Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

The Right Honourable The Earl of Shaftesbury PC FRS
Portrait by John Greenhill
Lord President of the Council
In office 21 April 1679 – 15 October 1679
Lord Lieutenant of Dorset
In office 1672–1674
President of the Board of Trade
In office 16 September 1672 – 1676
Lord Chancellor
In office 1672–1673
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 13 May 1661 – 22 November 1672
Governor of the Isle of Wight
In office 1660–1661
English Council of State
In office July 1653 – December 1654
Member of Parliament for Wiltshire
In office April 1653 – December 1660
High Sheriff of Wiltshire
In office 1647–1648
Personal details
Born	Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-07-22)22 July 1621 Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, England
Died	21 January 1683(1683-01-21) (aged 61) Amsterdam, Dutch Republic
Spouse(s)	Margaret Coventry (1639–1649, her death) Frances Cecil (1650–1654, her death) Margaret Spencer (1655–1683, his death)
Children	Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury (1652–1699)
Alma mater	Exeter College, Oxford
Military service
Rank	Colonel
Battles/wars	First English Civil War Capture of Wareham Capture of Abbotsbury Capture of Shaftesbury Relief of Taunton

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury PC, FRS, (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683) was an English statesman and peer. 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, 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 also a patron of the political philosopher John Locke, with whom Shaftesbury collaborated with in writing the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina in 1669.

During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Shaftesbury initially supported the Royalists, before switching to Parliamentarians in 1644. He served on the English Council of State under the Commonwealth, although he opposed Oliver Cromwell's attempt to rule without Parliament during the 1655 to 1657 Rule of the Major-Generals. 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 of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon in 1672, he was created as the Earl of Shaftesbury and became one of five members of the so-called Cabal Ministry. In 1673, it became widely known that Charles' heir James had secretly converted to Catholicism. Like 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.^[a]

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, in 1682 he went into exile in Amsterdam, where he died in January 1683.

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