Ancestral Trails 2016 » Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER (1671-1713)

Personal data Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER 

• He was born on February 26, 1671 in Exeter House, Strand, Middlesex.
• He was baptized on March 7, 1671 in St Clement Danes, The Strand, Westminster, Middlesex.
• Title: 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
• He died on February 4, 1713 in Naples, Napoli, Campania, Italy, he was 41 years old.

  Died from Asthma

• He is buried June 1713 in Wimborne St Giles, Dorset.
• A child of Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER and Dorothy MANNERS

Household of Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER

He is married to Jane EWER.

They got married in the year 1709, he was 37 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER  1711-1771 

Notes about Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury Bt (26 February 1671 - 16 February 1713) was an English politician, philosopher and writer. He was born at Exeter House in London, the grandson of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury. His mother was Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland. According to a story told by the third earl, the marriage was negotiated by John Locke, who was a trusted friend of the first earl. The second Lord Shaftesbury has been traditionally, and possibly unfairly, regarded to have been both physically and mentally inadequate, although the letters sent by a youthful third earl to both his parents reveal a rather more complex picture, not least the emotional manipulation attempted by his mother in refusing to see her son unless he cut off all ties to his father.

At the age of three the future Third Earl was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfather. Locke, who in his capacity of medical attendant to the Ashley household, had already assisted at the child's birth, was now entrusted with the supervision of his education. This was conducted according to the principles enunciated in Locke's Thoughts concerning Education, and the method of teaching Latin and Greek conversationally was pursued with such success by his instructress, Elizabeth Birch, that 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 November 1683, some months after the death of the first Earl, his father sent him to Winchester College as a warden's boarder. Being shy and mocked because of his grandfather, he appears to have been miserable at school. He left Winchester in 1686 for a course of foreign travel. This brought him into contact with artistic and classical associations which would strongly influence his character and opinions. On his travels he apparently did not seek the conversation of other young English gentlemen on their travels, but rather that of their tutors, with whom he could converse on congenial topics.

In 1689, the year after the "Glorious Revolution", Lord Ashley returned to England, and for nearly five years he appears to have led a quiet and studious life. There can be no doubt that the greater part of his attention was directed to the perusal of classical authors and to the attempt to realize the true spirit of classical antiquity. He had no intention, however, of becoming a recluse. He became parliamentary candidate for the borough of Poole and was returned on 21 May 1695. He soon distinguished himself by a speech in support of 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 could not be depended on to give a party vote. He was always ready to support propositions from other quarters, if they appeared to him to promote the liberty of the subject and the independence of parliament. His poor health forced him to retire from parliament at the dissolution of July 1698. He suffered from asthma, a complaint which was aggravated by the London smoke. 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 'every kind of vine'. He sold the property to Narcissus Luttrell in 1710.

Lord Ashley now retired to the Netherlands, where he became acquainted with Jean Leclerc, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Furly, the English Quaker merchant, at whose house Locke had resided during his stay at Rotterdam, and probably Limborch and the rest of the literary circle of which Locke had been a cherished and honoured member nine or ten years before. To Lord Ashley this society was probably far more congenial than his surroundings in England. Unrestrained conversation on the topics which most interested him-philosophy, politics, morals, religion-was at this time to be had in the Netherlands with less danger and in greater abundance than in any other country in the world. To the period of this sojourn in the Netherlands must probably be referred the surreptitious impression or publication of an imperfect edition of the Inquiry concerning Virtue, from a rough draught, sketched when he was only twenty years of age. This liberty was taken, during his absence, by Toland.

After an absence of over twelve months, Ashley returned to England, and soon succeeded his father as Earl of Shaftesbury. He took an active part, on the Whig side, in the general election of 1700-1701, and again, with more success, in the autumn election of 1701. At this time, he built a folly structure on the Shaftesbury Estate, known as the Philosopher's Tower. This folly sits in a field, clearly visible from the B3078 just south of Cranborne. It is thought that he did a lot of his philosophising in this tower, and from this suggestion it has become known as the Philosopher's Tower.

It is said that William III showed his appreciation of Shaftesbury's services on this latter occasion by offering him a secretaryship of state, which, however, his worsening health compelled him to decline. Had the King's life continued, Shaftesbury's influence at court would probably have been considerable. After the first few weeks of Anne's reign, Shaftesbury, who had been deprived of the vice-admiralty of Dorset, returned to his retired life, but his letters to Furly show that he retained a keen interest in politics.[1]

In August 1703, he again settled in the Netherlands, in the air of which he seems, like Locke, to have had great faith. 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. He returned to England, much improved in health, in August 1704. Although he had received immediate benefit from his stay abroad, he was showing symptoms of consumption, and gradually became a confirmed invalid. His occupations were now almost exclusively literary, and from this time forward he was engaged in writing, completing or revising the treatises which were afterwards included in the Characteristics. He continued, however, to take a warm interest in politics, both home and foreign, and especially in the war against France, of which he was an enthusiastic supporter.

Shaftesbury was nearly forty before he married, and even then he appears to have taken this step at the urgent instigation of his friends, mainly to supply a successor to the title. The object of his choice (or rather of his second choice, for an earlier project of marriage had shortly before fallen through) was Jane Ewer, the daughter of a Hertfordshire gentleman. The marriage took place in the autumn of 1709, and on 9 February 1711, was born at his house at Reigate, in Surrey, his only child and heir, the fourth Earl, to whose manuscript accounts we are in great part indebted for the details of his father's life. The match appears to have been happy, though Shaftesbury had little sentiment on the subject of married life.

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. His principal occupation at this time must have consisted in preparing for the press a second edition of the Characteristics, which appeared in 1713, soon after his death. The copy, carefully corrected in his own handwriting, is preserved in the British Library. He was also engaged, during his stay at Naples, in writing the little treatise (afterwards included in the Characteristics) entitled A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, and the letter concerning Design. A little before his death he had also formed a scheme of writing a Discourse on the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Etching, &c., but when he died he had made but little progress with it. Medals, and pictures, and antiquities, he writes to Furly, are our chief entertainments here. His conversation was with men of art and science, the virtuosi of this place.[8]

The events preceding the Treaty of Utrecht, which he saw as paving the way for a base desertion of British allies, greatly troubled the last months of Shaftesbury's life. He did not, however, live to see the actual conclusion of the treaty (31 March 1713), as he died the month before, 4 February 1713. His body was brought back by sea to England and buried at Wimborne St Giles, the family seat in Dorsetshire. His only son, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury, succeeded him in his titles and republished Characteristics in 1732. His great-grandson was the famous philanthropist, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.
SOURCE: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Ashley-Cooper,_3rd_Earl_of_Shaftesbury

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Timeline Anthony ASHLEY-COOPER

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