Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury was born on July 22, 1621. See ranking, bio blurb, and everyone else born that day.
About Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683), was an English statesman. He held senior political office under both the Commonwealth of England and Charles II, serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1661 to 1672 and Lord Chancellor from 1672 to 1673. During the Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681), Shaftesbury headed the movement to bar the Catholic heir, James II, from the royal succession, which is often seen as the origin of the Whig party. He was the first patron of John Locke, who, when they met was a quiet Oxford don and practising physician; as part of Shaftesbury's household and retinue for 15 years, Locke became a major political philosopher. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Shaftesbury initially supported the Royalists, before joining the Parliamentarians in 1644. He served on the English Council of State under the English Commonwealth, although he opposed Oliver Cromwell's attempt to rule without Parliament during the Rule of the Major-Generals (1655–1657). He backed the Stuart Restoration in May 1660, and was raised to the peerage of England as Lord Ashley by Charles II. After the political fall in 1667 of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Lord Ashley became one of five members of the so-called Cabal ministry and was created Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672. In 1673, it became widely known that Charles's brother and heir James had secretly converted to Catholicism. As with many English Protestants of the period, Shaftesbury saw Catholicism as closely linked to "arbitrary government", and thus the prospect of a Catholic monarch as a threat to the rule of Parliament. His sponsorship of the Exclusion Bill in 1679 led to two years of political struggle, but ultimately ended in defeat. During the subsequent Tory reaction in 1681, Shaftesbury was arrested for high treason, a prosecution dropped several months later. Fearing re-arrest and execution, which was the fate of other opponents of the King, in 1682 he went into exile in Amsterdam, where he died in January 1683.