Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (22 July 1621-21 January 1683) was an English statesman and the founder of the Whig party.
Biography[]
Anthony Ashley Cooper was born in Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, England in 1621, the eldest son of Sir John Cooper, 1st Baronet. He graduated from Oxford in 1637 before becoming MP for Tewkesbury in 1640. During the English Civil War, he raised a regiment of foot and a troop of horse for King Charles I of England, and he was made High Sheriff of Dorset. In 1644, however, he defected to the Parliamentarians due to his belief that King Charles was coming under Catholic influences, and he commanded the Parliamentary forces in Dorset from 1644 to 1645. He later supported the Presbyterians against the Puritans and opposed Charles I's execution, but he agreed to serve as a justice of the peace and High Sheriff of Wiltshire under Oliver Cromwell's administration. In 1653, the Rump Parliament pardoned him for his time as a Royalist, enabling him to serve in the Barebone's Parliament as MP for Wiltshire from 1653.
Cooper served on the Council of State under the Protectorate, and he eventually joined the republican faction of Protectorate politics. Amid the Restoration in 1660, Cooper returned to the Royalist cause, favoring a conditional restoration. He became a member of King Charles II of England's Privy Council in 1660 after being pardoned under the Declaration of Breda, and he urged leniency for the Parliamentarians, arguing that only regicides should be exempted from the general pardon. He was made Baron Ashley in 1661 and Chancellor of the Exchequer that same year, and he supported the toleration of Protestant dissenters. Duriing the mid-1660s, he increasingly came into favor with Charles, but he supported a ban on the importation of Irish cattle ot England, causing hm to break with the court. He also appointed John Locke as his personal secretary, and he was passed over as First Lord of the Treasury in 1667. He became a prominent member of the "Cabal Ministry" in opposition to the Cavalier government, and, in 1669, he supported an English union with Scotland.
In 1672, Cooper was created Earl of Shaftesbury, and, in 1679, he sponsored the Exclusion Bill to prevent the Catholic James, Duke of York from succeeding to the throne. Two years of political struggle ensued, and his bill ultimately ended in defeat. In 1681, the Tories had Lord Shaftesbury arrested for high treason, but they dropped their prosecution several months later. Lord Shaftesbury went into exile in Amsterdam in 1682, fearing re-arrest, and he died there in 1683.