Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (26 February 1671 – 16 February 1713) was an English Whig politician, philosopher and writer.
He was born at Exeter House in London, the son and first child of the future Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland. Letters sent to his parents reveal emotional manipulation attempted by his mother in refusing to see her son unless he cut off all ties to his sickly and secluded father.
At the age of three Ashley-Cooper was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfather. John Locke, as medical attendant to the Ashley household, was entrusted with the supervision of his education. It was conducted according to the principles of Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and the method of teaching Latin and Greek conversationally was pursued by his instructress, Elizabeth Birch.
At the age of eleven, it is said, Ashley could read both languages with ease. Birch had moved to Clapham and Ashley spent some years there with her. In 1683, after the death of the first Earl, his father sent Lord Ashley, as he now was by courtesy, to Winchester College. Under a Scottish tutor, Daniel Denoune, he began a continental tour with two older companions, Sir John Cropley, 2nd Baronet, and Thomas Sclater Bacon.
After the Glorious Revolution, Lord Ashley returned to England in 1689. It took five years, but he entered public life, as a parliamentary candidate for the borough of Poole, and was returned on 21 May 1695. He spoke for the Bill for Regulating Trials in Cases of Treason, one provision of which was that a person indicted for treason or misprision of treason should be allowed the assistance of counsel.
Although a Whig, Ashley was not partisan. His poor health forced him to retire from parliament at the dissolution of July 1698. He suffered from asthma. The following year, to escape the London environment, he purchased a property in Little Chelsea, adding a 50-foot extension to the existing building to house his bedchamber and Library, and planting fruit trees and vines. He sold the property to Narcissus Luttrell in 1710.
He was Lord Proprietor of the English colony of Carolina in North America and the Bahamas during this time.
Lord Ashley moved to the Netherlands. Away for over a year, Ashley returned to England, and shortly succeeded his father as Earl of Shaftesbury. He took an active part, on the Whig side in the House of Lords, in the January 1701 English general election, and again, with more success, in the November 1701 English general election.
After the first few weeks of Anne's reign, Shaftesbury, who had been deprived of the vice-admiralty of Dorset, returned to private life. In August 1703, he again settled in the Netherlands. At Rotterdam he lived, he says in a letter to his steward Wheelock, at the rate of less than £200 a year, and yet had much to dispose of and spend beyond convenient living.
Shaftesbury returned to England in August 1704, he landed at Aldeburgh, Suffolk having escaped a dangerous storm during his voyage. He had symptoms of consumption, and gradually became an invalid. He continued to take an interest in politics, both home and foreign, and supported England's participation in the War of the Spanish Succession.
The declining state of Shaftesbury's health rendered it necessary for him to seek a warmer climate and in July 1711 he set out for Italy. He settled at Naples in November, and lived there for more than a year.
Shaftesbury died at Chiaia in the Kingdom of Naples, on 15 February 1713 (N.S.) His body was brought back to England and buried at Wimborne St Giles, the family seat in Dorset.
John Toland was an early associate, but Shaftesbury after some time found him a troublesome ally. Toland published a draft of the Inquiry concerning Virtue, without permission. Shaftesbury may have exaggerated its faults, but the relationship cooled. Toland edited 14 letters from Shaftesbury to Robert Molesworth, published in Toland in 1721. Molesworth had been a good friend from the 1690s and he regarded Molesworth as a mentor. Other friends among English Whigs were Charles Davenant, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, Walter Moyle, William Stephens and John Trenchard.
From Locke's circle in England, Shaftesbury knew Edward Clarke, Damaris Masham and Walter Yonge. In the Netherlands in the late 1690s, he got to know Locke's contact Benjamin Furly. Through Furly he had introductions to become acquainted with Pierre Bayle, Jean Leclerc and Philipp van Limborch. Bayle introduced him to Pierre Des Maizeaux. Letters from Shaftesbury to Benjamin Furly, his two sons, and his clerk Harry Wilkinson, were included in a volume entitled Original Letters of Locke, Sidney and Shaftesbury, published by Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster (1830, and in enlarged form, 1847).
Shaftesbury was a patron of Michael Ainsworth, a young Dorset man of Wimborne St Giles, maintained by Shaftesbury at University College, Oxford. The Letters to a Young Man at the University (1716) were addressed to Ainsworth. Others he supported included Pierre Coste and Paul Crellius.
Most of the works for which Shaftesbury is known were completed in the period 1705 to 1710. He collected a number of those and other works in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (first edition 1711, anonymous, 3 vols.). His philosophical work was limited to ethics, religion, and aesthetics where he highlighted the concept of the sublime as an aesthetic quality. Basil Willey wrote "his writings, though suave and polished, lack distinction of style".
Contents of the Characteristicks
This listing refers to the first edition. The later editions saw changes. The Letter on Design was first published in the edition of the Characteristicks issued in 1732.