th. I returned to London. 

November. This term I paid my Lady Coventry one 
hundred pound she freely lent me. 

1650. January 7th. From London to Eagshot. 

8th. From Bagshot to Sutton. 



liv APPENDIX II. 1650. 

January 9th. To St. Giles. 

10th. To Dorchester. 

llth. Dine at Woolton at Sir Thomas Trenchard's, and 
came home to St. Giles. 

llth. To Salisbury, to the sessions and oyer and terminer ; 
present, Mr. Bond, High-sheriff, myself, Colonel William 
Eyres, Mr. Tooker, Mr. Hussey, Mr. Swanton, Mr. Free of 
Wishford, Mr. Ayres of White parish, Colonel Thomas Eyre, 
Colonel Read, Mr. Gabriel Martin, Mr. Coles, Mr. Shute, 
Mr. Littleton : we all this day subscribed the Engagement. 

18th. The commission lasted. 

19^. The sessions ended, and I came home to St. 
Giles. 

2 2 nd. I went to my commission at Wimborne betwixt 
Mr. Banks and I. 

23rd. Returned. 

29th. Myself, Captain Dewe, and Mr. Baker sat on a com- 
mission from the Council of State to give the Engagement at 
Blandford. I returned at night. 

3lst. To Winchester, on my way to London. 

February 1st. To Bagshot. 

2nd. To London, my cousin Day's. 

7th. I received a commission to me and others from the 
Commissioners of the Great Seal for the giving the Engage- 
ment in Dorsetshire. I sent it by the next post to Captain 
Dewe. 

8th. I received a second commission as above with the 
time enlarged, and sent it as above. 

February 2nd. I paid Mr. William Hinton 5001. I owed 
him on bond, and cancelled. 

This month I borrowed 1501. of my cousin Day, on mine 
and my brother John's bond. 

March 5th. I came to Bagshot on my way to my house in 
Dorset. 

Qth. To Twyford in Hamshyre, to Mr. Wool's, where my 
aunt l lived. 

7th. Home to St. Giles's. 

llth. To Salisbury assize. Judge Nicholas 2 Chief Justice. 

1 A blank in the manuscript. 

2 Kobert Nicholas was made serjeant October 30, 1648, and a Judge 
of the Upper Bench (the Commonwealth name for King's Bench), 
June 1, 1649. He was afterwards moved by Cromwell to the Court of 
Exchequer. (Foss's Judges, vi. 463.) 



1650. DIARY. ly 

March 13th. Home to St. Giles's. 

I4:th. To Dorchester assize. I was of the oyer and terminer 
for the circuit. 

16^. We sat on the commission for militia. In the after- 
noon I returned home to St. Giles's. 

19th. I laid the first stone of my house at St. Giles's. 1 

20th. I came to Winchester. 

2 1 st. To Egham. 

22nd. To London, to my cousin Day's. 

22th. I removed my lodging from Ax Yard to Bedford 
Street. 

April 15th. I was married to Lady Frances Cecil, 2 and 
removed my lodging to Mr. Blake's, by Exeter House. 

July 2nd. My wife and I and my sister came from London 
to Bagshot, on our way westward. 

3rd. We came to Basingstoke. 

4:th. We came to St. Giles Wimborne. 

10^. I went to the assizes at Shaston, where were present 
justices 3 

1 The right wing of the present house was built in 1651. (Hutchins's 
Hist, of Dorset, iii. 186.) 

2 Daughter of David, third Earl of Exeter, who had died in 1643, 
and sister of John, fourth Earl. Cooper's connexion with the King's 
enemies and adherence to the Commonwealth, did not prevent his 
marrying a noble lady of a Koyalist house. This second marriage was 
also of short duration ; the lady died some time in 1654. But it was 
not without issue ; two sons were born of this marriage. 

3 Here ends the Diary, as abruptly as the Fragment of the Auto- 
biography written by Shaftesbury late in life ends. Nothing more is 
known of Shaftesbury till he is named by the Parliament nearly two 
years after a member of a Commission for the reform of the laws, 
January 17, 1652 ; and we learn this only by the Journals of 
Parliament. 



APPENDIX III. 

Suppressed Passages of Edmund Ludlow'' s Memoirs, referring 
to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, collected by John Locke, 
1653 1660. 1 

(1) WHEN by the Instrument of Government whereby 
Cromwell was set up Protector he had issued out writs for 
choosing a parliament, General Ludlow in his manuscript 
history has these words 2 (p. 344, 1. 33) : 

"And though I was in Ireland and under a cloud, and that 
there was the like packing of the cards for the election in 
the county of Wilts as in other places, the Cavaliers and the 
imposing clergy, the lawyers and court interest, all joining 

1 These suppressed passages of Ludlow's Memoirs, all relating to Sir 
A. A. Cooper, are in Locke's handwriting among his papers in the 
possession of the Earl of Lovelace. There is no explanation in the 
manuscript as to how Locke obtained these suppressed passages. I 
have made many endeavours to trace the manuscript of Ludlow's 
Memoirs, but have entirely failed to obtain any clue. If it is in 
existence, it would probably be found that more has been suppressed. 
Ludlow's Memoirs were first printed at Vevey in Switzerland, and 
published in 1698 and 1699 : Ludlow had died there in 1693. Locke 
died in 1704. There is no trace, that I am aware of, of intercourse 
between Locke and Ludlow. It is clear that every passage containing 
depreciatory mention of Shaftesbury was purposely suppressed, when 
Ludlow's Memoirs were published. At that time the memory of 
Shaftesbury was dear to "Whigs; and Ludlow had possibly himself 
lived to wish that these passages should not see the light. It is stated 
in Tyers's " Political Conferences " (p. 88) that Ludlow's Memoirs were 
prepared for the press by Littlebury, translator of Herodotus, a very 
strong Whig. 

2 This short introduction and other similar explanations are by 
Locke. The pages and lines referred to are, it is to be presumed, of 
the manuscript of Ludlow's Memoirs. This passage is to be inserted 
at p. 498 of vol. ii. of the three-volume Yevey edition, 1698-9, and at 
p. 211 of the quarto edition of 1771. 



1653. SUPPRESSED PASSAGES OF LUDLOW. Ivii 

against that of the Commonwealth, and having preferred a 
list of ten men (the number which was to be chosen by that 
county) as those whom they would have to be chosen, they 
cite the parishes and every particular person therein to 
appear, who when they came upon the hill were headed by 
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, a man of a healing and recon- 
ciling spirit of all interests that agree in the greatening of 
himself, being now one 'of Cromwell's Council. The well- 
wishers to the public interest, according to the practice of 
their antagonists, prepared a list of such as they judged 
faithful to the public cause, but the other party not con- 
tented with their policy make use of force, threatening those 
who oppose them as such who designed disturbance in the 
State by promoting the election of such as were dissatisfied 
with the present Government; but notwithstanding all they 
could say or do, and though the tinder-sheriff was made 
for their turn, the high-sheriff being absent, the Common- 
wealth party appeared so equal, that it could not be decided 
without a poll, and both parties were so numerous that the 
usual place for election was too strait, so that they consented 
to adjourn the meeting unto Stonnage, 1 where there was 
room enough. The great work is to keep me from being 
elected who knew not of one person's intention to appear for 
me, being at that time in Ireland, neither had I been free to 
have sat had I been elected as a member to serve in that 
assembly (a parliament I could not own it to be, the Long 
Parliament being only interrupted by the sword), knowing 
well that they were called together for no good end, and that 
if they should beyond expectation do anything for the good 
of the people, they should receive an interruption by the 
power of the sword, under which they then were. Yet did 
Sir Anthony Cooper and Mr. Adoniram By field, a busy 
clergyman, not contented with their share in that tyrannical 
Government, or hoping that it would conduce to that which 
was more so, make harangues to the people, labouring to 
convince them that it was desirable to choose such as were of 
healing spirits, and not such as were for the putting of all 
things into confusion and disorder ; but the people well 
knowing their persons, designs, and interests, and that yet 
nothing could prevent tyranny and confusion but the settling 
of such a Government as would provide for common good, 

1 So in the manuscript ; Stonehenge. 



Iviii APPENDIX III. 1653. 

and needed not the military sword to uphold it, but would be 
supported by the affection of the people, stick close to the 
former resolution, and pleased in the first place to cry up me 
as one they would entrust in that assembly. The other 
party, finding mine greater than any of theirs when divided, 
unite in their first vote for Sir Anthony Cooper, whom the 
under-sheriff on the view adjudgeth to be first chosen, 
though the party that appeared for me conceived them- 
selves much injured therein ; but the other party had all 
the power in their hands, and knew they should be pro- 
tected by him, who called himself the Protector, do they 
what they would." 

(2) P. 377,1. 22 is thus i 1 

" Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who was first for the King, 
then for the Parliament, then in Cromwell's first assembly 
for the reformation, and afterwards for Cromwell against that 
reformation, now being denied Cromwell's daughter Mary in 
marriage, he appears against Cromwell's design in the last 
assembly, and is therefore dismissed the Council, Cromwell 
being resolved to act there as the chief juggler himself, and 
one Colonel Mackworth, a lawyer about Shrewsbury, a 
person fit for his purpose, is chosen in his room, &c." 2 

1 This is to be inserted after the words "departed from that king- 
dom," vol. ii. p. 53 of the Vevey edition, and p. 224 of quarto edition, 
1771. 

2 The "last assembly" spoken of in this passage is Cromwell's first 
parliament under the Instrument of Government, which met Sep- 
tember 4, 1654, and was dissolved on the 22d of January, 1655. 
There are several mistakes in this passage of Ludlow. Cooper had not 
been "in Cromwell's first assembly for the reformation and afterwards 
for Cromwell against that reformation." In Cromwell's first assembly, 
the Barebone's Parliament, he had acted in accord with Cromwell, and 
was a leading member of the party of moderate reformers, and, as 
Burnet says, "was of great use to Cromwell in withstanding the 
enthusiasts." It is not true that Cooper was dismissed from the 
Council, or that Mackworth took his place. Cooper continued to 
attend the Council until December 28, ]654. Mackworth had been 
appointed a member on the previous 7th of February. A dismissal 
from the Council could only have taken place, according to the pro- 
visions of the Instrument of Government, on a specific charge of mis- 
conduct after inquiry by a Committee jointly appointed by the Council 
and the Parliament. It does not appear even that Cooper resigned 
his seat in the Council, when he ceased to attend in the end of 
December 1654. His name is included in a list of members of the 
Council, prepared at the end of 1655, printed in Thmioe's State 
Papers, (iii. 581.) 



1659. SUPPRESSED PASSAGES OF LUDLOW. lix 

'Note that this is in the book eleven leaves after that he 
gives account of the dissolving of this called here the last 
assembly, in which eleven leaves he "writes of Cromwell's 
proceedings against the Cavaliers, and many other particulars, 
and immediately after the imprisonment of my Lord Grey 
and his baseness to Colonel Sexby. This concerning Sir 
Anthony is written p. 377. 

(3) When the Long Parliament was restored by the army 
in Richard Cromwell's time, and the Parliament had 
appointed a Council of State which was to consist of thirty- 
one persons, p. 513, 1. 6, it is thus : l 

"Mr. Love (in consideration that Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper had voted with the Commonwealth party in the last 
Convention) moved that he might be one, though his 
affections were well known to be to another interest, and 
Mr. Nevill having hopes that Sir Horatio Townsend was a 
friend to the Commonwealth, for the same reason, moved for 
his addition, which two motions being upon the rising of the 
House made on a sudden before any could recollect themselves 
to speak against them, there being also an unwillingness to 
disoblige those of whom there was any hope, were con- 
sented to." 2 

(4) In the following page, line 21 is thus : 3 

" And when the Wallingford House party (which was the 
Council of officers, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, &c.), had 
taken the oath that was directed by the Parliament to be 
taken by every member of the Council of State before he 
took his place, the effect whereof was to be true and faithful 
to the interest of the Commonwealth, and to oppose Charles 
Stewart or any other single person whatsoever, they came 

1 Vol. ii. p. 656, line 11 from bottom of Vevey edition, and p. 277 
of quarto edition of 1771. 

2 There is an interval of more than four years between the periods 
referred to in this passage of Ludlow and in the last. Richard 
Cromwell's parliament was dissolved April 22, 1659. The Rump of 
the Long Parliament was then resuscitated ; and this body proceeded 
to elect a Council of State on May 13. It was resolved that the 
Council should consist of thirty-one members, twenty-one members of 
the parliament, and ten who were not members. Seven of the latter 
were elected on that day, and two of these seven were Sir A. A. Cooper 
and Sir Horatio Townshend. 

3 At the bottom of page 657 of vol. ii. of Vevey edition, and at page 
278 of quarto edition of 1771. 



Ix APPENDIX III. 1659. 

but seldom to discharge their duty, pretending that, by 
reason of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's being of the Council 
and Sir H. Townsend, they could not with freedom speak 
their minds there nor carry on the public work, they sup- 
posing these persons to be assured to Charles Stewart's 
interest, and that they would give intelligence to him of all 
that passed. That we might remove this rub, endeavours 
were used with them both to manifest their affections to the 
public, for removing of jealousies between the Parliament and 
the army, by desiring the House to excuse them from that 
employment, or at least to forbear coming to the Council. 
Sir H. Townsend very ingenuously chose to do the latter, 
pretending occasions of his own which drew him into the 
country. But Sir Anthony having it in design to be a 
loutefeu between the Parliament and the army, as his after 
carriage will make appear, makes use of this occasion and 
comes into the Council with much confidence, and moves 
with much importunity to have the oath administered to him, 
professing himself ready to take the same, yet having a secret 
resolve to break it at the same time (as there was ground to 
suspect), but the Council not having any power to refuse it 
him permitted him to take it. And being thus ensnared, as 
the best remedy to prevent inconveniences, they appoint 
a Committee of examination and secrecy, whom they en- 
trusted with great powers, to wit, Lieutenant-General Fleet- 
wood, Sir Henry Vane, Major-General Lambert, Major 
Salloway, Mr. Scott, Serjeant Bradshaw, and myself : yet so 
hot and confident was Sir Anthony grown, that to pursue his 
mischievous design, he solicits the Parliament that they 
would admit him to sit upon an election of seventeen or 
eighteen years' standing, which never was adjudged, and we 
could find no better way to put him off (so far had he insinu- 
ated into the members) than to refer the consideration thereof 
to the committee of five formerly appointed by the Par- 
liament for the receiving of satisfaction touching those mem- 
bers who had not sat from 1648, who alleging their powers 
were at an end, it was referred to them to search their books, 
and state matter of fact in relation thereto." 1 

1 The case of Sir A. A. Cooper's election for Downton was referred 
to the Committee named by Ludlow on May 10, the day after the re- 
storation of the Parliament, and three days before Cooper's election to 
be a member of the Council of State. Cooper was not yet admitted to 
sit in the House. 



1659. SUPPKESSED PASSAGES OF LUDLOW. Ixi 

(5) P. 571, L 9n 

" The Parliament sent a committee to the Tower to examine 
Sir George Booth touching the plot wherein he had been 
engaged, both as to the authority which he pretended to act 
by, and as to those who were engaged to join with him 
therein ; he confessed he had received a commission from the 
King, and that many of the nobility and gentry were engaged 
with him for the carrying on of the design ; some he disco- 
vered, but took time to discover the rest ; and upon exami- 
nation of a boy which brought, as was supposed, a letter from 
Sir George Booth before his rising to Sir A. A. Cooper, it was 
found that he dismissed the boy with much civility, in token 
of consenting to what was done." 

(6) "When the Wallingford House party had put a stop 
to the sitting of the Parliament, and Monk marching from 
Scotland had declared against, pretending to be for the Parlia- 
ment and Commonwealth, but underhand carrying on his 
design of setting up King Charles, p. 621, 1. 19, it is thus : 2 

" Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, also a great instrument in this 
horrid treachery, as he was most active amongst those of the 
Parliament who were consulting for their restitution, so 
notwithstanding the affronts he had formerly put upon me, 
the Lord Arundel being pressed by the trustees and con- 
tractors at Drury House for the paying in of thousands of 
pounds which he was in arrears for some lands which they 
had sold of his to some of his friends, and which Cromwell 
had discharged him of, they not allowing that to be a suf- 
ficient discharge threaten him to sell the land again according 
to a command they had received from the Parliament to that 
purpose, if he forthwith paid not the said arrears. It being 
apprehended that my letter to them might be of service to 
him therein, he the same Sir Anthony, coming to me with 
him to desire me to write on his behalf, professed to be very 
affectionate to the interest of the Commonwealth, which he 
did so to the life that I was much pleased therewith, having 
always believed him to be otherwise inclined. But notwith- 

1 Vol. ii. p. 696 of Vevey edition, and p. 294 of quarto edition of 
1771. The whole of this passage, except the last sentence referring to 
Shaftesbury, is printed in .Ludlow's Memoirs in somewhat different 
words. 

2 This passage should be inserted probably at p. 765 of vol. ii. of 
the Yevey edition, and at p. 323 of the quarto edition of 1771. 



Ixii APPENDIX III. 1659. 

standing his fair words, I was not so confident of him as to 
repose any great trust in him, he having played fast and 
loose so often, declaring sometimes for the King, then for the 
Parliament, then for Cromwell, afterwards against him, and 
now for the Commonwealth." 

(7) When Monk drew nigh to London, and was always 
declaring highly for the Parliament and Commonwealth, 
whereas he modelled his army for another design, p. 690, 
1. 11, it is thus i 1 

" It was wonderful to consider how with fair words those 
who used to be watchful to discover what was for their 
interest were lulled to sleep : Chief Justice St. John himself, 
who even in this session prepared and procured the Parliament 
to pass a declaration against Monarchy and for a Common- 
wealth, and Reynolds who had bought public lands as well 
as the other, in crushing the friends of the Commonwealth 
and preferring those of a contrary principle (if of any), acting 
as if they had designed nothing less than what they pretended 
to and what their interest led them to ; scarce one of ten of the 
old officers of the army are continued ; Sir Anthony Ashley 
Cooper, a known bitter enemy to the public and to all good 
men, on a disputable election of eighteen years' standing, 
against all reason and common justice, is admitted to sit as a 
Member of Parliament because he had joined with some of 
them in opposing the army at this time, which Charles 
Stewart himself would have done, might he have been ad- 
mitted into the confederacy. They bestow also a regiment of 
horse upon him, which by his policy he modelleth with 
officers for his turn, and by his smooth tongue and insin- 
uating carriage bears a great sway in Parliament." 

(8) When Monk was come to London, p. 705, 1. 35, 2 it is 
thus : 

" In the meantime the secluded members held their cabals 
with the city of London for the carrying on of these designs, 
and some of those members who sat, especially Sir Anthony 
Ashley Cooper and Colonel Feilder, had correspondency with 
them." 

1 Vol. ii. p. 809 of the Vevey edition, and p. 342 of the quarto 
edition of 1771. 

2 At p. 822 of vol. ii. of the Vevey edition, and p. 347 of the quarto 
edition of 1771. 



APPENDIX IV. 



Speech in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, March 28, 1659. 1 

MR. SPEAKER, 

This day's debate is but too clear a proof that we English- 
men are right islanders ; variable and mutable, like the air 
we live in : for, Sir, if that were not our temper, we should 
not be now disputing whether, after all those hazards we 
have run, that blood we have spilt, that treasure we have 
exhausted, we should not now sit down just where we did 
begin, and of our own accords submit ourselves to that slavery 
which we have not only ventured our estates and lives, but I 
wish I could not say, our souls and consciences, to throw off. 
What others, Sir, think of this levity, I cannot tell. I mean 
those who steer their consciences by occasions, and cannot 
lose the honour they never had : but truly, Sir, for my own 

1 I have no doubt that this long elaborate speech, which was pub- 
lished by Sir A. A. Cooper at the time, is the one thus referred to in 
Burton's Diary on March 28: "Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper made a 
long speech till the House was fuller of those of his party, and moved 
to second the motion that they be but for this parliament, and would 
have them bounded in time." (iv. 286.) It was made in support of a 
motion for limiting the existence of the " Other House " Cromwell's 
House of Peers to the time of the Parliament then sitting. The 
speech here printed has been published in various works ; it is to be 
found in the Somers Tracts and Harleian Miscellany, in Morgan's 
" Phoenix Britannicus," George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham's Works, 
2 vols. 17] 5, the old Parliamentary History, and Martyn's Life. In 
the Somers Tracts it is reprinted from a republication in 1680 with 
the following title: "A time-serving Speech spoken once in a season 
by a worthy member of Parliament, and now thought fit to be 
reprinted, to prevent the occasion of having it respoken." (Vol. vi. 
p. 466.) 



Ixiv APPENDIX IV. 1659. 

part, I dare freely declare it to be my opinion, that we are 
this day making good all the reproaches of our enemies, own- 
ing ourselves oppressors, murderers, regicides, subverters of 
that which we do not only acknowledge to have been a lawful 
government, but, by recalling it, confess it now to be the best : 
which, Sir, if it be true, and that we now begin to see aright, 
I heartily wish our eyes had been sooner open ; and, for 
three nations' sake, that we had purchased our conviction at 
a cheaper rate. We might, Sir, in '42 have been what we 
thus contend to be in '59 ; and our consciences would have 
had much less to answer for to God, and our reputations to 
the world. 

But, Mr. Speaker, I wish with all niy soul I did state the 
case to you amiss ; and that it were the question, whether we 
would voluntarily relapse into the disease we were formerly 
possessed of, and of our own accords take up our old yoke, 
that we with wearing and custom had made habitual and easy, 
and which, it may be, was more our wantonness than our 
pressure that made us throw it off. But this, Sir, is not now 
the question : that which we deliberate is not whether we 
will say, we do not care to be free, we like our old masters, 
and will be content to have our ears bored at the door-post of 
their House, and to serve them for ever ; but, Sir, as if we 
were contending for shame as well as servitude, we are carry- 
ing our ears to be bored at the doors, of another House ; an 
House, Sir, without a name, and therefore it is but congruous 
it should consist of members without family ; an House that 
inverts the order of slavery, and subjects us to our servants ; 
and yet, in contradiction to Scripture, we do not only not think 
that subjection intolerable, but we are now pleading for it. 
In a word, Sir, it is a House of so incongruous and odious a 
composition and mixture, that certainly the grand architect 
would never have so framed it, had it not been his design, as 
well as to show the "world the contempt he had of us, as to 
demonstrate the power he had over us. 

Sir, that it may appear I intend not to be so prudent, as 
far as my part is concerned, as to make a voluntary resigna- 
tion of my liberty and honour to this excellent part of his 
Highness's last will and testament, I shall crave leave to declare 
in a few particulars my opinion of this other House ; wherein 
I cannot but promise myself to be favourably heard by some, 
and patiently heard by all: for those Englishmen who are 
against that House will certainly with content hear the 



1C59. SPEECH AGAINST THE OTHER HOUSE. Ixv 

reasons why others are so too ; those courtiers who are for it 
give me evidence enough to think that in nature there is 
nothing which they cannot willingly endure. 

First, Sir, as to the author and framer of the House of 
Peers ; let me put you in mind it was he who with 
reiterated oaths had often sworn to he true and faithful to 
the government without it ; and not only sworn so himself, 
but had "been the chief instrument both to draw and compel 
others to swear so too. So, Sir, the foundation of that noble 
structure was laid in perjury, and was begun with the viola- 
tion and contempt as well of the laws of God as of the nation. 
He who called monarchy anti-christian in another, and indeed 
made it so himself; he who voted a House of Lords dangerous 
and unnecessary, and too truly made it so in his partisans ; 
he who with fraud and force deprived you of your liberty when 
living, and entailed slavery on you at his death : it is he, Sir, 
who has left you these worthy overseers of that his last will 
and testament ; who, however they have behaved themselves 
in other trusts, we may be confident will faithfully endeavour 
to discharge themselves in this. In a word, had that other 
House no other fault but its constitution and author, I should 
think that original sin enough for its condemnation : for I am 
of their opinion who think that, for the good of example, all 
acts and monuments of tyrants are to be expunged and erased ; 
that, if possible, their memory may be no longer-lived than 
their carcases ; and the truth is, their good laws are but snares 
for our liberty. But to impute to that other House no faults 
but its own, you may please in the first place to consider of 
the power which his Highness hath left it, according to that 
" Humble Petition and Advice," which he was pleased to 
give order the Parliament should present to him. For as the 
Eomans had kings, his Highness had " parliaments amongst 
his instruments of slavery ;" and I hope it will be no offence 
for me to pray that his son may not have so too. But, Sir, 
they have a negative voice, and all other circumstances of that 
arbitrary power which made the former House intolerable ; 
only the dignity and quality of the persons are wanting, that 
our slavery may be accompanied with ignominy and affront. 
And now, Mr. Speaker,, have we not gloriously vindicated 
the nation's liberty, have we not worthily employed our blood 
and treasure to abolish that power which was set over us by 
law, to have the same imposed upon us without law 1 And 
after all that sound and noise we have made in the world, of 
VOL. I. e 



Ixvi APPENDIX IV. 1659. 

the people's legislative power, and of the supremacy and 
ornnipotency of their representatives, we now see there is no 
more power left them but what is put into the balance, and 
equalled by the power of a few retainers of tyranny, who are 
so far from being the people's choice, that the most part of 
them are only known to the nation by the mischiefs they 
have committed in it. 

In the next place, Sir, you may please to consider that the 
persons invested with that power are all of them nominated 
by the Lord Protector (for to say by him and his Council, has 
in effect no more distinction than if one should say by Oliver 
and Cromwell). By that means, the Protector himself, by 
his own and by his peers' negative, may become in effect two 
of the three estates ; and by consequence, is possessed of two 
parts of the legislative power. I think this can be a doubt to 
no one who will but take the pains to read over the catalogue 
of those noble lords ; for certainly no man who reads their 
names can possibly fancy for what virtues or good qualities 
such a composition should be made choice of, but only the 
certainty of their compliance with whatsoever shall be 
enjoined them by their creator. Pardon, Sir, that name, for 
it is properly applicable where things are made out of nothing. 
If, in the former government, increase of nobility was a 
grievance, because the new nobility, having fresh obligations 
to the crown, were more easily led into compliance with it ; 
and if one of the main reasons for exclusion of bishops out of 
the House of Lords was because they were of the King's 
making, and were in effect so many certain votes for what- 
ever he had a mind to carry in the House ; how much more 
assured will that inconvenience now be, when the Protector, 
who wants nothing of the King but (in every sense) the title, 
shall only make and nominate a part, but of himself constitute 
the whole ? In a word, Sir, if our liberty was endangered by 
the former House, we may give it up for lost in the other 
House : and it is in all respects as secure and advantageous 
for the liberty of the nation, which we come hither to redeem, 
to allow this power to his Highness's officers and chaplains, 
as to his other creatures and partisans in this other House. 

^ow, having considered, Sir, their author, power, and con- 
stitution, give me leave to make some few observations, 
though but in general, on the persons themselves who are 
designed to be our lords and masters ; and let us see what 
either the extraordinary quality or qualifications are of these 



1659. SPEECH AGAINST THE OTHER HOUSE. Ixvii 

egregious legislators, which may justify their choice, and pre- 
vail with the people to admit them at least into equal 
authority with the whole representative "body of themselves. 
But what I shall speak of their quality, or anything else con- 
cerning them, I would be thought to speak with distinction, 
and to intend only of the major part ; for I acknowledge, Mr. 
Speaker, the mixture of the other House to be like the com- 
position of apothecaries, w r ho mix something grateful to the 
taste to qualify their bitter drugs, which else, perhaps, would 
be immediately spit out and never swallowed. So, Sir, hi* 
Highness, of deplorable memory to this nation, to countenance 
as well the want of quality as honesty in the rest, has nomi- 
nated some against whom there lies no other reproach but 
only that nomination ; but not out of any respect to their 
quality or regard to their virtues, but out of regard to the no- 
quality, the no- virtues of the rest ; which truly, Mr. Speaker, 
if he had not done, we could easily have given a more express 
name to this other House than he hath been pleased to do ; 
for we know a house designed for beggars and malefactors is 
a house of correction, and so termed by our law : but, Mr. 
Speaker, setting those few persons aside, who, I hope, think 
the nomination a disgrace, and their ever coming to sit there 
a much greater, can we without indignation think of the rest ? 
He who is first in their roll, a condemned coward ; one that 
out of fear and baseness did once what he could to betray our 
liberties, and now does the same for gain. 1 The second, a 
person of as little sense as honesty ; preferred for no other 
reason but his no- worth, his no-conscience ; except cheating 
his father of all he had was thought a virtue by him, who, by 
sad experience we find, hath done as much for his mother 
his country. 2 The third, a Cavalier, a Presbyterian, an 
Independent ; for the Republic, for a Protector, for every- 
thing, for nothing, but only that one thing money. 3 It 

1 Nathaniel Fiennes, second son of Viscount Saye and Sele, who in 
the beginning of the Civil War had surrendered Bristol to the King's 
army without making any defence, and had been condemned to death 
by a court-martial, but pardoned by the Earl of Essex, the general-in- 
chief. He was now one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, and 
one of Richard Cromwell's chief advisers. His father and a younger 
brother John were also named by Cromwell members of his House of 
Lords : the father did not sit. 

2 I do not know which of Cromwell's Lords is here referred to. 

3 This is generally supposed to refer to Lord Broghill, after the 
Restoration created Earl of Orrery. 

e 2 



Ixviii APPENDIX IV. 1659. 

were endless, Sir, to run through them all ; to tell you of the 
lordships of seventeen pounds a year land of inheritance ; of 
the farmer lordships, draymen lordships, 1 cobbler lordships, 2 
without one foot of land but what the blood of Englishmen 
has been the price of. These, Sir, are to be our rulers, these 
the judges of our lives and fortunes ; to these we are to stand 
bare whilst their pageant lordships deign to give us a confer- 
ence on their breeches. Mr. Speaker, we have already had too 
much experience how insupportable servants are when they 
become our masters. All kinds of slavery are miserable in 
the account of generous minds ; but that which comes accom- 
panied with scorn and contempt stirs up every man's indigna- 
tion, and is endured by none whom nature does not intend 
for slaves, as well as fortune. 

I say not this, Mr. Speaker, to revile any man with his 
meanness; for I never thought either the malignity or in- 
dulgence of fortune to be, with wise or just men, the grounds 
either of their good or ill opinion. Mr. Speaker, I blame not 
in these men the faults of their fortune any otherwise than as 
they make them their own : I object to you their poverty, 
because it is accompanied with ambition ; I remind you of 
their quality, because they themselves forget it : it is not the 
men I am angry with, but their Lordships. Sir, though we 
easily grant poverty and necessity to be no faults, yet we 
must allow them to be great impediments in the way of 
honour, and such as nothing but extraordinary merit and 
virtue can remove. The Scripture reckons it amongst Jero- 
boam's great faults, "that he made priests of the meanest 
of the people : " and sure it was none of the virtues of our 
Jeroboam, who hath set up his calves too, and would have 
our tribes come up and worship them, that he observed the 
same method in making lords. 

One of the few requests the Portuguese made to Philip 
the Second, King of Spain, when he got that kingdom, as 
his late Highness did this, by an army, was, that he would 
not make nobility contemptible by advancing such to that 
degree whose quality or virtue could be noways thought to 
deserve it. Nor have we formerly been less apprehensive of 
such inconveniences ourselves. It was, in Richard the First's 



1 This refers to Colonel Pride, who had been a brewer, and, it is said, 
had begun as a drayman. 

8 Colonel Hewson had been a shoemaker. 



1659. SPEECH AGAINST THE OTHER HOUSE. Ixix 

time, one of the Bishop of Ely's accusations, that castles and 
forts of great trust he did "obscuris et ignotis hominibus 
tradere' ? put in the hands of obscure and unknown men. 
But we, Mr. Speaker, to such a kind of men are delivering 
up the power of our laws, and, in that, the power of all. 

In the 17th of Edward the Fourth, there passed an Act of 
Parliament for degrading John Nevil, Marquis Montague 
and Duke of Bedford : the reason expressed in the Act, 
because he had not a revenue sufficient for the maintaining of 
that dignity j to which was added, when men of mean birth 
are called to high estate, and no livelihood to support it, it 
induceth briberies and extortions, and all kinds of injustice 
that are followed by gain. And in the parliament of M of 
Charles, the peers, in a petition against Scottish and Irish 
titles, told the King, that it was a novelty without precedent 
that men should possess honours where they possessed nothing 
else, and that they should have a vote in parliament where 
they have not a foot of land. But if it had been added, or 
have no land but what is the purchase of their villanies, 
against how many of our new peers would this have been an 
important objection ! To conclude : it has been a very just 
and reasonable care among all nations, not to render that 
despised and contemptible to the people which is designed 
for their reverence and awe ; and, Sir, an empty title, without 
quality or virtue, never procured any man this, any more than 
the image in the fable made the ass adored that carried it. 

After their quality, give me leave to speak a word or two 
of their qualifications; which certainly ought, in reason, to 
carry some proportion with the employment they design 
themselves. The House of Lords are the King's great heredi- 
tary Council ; they are the highest court of judicature; they 
have their part in judging and determining of the reasons for 
making new laws and abrogating old : from amongst them 
we take our great officers of State: they are commonly our 
generals at land, and our admirals at sea. In conclusion, 
they are both of the essence and constitution of our old 
government ; and have, besides, the greatest and noblest share 
in the administration. ISTow, certainly, Sir, to judge accord- 
ing to the dictates of reason, one would imagine some small 
faculties and endowments to be necessary for discharging 
such a calling ; and those such as are not usually acquired in 
shops and warehouses, nor found by following the plough : 
and what other academies most of their lordships have been 



Ixx APPENDIX IV. 1659. 

bred in but their shops, what other arts they have been 
versed in but those which more required good arms and good 
shoulders than good heads, I think we are yet to be informed. 
Sir, we commit not the education of our children to ignorant 
and illiterate masters ; nay, we trust not our horses to unskil- 
ful grooms. I beseech you, let us think it belongs to us to 
have some care into whose hands we commit the management 
of the commonwealth ; and if we cannot have persons of 
birth and fortune to be our rulers, to whose quality we would 
willingly submit, I beseech you, Sir, for our credit and 
safety's sake, let us seek men at least of parts and education, 
to whose abilities we may have some reason to give way. If 
a patient dies under a physician's hand, the law esteems that 
not a felony, but a misfortune, in the physician : but it has 
been held by some, if one who is no physician undertakes the 
management of a cure, and the party miscarries, the law 
makes the empiric a felon ; and sure, in all men's opinion, 
the patient a fool. To conclude, Sir, for great men to govern 
is ordinary ; for able men it is natural : knaves many times 
come to it by force and necessity, and fools sometimes by 
chance ; but universal choice and election of fools and knaves 
for government was never yet made by any who were not 
themselves like those they chose. 

But methinks, Mr. Speaker, I see ready to rise after me 
some gentlemen that shall tell you the good services their 
new lordships have done the commonwealth ; that shall extol 
their valour, their godliness, their fidelity to the cause. The 
Scripture, too, no doubt, as it is to all purposes, shall be 
brought in to argue for them ; and we shall hear of " the 
wisdom of the poor man that saved the city ; " of the " not 
many wise, not many mighty ; " attributes that I can no way 
deny to be due to their lordships. Mr. Speaker, I shall be as 
forward as any man to declare their services, and acknowledge 
them ; though I might tell you that the same honour is not 
purchased by the blood of an enemy and of a citizen ; that 
for victories in civil wars, till our armies marched through 
the city, I have not read that the conquerors have been so 
void of shame as to triumph. Caesar, not much more indul- 
gent to his country than our late Protector, did not so much 
as write public letters of his victory at Pharsalia ; much less 
had he days of thanksgiving to his gods, and anniversary 
feasts, for having been a prosperous rebel. 

But, Sir, I leave this argument ; and, to be as good as my 



1659. SPEECH AGAINST THE OTHEK HOUSE. Ixxi 

word, come to put you in mind of some of their services, and the 
obligations you owe them for the same. To speak nothing of one 
of my Lords Commissioners' valour at Bristol, nor of another 
noble lord's brave adventure at the Bear-garden, 1 I must tell 
you, Sir, that most of them have had the courage to do things 
which, I may boldly say, few other Christians durst so have 
adventured their souls to have attempted : they have not 
only subdued their enemies, but their masters that raised and 
maintained them ; they have not only conquered Scotland 
and Ireland, but rebellious England too, and there suppressed 
a malignant party of magistrates and laws ; and, that nothing 
should be wanting to make them indeed complete conquerors, 
without the help of philosophy they have even conquered 
themselves. All shame they have subdued as perfectly as 
all justice ; the oaths they have taken they have as easily 
digested as their old General could himself; public covenants 
and engagements they have trampled under foot. In conclu- 
sion, so entire a victory they have over themselves, that their 
consciences are as much their servants, Mr. Speaker, as we 
are. But give me leave to conclude with that which is more 
admirable than all this, and shows the confidence they have 
of themselves and us : after having many times trampled on 
the authority of the House of Commons, and no less than five 
times dissolved them, they hope, for those good services to 
the House of Commons, to be made a House of Lords. 

I have been over long, Sir, for which I crave your pardon ; 
therefore, in a word, I beseech you let us think it our duty 
to have a care of two things : first, that villanies be not 
encouraged with the rewards of virtue; secondly, that the 
authority and majesty of the government of this nation be 
not defiled, and exposed to contempt, by committing so con- 
siderable a part of it to persons of as mean quality as parts. 
The Thebans did not admit merchants into government till 
they had left their traffic ten years : sure it would have been 
long before cobblers and draymen would have been allowed. 

1 The person here referred to is Colonel Pride, who is accused of 
having cruelly killed a number of bears, in suppressing bear-baiting, 
as Sheriff of Surrey. See a lampoon printed in the Harleian Miscellany 
vol. iii. p. 136: "The Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomas (Lord, 
alias Colonel) Pride, being touched in conscience for his inhuman 
murder of the Bears in the Bear-garden when he was High Sheriff of 
Surrey, taken in shorthand by T. S., late clerk in his Lordship's 
Brewhoiise." 



Ixxii APPENDIX IV. 1659. 

Sir, if the wisdom of this House shall think we have been 
hitherto like the prodigal; and that now, when our necessities 
persuade us, i.e. that we are almost brought to herd it with 
swine, it is time to think of a return: let us without more 
ado, without this motley mixture, even take our rulers as at 
the first, so that we can but be reasonably secured to avoid 
our counsellors as at the beginning 

Give me leave, Sir, to release your patience with a short 
story. Livy tells us there was a state in Italy, an aristocracy, 
where the nobility stretched the prerogative too high, and 
presumed too much on the people's liberty and patience ; 
whereupon the discontents were so general and so great, 
that they apparently tended to a dissolution of government, 
and the turning of all things into anarchy and confusion. 
At the same time, besides these distempers at home, there 
was a potent enemy ready to fall on them from abroad, that 
had been an over-match for them when united; but now, in 
these disorders, was like to find them a very ready and eusy 
prey. A wise man, Sir, in the city, who did not all approve 
of the insolence of the nobility, and as little liked popular 
tumults, thought of this stratagem, to cozen his country into 
safety. Upon a pretence of counsel, he procured the nobility 
to meet all together; which when they had done, he found 
means to lock the doors upon them, went away himself, and 
took the keys ; then immediately summoned the people; told 
them, by a contrivance of his he had taken all the nobility in 
a trap ; that now was the time to be revenged on them for 
their insolences ; that, therefore, they should immediately go 
along with him and despatch them. Sir, the officers of our 
army, after a fast, could not be more ready for the villany 
than these people were ; and accordingly they made as much 
haste to the slaughter as their Lord Protector could desire. 
But, Sir, this wise man I told you of was their Lord Protector 
indeed. As soon as he had brought the people where the 
parliament was sitting, and when they expected but the word 
to fall to the butchery; "Gentlemen," says he, ''though I 
would not care how soon this work of reformation were over, 
yet, in this ship of the commonwealth, we must not throw 
the steersmen overboard till we have provided others for the 
helm. Let us consider, before we take these men away, in 
what other hands we may securely trust our liberty and the 
management of the commonwealth/' And so he advised 
them, before the putting down of the former, to bethink 



1659. SPEECH AGAINST THE OTHER HOUSE. Ixxiii 

themselves of constituting another House. He began and 
nominated one, a man highly cried up in the popular faction, 
a confiding man, one of much zeal, little sense, and 110 quality; 
you may suppose him, Sir, a zealous cobbler. The people, in 
conclusion, murmured at this, and were loth their fellow 
mutineer, for no other virtue but mutinying, should come to 
be advanced to be their master ; and by their looks and mur- 
murs sufficiently expressed the discontent they took at such 
a motion. Then he nominated another, as mean a mechanic 
as the former ; you may imagine him, Sir, a bustling rude 
drayman, or the like : he was no sooner named but some 
burst out a laughing, others grew angry and railed at him, 
and all detested and scorned him. Upon this a third was 
named for a lordship, one of the same batch, and every way 
qualified to sit with the other two. The people then fell 
into a confused laugh arid noise, and inquired, if such were 
lords, who, by all the gods ! would be content to be com- 
moners 1 Sir, let me be bold, by the good leave of the other 
House and yours, to ask the same question. But to conclude 
this story, and with it the other House, when this wise man 
I told you of perceived they were now sensible of the incon- 
venience and mischief they were running into, and saw that 
the pulling down their rulers would prove in the end but 
the setting up their servants, he thought them then prepared to 
hear reason, and told them, "You see," says he, "that bad as 
this government is, we cannot, for anything I see, agree upon 
a better : what then if, after this fright we have put our 
nobility in, and the demonstration we have given them of 
our power, we try them once more whether they will mend, 
and for the future behave themselves with more moderation? " 
The people were so wise as to comply with that proposition, 
and to think it easier to mend their rulers than to make new. 
And I wish, Mr. Speaker, we may be so wise as to think 
so too. 



APPENDIX V. 



A Letter from Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Thomas Scot, 
Josias Berners, and John Weaver, Esquires, delivered to 
the Lord Fleetwood, owning their late actions, in endeavour- 
ing to secure the Tower of London for the better service of 
the City and Commonwealth, December 16, 1659. 1 

SIR, 

Understanding you have received some disturbance of 
late, in examining divers persons about a design to surprise 
the Tower ; to save you further trouble, we do hereby freely 
own our utmost and hearty endeavours to have put that place 
into more faithful and confiding hands, and that by authority 
from the Council of State, who at the passing of that resolve 
had the sole legal power from the Parliament of ordering, 
directing, and disposing of all the garrisons and forces of this 
Commonwealth, both by sea and land ; an action so honest 
and honourable as would not only have given check to the 
exorbitances at Wallingford House and Whitehall, but was 

1 This letter is printed in the Thurloe collection of State Papers, vol. 
vii. p. 797, and in the Somers Tracts, vol. ri. p. 542. Ten days after the 
date of this letter, on December 26, the Committee of Safety was 
overthrown, Fleetwood and Lambert discomfited, and the Rump 
Parliament restored ; Sir A. A. Cooper, Scot, Berners, and Weaver were 
then entrusted with the temporary command of the Tower, which 
they had secured. Whitelocke, under date of December 24, records : 
"The Speaker with Cooper, Reynolds, Weaver, and Berners went to 
the Lord Mayor and discoursed with him and the Sheriffs, touching 
the Parliament's meeting again speedily, and found them to like well 
of it; from him they went to the Tower and secured that." (Me- 
morials, p. 691.) The letter in the text describes an unsuccessful 
attempt made before December 16. 



1659. LETTER TO FLEETWOOD. Ixxv 

almost necessary to the preserving the peace and safety of this 
great city, by giving advantage to them to put themselves into 
a regular posture of defence, and such an encouragement to 
the sober party among them as would through God's mercy 
have utterly defeated the designs of the common enemy. Sir, 
let us tell you this design was not so vain but that we had by 
the blessing of God possessed that place some weeks since, 
had we not been frustrated by our mistake in the courage and 
fidelity of a person, whose opportunity, interest, and duty, if 
not principles, gave us better hopes. 1 But in this age we are 
to complain and wonder at nothing ; yet we cannot but highly 
resent the confidence of sending for one of our number by 
a party of soldiers, as if red coats and muskets were a non 
obstante to all laws and public privilege, Not as if that 
person or any of us are afraid or ashamed to own the enter- 
prise before any that have a lawful authority to demand an 
account of it ; which we are sure no single person, junto, or 
pack of men at Whitehall or Wallingford House have a pre- 
tence to. Sir, we have the witness with our own spirits, that 
we have and do cordially wish the preservation and good of 
you and your family : but if the Lord hath said, " You shall 
not hearken, but be hardened in your way," we must acquiesce 
in His providence, and with sorrow look upon that ruin which 
is flowing in upon you, as upon one in whom we thought we 
had seen some good. 

Sir, consider that in the day of trouble, which is certainly 
coming upon you, what support you will have to your spirit, 
when you shall be assaulted with the shame you have brought 
upon God's people ; with the breach of faith to the Parliament 



1 Compare Ludlow's Memoirs, ii. 763: "The Parliament party was 
not wanting to promote their interest, and to that end formed a design 
to get the Tower into their hands. Colonel Fitz, who was then Lieu- 
tenant of the place, had consented that Colonel Okey with three 
hundred men should lie dispersed about the town, prepared for the 
enterprise, promising that on a certain day he would cause the gates to 
be opened early in the morning, to let him pass in his coach ; which 
opportunity Colonel Okey with his men taking, might easily seize the 
guards and possess himself of the place ; and their attempt might have 
succeeded, had it not, by I know not what accident, been discovered 
to the Lord Mayor, who informed the army of it the night before it 
was to be put in execution. Whereupon Colonel Desborow with some 
forces was sent thither, who changed the guards, seized the Lieutenant 
of the Tower, and left Colonel Miller to command there till further 
order." 



IxxVi APPENDIX V. 1659. 

from whom you received your commission ; with, the ruin you 
have brought upon your native country (unless the Lord by 
His own Almighty arm prevent it) ; and with the misery you 
have led the poor soldiers into, who, instead of being the 
instruments of renewing and settling the peace and liberty of 
these nations, enjoying the honour and quiet thereof, their 
arrears fully paid, future pay and advancement settled and 
established in order and with the blessing of their countrymen, 
are now become the instruments of nine men's ambition, 1 
have made the whole nation their enemies, and are exposed 
again to the hardship and hazard of a new unnatural war, 
without prospect of our hoping that the issue of these affairs 
can leave their new masters so rich as to satisfy their arrears, 
or so secure as to trust preferments in any hands, but such 
whose fanatic principles or personal relations make them 
irreconcilable to the public interest. But God, we trust, has 
raised up a deliverer, having by admirable providence put an 
opportunity and power into the hands of General Monck, the 
ablest and most experienced commander of these nations ; 
whom he hath also spirited to stand firm for the interest of 
this Commonwealth, as well against a rebellious party of our 
own forces, as the designs of the common enemy, notwith- 
standing all causeless and false aspersions maliciously cast 
upon him ; being warranted in his present actings by especial 
commission and authority from the Council of State, whereas 
yours is that only of the sword. Our prayers and earnest 
request for you and all honest men amongst you are that you 
may timely join with him, and partake of the honour and 
blessing of his actions, and your true repentance shall be a 
greater rejoicing than your desertion was trouble ; when 
Providence shall have separated the precious from the vile, 
and not have suffered our scum to boil in, but shall have 
placed the sword and civil authority in the hands of men of 
the best and soberest principles. Sir, be not so far deceived 
as to think sober men see not through the mask of this 
strange new parliament, whose liberty and safety either of 
meeting or debating must be at your pleasure, who, having 
taken upon you to be conservator of the cause, will only make 



1 The nine men here referred to are probably the nine officers who 
subscribed the circular letter which, produced by Colonel Okey in the 
Parliament, caused the commotion which brought on Lambert and 
Fleetwood's revolution of October. See p. 189 of the " Life." 



1659. LETTER TO FLEETWOOD. Ixxvii 

use of them as your assessors and tax-gatherers ; the present 
interrupted parliament being the sole lawful authority, and 
which can only be hoped to make the sword subservient to 
the civil interest, and settle the government in the hands of 
the people by successive and free parliaments unlawfully 
denied to them. Sir, we have in sincerity given you our 
sense, and shall leave you to Him. that disposes of all men's 
hearts, and remain, 

Your servants, 
So far as you shall be found to serve the public, 

AN. ASHLEY COOPER. 
THO. SCOT. 
Jos. EERNERS. 
JOHN WEAVER. 



APPENDIX VI. 



A Proviso for the Bill of Uniformity, presented to the House of 
Peers from the King by the Lord Chancellor, March 17, 
1662. 1 

PROVIDED always that, notwithstanding anything in this Act 
in regard of the generous offers and promises made by His 
Majesty before his happy restoration of liberty to tender 
consciences, the intention whereof must be best known to 
His Majesty, as likewise the several services of those who 
contributed thereunto, for all whom His Majesty hath in 
his princely heart as gracious a desire of indulgence as may 
consist with the good and peace of the kingdom, and would 
not have a greater severity exercised towards them than what 
is necessary for the public benefit and welfare thereof, it be 
enacted. And be it therefore enacted, that it shall and may 
be lawful for the King's Majesty by any writing and in such 
manner as to his wisdom shall seem fit, so far to dispense with 
any such Minister as upon the nine-and-twentieth day of May, 
1660, was and at prt-sent is seised of any benefice or ecclesi- 
astical promotion, and of whose merit towards His Majesty, 
and of whose peaceable and pious disposition, His Majesty 
shall be sufficiently informed and satisfied, that no such 
Minister shall be deprived or lose his benefice or other 
ecclesiastical promotion for not wearing the surplice, or for 

1 This Proviso is here printed for the first time from the Rolls of 
the House of Lords. Though presented by Clarendon, the Lord 
Chancellor, from the King, it was rejected by the House of Lords. See 
Chapter IX. of " Life ; " and Lords' Journals, March 17, 18, arid 19 ; 
Rawdon Papers, pp. 141 143, and Pepys's Diary, March 21, 1662. 



1663. LOED KOBERTS'S DISPENSING BILL. Ixxix 

not signing with the sign of the cross in baptism : so as he 
permit and bear the charge of some other licensed minister 
to perform that office towards such children whose parents 
desire the same, and so as such Ministers shall not deprave 
the Liturgy, rites, or ceremonies established in the Church 
of England, or any person for using them, by preaching, 
writing, speaking, or otherwise, upon pain of forfeiting the 
benefit of the dispensation. 

And be it further enacted, that such dispensations as afore- 
said being granted by His Majesty shall be a sufficient 
exemption from such deprivation in the cases aforesaid. 
Always understood, that this indulgence be not thought or 
interpreted to be an argument of His Majesty's indifferency 
in the use of those ceremonies when enjoined, though in- 
different in their own nature, but of his compassion towards 
the weakness of the Dissenters, which he hopes will in 
time prevail with them for a full submission to the Church 
and to the example of the rest of their brethren. 



A Bill, entitled "An Act concerning His Majesty's power in 
Ecclesiastical Affairs" presented to the House of Peers, 
February 23, 1663, ly Lord Roberts, Lord Privy Seal. 1 

WHEREAS divers of His Majesty's subjects through error of 
judgment and misguided consciences (whereunto the licen- 
tiousness of these late unhappy times have much contributed) 
do not conform themselves to the order of divine worship 
and service established by law; and although His Majesty 
and both Houses of Parliament are fully satisfied that those 
scruples of conscience from whence this non-conformity 
ariseth are ill-grounded, and that the government of the 
Church with the service thereof, as now established, is the 
best that is anywhere extant, and most effectual to the pre- 
servation of the Protestant religion : yet, hoping that 
clemency and indulgence may in time wear out those preju- 
dices and reduce the Dissenters to the unity of the Church ; 
and considering that this indulgence, how necessary soever, 

1 This Bill, which caused considerable public excitement in 1663, is 
now printed for the first time from the Rolls of the House of Lords. 
See Chapter IX. of " Life ; " also Lords' Journals, February 23, 25, 27, 
28, March 5, 6, 12, 13. The bill was dropped in committee. 



Ixxx APPENDIX VI. 

cannot be dispensed by any certain rule, but must vary 
according to the circumstances of time, and the temper and 
principles of those to whom it is to be granted ; and His 
Majesty being the best judge when and to whom this indul- 
gence is to be dispensed, or as may be most consistent with 
the public peace, and without just cause of offence to others; 
and to the end His Majesty may be enabled to exercise it 
with universal satisfaction : Be it enacted by the King's most 
excellent Majesty by advice and with the consent of the 
Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present 
Parliament assembled and by the authority thereof, that the 
King's Majesty may by letters patent under the Great Seal, or 
by such other ways as to His Majesty shall seem meet, 
dispense with one act or law made the last session of this 
parliament, entitled "An Act for the Uniformity of Public 
Prayer, and Administration of Sacraments and other Rites and 
Ceremonies, and for establishing the Form of Making, Ordain- 
ing, and Consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in the 
Church of England," and with any other laws or statutes con- 
cerning the same or requiring oaths or subscriptions, or which 
do enjoin conformity to the order, discipline, and worship 
established in this Church, and the penalties in the said laivs 
imposed or any of them, 1 and may grant licences to such of 
His Majesty's subjects of the Protestant religion, of whose 
inoffensive and peaceable disposition His Majesty shall be 
persuaded, to enjoy the use and exercise of their religion 
and worship, though differing from the public rule, the said 
laws and statutes, or any disabilities, incapacities, or penal- 
ties in them or any of them contained, or any matter or thing 
to the contrary thereof notwithstanding. Provided always, 
and be it enacted, that no such indulgence, licence, or dis- 
pensation hereby to be granted shall extend or be construed to 
extend to the tolerating or permitting the use or exercise of the 
Popish or Roman Catholic religion in this kingdom, nor to en- 
able any person or persons to hold or exercise any place or office 
of public trust within this kingdom, who, at the beginning of 
this present Parliament, were by the laws and statutes of 

1 On March 5, the House of Lords adopted a recommendation of 
the Committee to omit the words which are printed in italics, apply- 
ing to other acts besides the Act of Uniformity. A list of such acts 
was brought in to the House on that day by the Attorney- General in 
pursuance of a previous order : the list, Avhich is curious, and is not 
professed to be complete, is printed in the Lords' Journals of March 5. 



1663. LOED ROBERTS'S DISPENSING BILL. Ixxxi 

this realm disenabled thereunto ; nor to exempt "any person 
or persons from such penalties as are by law to'be inflicted 
upon such as shall publish or preach anything to the deprava- 
tion or derogation of the Book of Common Prayer or the 
government, order, and ceremonies of the Church established 
by law. Provided also, and be it enacted, that no such licence 
or dispensation shall extend to make any priest or minister 
capable of any ecclesiastical living or benefice with care, who 
shall not before the Archbishop of the Province or Bishop of 
the Diocese where he lives, make such subscription to the 
Articles of Religion as is enjoined by the statute of 13 Eliz., 
made for reformation of disorders in the Church ; nor shall 
extend or be construed to extend to dispense with the Book 
of Common Prayer, but that the said book shall be con- 
stantly read in all the cathedral and collegiate churches, and 
in all the parish churches and public chapels. 



END OF VOL. I. 



LONDON : 

R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
BREAD STREET HILL. 



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Christie, William Dougal 

A life of Anthony Ashley 
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