sweet beyond what either easily can be believed or hath been observed in any one else.' Shaftesbury is equally frank, and our wonder at the exertions of which so feeble a frame was capable is greatly enhanced at finding that he was a constant sufferer from disease: At the hunting I was taken with one of my usual fits, which for divers years had hardly missed me one day, which lasted for an hour, betwixt eleven and one, sometimes beginning earlier and sometimes later betwixt those times. It was a violent pain of my left side, that I was often forced to lie down wherever I was; at last it forced a working in my stomach, and I put up some spoonfuls of clear water, and I was well, if I may call that so, when I was never without a dull aching pain of that side. Yet this never abated the cheerfulness of my temper; but, when in the greatest fits, I hated pitying and loved merry company, and, as they told me, was myself very pleasant when the drops fell from my face for pain; but then my servant near me always desired they would not take notice of it, but continue their diversions, which was more acceptable to me; and I had always the women and young people about me at those times, who thought me acceptable to them, and peradventure the more admired me because they saw the visible symptoms of my pain, which caused in all others so contrary an effect.'

This hunting took place near Tewkesbury, and the meet' was attended by the bailiffs and burgesses of that borough, who, being no hard riders,' dropped behind to keep the young baronet company; and a part of the discourse turned on 'an old knight in the field, a crafty, perverse, rich man, in power as being of the Queen's Privy Council, a bitter enemy of the town and Puritans as rather inclined to the Popish way.' At dinner, the same day, Shaftesbury was seated opposite Sir Harry Spiller, the old knight in question, who 'began with all the affronts and dislikes he could put on the bailiffs or their entertainment, which enraged and discontented them the more, it being in the face of the first gentlemen of the country, and when they resolved to appear in their best colours.' Here was one of the opportunities which Shaftesbury was ever ready and well qualified to seize. When the first course was near spent, and he continued his rough raillery, I thought it my duty, eating their bread, to defend their cause the best I could, which I did with so good success, not sparing the bitterest retorts I could make him, which his way in the world afforded matter for, that I had a perfect victory over him. This gained the townsmen's hearts, and their wives' to boot; I was made free of the town, and the next parliament, though absent, without a penny charge, was chosen Burgess by an unanimous vote.'

The parliament for which he was thus elected was the Short Parliament, which met on the 13th of April and was dissolved on the 5th of May, 1640. There is no trace of his having spoken in it. The next parliament, which met on the 3rd November, 1640, was the Long Parliament. He was elected for Downton, but the validity of the return was left undecided, and he did not take his seat under it till shortly before the Restoration (Jan. 7, 1661), when the Long Parliament had sunk into contempt and derision as the 'Rump.' He consequently took no part in its early debates and most memorable proceedings, and was left comparatively free from the heat of civil conflict to choose his side. He became of age on the 22nd July, 1642, a month before the royal standard was set up at Nottingham; and he has entered in his Diary that he was with the King at Nottingham and Derby, but only as a spectator, having not as yet adhered against the Parliament.' Early in 1643, he had begun to play a prominent part:

'1643. Sir Anthony left the ladies, and went borne, where he continued generally till, the into Dorsett to his house at St. Giles WimLord Marquess Hertford coming into the county, he was employed for the treating with the towns of Dorchester and Weymouth to surrender, the commission being directed to him, Napper, Hele, Ogle, which they effected, and Sir Anthony was by the gentlemen of the county desired to attend the King with their desires and the state of the county.'

According to Martyn, partly confirmed by Locke, he sought an interview with the King at Oxford, and offered to undertake the general pacification of the realm, if the required powers were vested in him, at which His Majesty naturally demurred, saying, 'You are a young man, and talk great things.' According to the same authority, all Shaftesbury's plans were spoilt by Prince Maurice, and on Cooper's complaining to the King, it is said that "the King shook his head with some concern, but said little." It is further stated that, after this first grand project was broken by Prince Maurice, Cooper started another, which was that the counties should all arm and endeavour to suppress both the contending armies; and that Cooper brought most of the sober and well-intentioned gentlemen of both sides throughout England into this plan.

Most of this is pronounced by Mr. Christie to be downright falsehood; and its inherent absurdity is self-evident. To propose that the counties should all arm and endeavour to suppress both the contending armies, is very like proposing that the contending parties should combine to put down party.

There

-

'Some months after this, Marquess Hertford's commission was taken away, yet Sir Anthony had a continuation of all his commands under the King's own hand, and he was made high sheriff of the county of Dorsett, and president of the council of war for those parts.

Notwithstanding, he now plainly seeing the King's aim destructive to religion and the state, and though he had an assurance of the barony of Astley Castle, which had formerly belonged to that family, and that but two days before he received a letter from the King's own hand of large promises and thanks for his service, yet in February he delivered up all his commissions to Ashburneham, and privately came away to the Parliament, leaving all his estate in the King's quarters, 5001. a year full stocked, two houses well furnished, to the mercy of the enemy, resolving to cast himself on God and to follow the dictates of a good conscience. Yet he never in the least betrayed the King's service, but while he was with him was always faithful.'

Such is Shaftesbury's account of his first change of sides, which Mr. Christie sees no reason to reject or qualify, considering that other persons of importance and unquestionable integrity left the King's party about the same time for similar reasons, and that the royal cause was just then in the ascendant in the western counties. Lord Campbell is less charitable, and follows Clarendon, who attributes the change to pique. Shaftesbury, he says, having been superseded in his governorship of Weymouth and otherwise crossed or slighted by Prince Maurice, he was thereby so much disobliged that ho quitted the King's party, and gave himself up, body and soul, to the service of the Parliament, with an implacable animosity against the royal cause.' It was not in Shaftesbury's nature to be lukewarm, and his zeal in every cause in which he chanced to be engaged is sign of his good faith. Far from distrusting his assertion, that he never in the least betrayed the King's service whilst he was in it, his assailants give him credit for a chastity of honour and a scrupulous delicacy which we commend to public men in general, and especially to diplomatists. When examined by the Committee of the House of Commons, before whom new converts of consequence were brought, he absolutely refused to make any discovery, either of persons or

whereby a man is obliged not to repeat anything to the speaker's prejudice, though no intimation may be given of a desire not to have it spoken again.'*

Historians differ as to the degree of cordiality with which Shaftesbury was received by the Parliament. That he was at first regarded with some suspicion or distrust, may be inferred from the circumstance, that he was unable to gain admittance to the House of Commons, and that some months, marked by active services, elapsed before he was allowed to compound by a moderate fine (5001.) for his estates. But he speedily made known his value both as a political partisan and a citizen soldier; for in less than a year (August, 1644) he received a commission to command a brigade of horse and foot, with the title of Field-MarshalGeneral; and with this force he besieged and reduced Wareham. In the October following being appointed Commander-in-Chief for the Parliament in Dorsetshire, he took the field with ten regiments of horse and foot, with which he stormed Abbotsbury, the fortified house of Sir John Strangways, garrisoned by a cavalier regiment, which, after a desperate defence, capitulated. An officer engaged in this affair writes, "When by no other means we could get it, we found a way by desperately flinging fired turffaggots into the windows, and the fight then grew so hot that our said Commanderin-Chief (who, to his perpetual renown, behaved most gallantly in this service) was forced to bring up his men within pistolshot of the house, and could hardly get them to stay and stand the brunt.' After clearing the surrounding country of royalist forces, he advanced to the relief of Taunton, where Blake was sorely pressed, and the siege was raised at his approach.

In mere wantonness of depreciation, and without the semblance of authority, Lord Campbell says that 'he (Shaftesbury) wrote a flaming account of the exploit to the Parliament, taking greater credit to himself than Cromwell in his despatch announcing his victory at Dunbar.' The actual report, in the

ix. p. 270. When examined by the Committee * Martyn, vol. i. p. 142. Locke's Works, vol. of the House of Commons appointed to inquire whether certain expressions had been used by Shiel at a dinner party, Sir Francis Burdett made answer, that his memory was so peculiarly constituted as to be unable to retain the slightest impression of anything that passed or was spoken at table.

shape of a letter to Lord Essex, has been printed from the Harleian MSS. by Mr. Christie, and turns out to be simple, plain, and businesslike, without one boastful or turgid expression. The military cominands which he subsequently held are cursorily mentioned in the Diary as unattended by results for want of men; and his military career terminated in 1645. Mr. Christie

thinks that he withdrew from the army along with the rest of the Presbyterian leaders, who were driven out by the Self-denying Ordinance' and the New Model.' Lord Campbell says captiously: 'He was suddenly satisfied with his military glory, and after this brilliant campaign never again appeared in the field: whether he retired from some affront, or mere caprice, is not certainly known.' Dryden's sneer at his brief military career is equally gratuitous :

'A martial hero, first with early care, Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war, A beardless chief, a rebel e'er a man, So young his hatred to his Prince began.' The winds first 'blew him' into the royal camp, and he was no longer beardless when he became a rebel. His Diary, from January 1, 1646, to April 10, 1650 (when it ends) is meagre in the extreme. It is studiously confined to domestic incidents and personal matters, and contains not a single comment on any of the great political events, including the royal martyrdom, that occurred in the interval. But we collect from it that he took an active part in country business, and cooperated with the authorities for the enforcement of the law of the land. After stating that he had been sworn a justice of the peace for the county of Wilts, and was in commission for oyer and terminer the whole circuit, he sets down:

August 11, 1646.-Sir John Danvers came and sat with us. Seven condemned to die, four for horse stealing, two for robbery, one for killing his wife; he broke her neck with his hands; it was proved that, he touching her body the day after, her nose bled fresh; four burnt in the hand, one for felony, three for manslaughter; the same sign followed one of them, of the corpse bleeding.'

This gravely set down by a man like Shaftesbury, is a remarkable proof of the strength of the popular superstition.

In January, 1652, he was named one of the Parliamentary Commissioners for the reform of the law, and an entry in the Journal, dated March 17, 1653, runs thus:

Resolved by the Parliament that Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, baronet, be, and is hereby, pardoned of all delinquency, and be, and is hereby, made capable of all other

privileges as any other of the people of this nation are.'

There is no reason for believing, with Martyn and Lord Campbell, that he had been guilty of any delinquency more recent than this (in Independent eyes) original sin in taking service with the Crown. He was one of ten members for the county of Wilts, in Barebones' Parliament, and his detractors take for granted that he fell in with the humours of this strange assembly, prayed, canted, and sought the Lord with the best

of them:

'Next this-how wildly will ambition steer! A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear. Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould: Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,

The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train.'

There is not the slightest evidence that he did anything of the kind. He regularly acted and voted with the moderate party in this assembly; but the fact of his having been a member of it was remembered against him when he became a Peer:

'A little bobtail'd lord, urchin of state, A praise-god Barebone peer, whom all men hate.'

The charge of wriggling in the usurper's ear derives some semblance of plausibility from his being deputed by the House to offer Hampton Court to Cromwell, and becoming one of the fifteen members of the Council of State named in the new Constitution which established the Protectorate for life. He certainly made common cause with Cromwell against the fanatics, and, during a brief interval, had the air of trusting in and being trusted by him. If we may believe Burnett, he (Shaftesbury) pretended that Cromwell offered to make him king. He was indeed of great use to him in withstanding the enthusiasts of that time. He was one of those who pressed him most to accept of the kingdom, because, ruin him.' In the closing years of his life as he said afterwards, he was sure it would Shaftesbury was in the habit of talking loosely and boastfully of his former doings; and, not intending to be taken literally, he may have said something of the sort to intimate the high sense Cromwell entertained of his services, or by way of mystifying Burnet, whose credulity and love of gossip were well known. It is impossible to believe that Cromwell did offer to make him king, or (for it comes to this, if he in turn wished Cromwell to be king) that the throne was bandied between them, or made the subject

of an interchange of compliments, like a chair or place of precedence between two courtiers, which each presses the other to accept.

Early in 1655, Shaftesbury quietly withdrew from Cromwell's Privy Council, and gradually came to be regarded as a decided opponent of his views. There was no open rupture or avowed cause of dissatisfaction, and conjecture has consequently been busy in imputing motives, public and private, the least creditable the better. Some will have it that Shaftesbury aspired to the Great Seal and was refused: others that he sought the hand of the Lady Mary, the Protector's daughter; that his addresses were declined on the ground of his dissolute morals; and that the disappointment of his ambitious love was the occasion of the breach. Considering that the estrangement was gradual, and that there is no proof whatever of his having aspired to the lady's hand or (at that time) to the Great Seal, the simplest explanation is the best. He was willing to go along with Cromwell to the extent of making him Chief Magistrate, or Head of the Executive, under constitutional restrictions, but shrank from the creation of an uncontrolled despotism or dictatorship. His position in the Presbyterian party, to whom he owed his influence, was at stake; and he had obviously no alternative but to become one of the Protector's creatures or to separate from him. How matters stood between them is shown by Shaftesbury's exclusion from the second Parliament elected under the Instrument of Government; and also by the remark attributed, on respectable authority, to Cromwell, that 'there was no one he was more at a loss how to manage than that Marcus Tullius Cicero, the little man with three names.' If that little man could have been induced to name his price, the odds are that it would have been readily paid, even if he had named the Great Seal or a daughter.

Lord Campbell says that upon being refused the hand of the musical, glib-tonged Lady Mary,' he (Shaftesbury) finally broke with Oliver, and became a partisan of the banished royal family. This is glaringly incorrect. He did not become a partisan of the royal family until after Oliver's death, when the people, with one accord, flew from petty tyrants to the throne, and the Restoration offered the sole protection against anarchy. His public appearances during the five or six years' interval were limited by the jealousy or hostility he had provoked. The certificate of approbation from the Council, without which no member could take his seat, was refused to more than a hundred members of the Parliament of 1656. He

was one of these, and he joined with more than sixty-four others in signing a letter of complaint to the Speaker, which was followed up by a spirited Remonstrance to the People, denouncing whoever advised the exclusion, or who should sit and vote in the 'mutilated' assembly, as capital enemies of the Commonwealth. The mutilated assembly proceeded, notwithstanding, to pass the new Constitution, entitled the Humble Petition and Advice, under which Parliament was to consist of two Houses; and Cromwell forthwith proceeded to nominate his peers. We need hardly say that Shaftesbury was not one of this favoured and speedily discredited body, but he was allowed to sit in the House of Commons during the Session of 1658, and he played a conspicuous part in the opposition to the new Constitution, and the new the new Lords whom the Commons refused to recognise.

He was a teller on the division which led to the immediate dissolution of this Parliament, the last called by Oliver, who died in September, 1658, and was succeeded by his son Richard, whose first Parliament met in January, 1659. Shaftesbury was again a member, and an active and influential one: He delivered in it, and published at the time, a carefully prepared speech, which may be accepted as the best specimen extant of his oratory, and one of the best specimens of the oratory of the age.

The leading speakers were then earnest, plain, and practical, rather than rhetorical or declamatory. They were rarely full and flowing, rarely what is commonly called eloquent, rarely imaginative in the highest sense of the term. Their greatest effects were produced by terse, weighty sentences, apt homely metaphors, sudden turns, quaint allusions, condensed reasoning, and bold apostrophes. They were occasionally longwinded. Hume describes Pym as opening the charge against Strafford in a longstudied discourse, divided into many heads after his manner;' and contemptuously referring to an attempt to put the Parliamentary champions in balance with the most illustrious characters of antiquity, with Cato, Brutus, Cassius-the historian exclaims: Compare only one circumstance and consider its consequences. The leizure of those noble ancients were (sic) totally employed in the study of Grecian eloquence and philosophy, in the cultivation of polite letters and civilised society. The whole discourse and language of the moderns were polluted with mysterious jargon, and full of the lowest and most vulgar hypocrisy.' This was partly true of Vane, Cromwell, and many others when the Saints were uppermost: during 'Barebones'