Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury 1621–1683 ed. by John Spurr (review)

On the dust jacket of this book, Mark Kishlansky assures prospective readers that it is “A collection of essays that befits the stature of the Earl of Shaftesbury.” It is at least questionable whether this is the unalloyed praise for which Ashgate has presumably taken it. Even leaving aside Shaftesbury’s physical smallness (and it is unclear that we are intended to leave this aside), the “stature” of the Earl of Shaftesbury, of course, very much depends on one’s perspective. For some he was the founder of the Whig party and the progenitor of a liberal tradition (British readers might wonder, if this were true, what he would have made of Nick Clegg). But for others he was serpentine, ambitious, and immoral. Sir Richard Bulstrode called him “that false and traiterous Villain; that dextrous man at Wickedness; that cunning crafty Politician.” Most famously, for Dryden, he was “the false Achitophel”: “A name to all succeeding ages cursed: / For close designs, and crooked counsels fit; / Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit; / Restless, unfix’d in principles and place; / In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace.” He has certainly continued to pose puzzles for historians, and this new collection of essays is often bracingly ingenuous about our remaining levels of ignorance. Paul Seaward’s statement that “Shaftesbury is opaque, contradictory, difficult to read” is repeated in so many words by various contributors to this book and betrays a frustration that runs throughout.

That our ignorance is not greater is a result of the monumental efforts of K. H. D. Haley, whose The First Earl of Shaftesbury casts its considerable shadow over the current collection. Mr. Spurr wisely makes it clear from the start that the intention of this book is not to replace Haley. Rather it is to locate Shaftesbury within the vibrant debates and preoccupations that have characterized the recent historiography of the Restoration. The result is a fine collection which students eager for relevant arguments and without the time to consume Haley’s 767 pages will fall upon. The cast of Restoration historians assembled is exceptional, and features many of those who have done so much to reinvigorate scholarly interest in the late seventeenth century and to transform our understanding of it.

Paul Seaward, writing as always in crystalline prose, examines Shaftesbury’s “determined advocacy of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs” in the 1660s and early 1670s. Most strikingly, he assembles the evidence for Shaftesbury’s interest in the establishment of a vicegerent. While others at the time used the Elizabethan age as a lens through which to view the late-seventeenth-century religious landscape, Shaftesbury’s thoughts seem to have turned to Elizabeth’s father and his vicar-general Thomas Cromwell. Such thinking is suggestive of “a project much more radical than merely the relief of Dissenters: a direct challenge to the claims of the Church to direct its own affairs on a scale not seen since the Henrician Reformation.” The potency of Shaftesbury’s anti-clericalism is further discussed by Mr. Spurr who, taking his lead from Mark Goldie’s seminal work on the roots of Whiggism, shows how this was central to the Earl’s political position. The bishops represented a potential bulwark against the ancient constitution, having learned from Archbishop Laud the erroneous doctrine of divine right. Shaftesbury’s political fears of the power of prelates were felt deeply, but, Mr. Spurr tentatively suggests, his position might finally have become not just anticlerical but also antireligious. The window into Shaftesbury’s soul, nonetheless, remains as opaque as ever.

Other essays consider Shaftesbury’s political career. Examining the calls for annual parliaments that were made from 1675–1677 in forums, Mr. Goldie sees in them “an ‘ancient constitutionalist’ critique which profoundly undermined the Stuart Crown’s prerogatives,” key to the creation of the Whigs, and “embedded within an aristocratic theory of politics which achieved a particular efflux at this time.” He draws attention not only [End Page...