COOPER, Sir Anthony Ashley, 2nd bt (1621-83), of Wimborne St Giles, Dorset

The Cooper family originated in Somerset in the early sixteenth century. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper’s grandfather, Sir John Cooper, who acquired the Rockbourne estate in Hampshire, sat as MP for Whitchurch in 1584 and 1586, and his father, also Sir John, was the member for Poole in 1625 and 1628. The Ashleys had been seated at Wimborne St Giles since the fifteenth century, and they had played their hand more astutely during the Tudor period. Sir Henry Ashley sat as knight of the shire for Dorset in 1554 and 1563, and his son Henry sat for Wareham, Christchurch and Poole between 1572 and 1587 and married a daughter of Lord Burgh. Henry was succeeded in 1604 by a cousin, Anthony Ashley, who had risen through the Elizabethan court to become clerk of the privy council, and an influential, if controversial, politician. The marriage of Anthony Ashley’s only daughter with John Cooper in 1616 created a vast estate centred on north east Dorset and the neighbouring counties of Wiltshire and Hampshire, and when a male heir was born in 1621 the future for the family looked bright. Yet the deaths of Sir Anthony Ashley in January 1628, his daughter Anne in the following July, and finally of Sir John Cooper in March 1631, threw everything in doubt.61K.H.D. Haley, The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968), 7-15; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 2-3. Although Cooper’s wardship was sold to Sir Daniel Norton† and Edward Tooker†, both friends of Sir John Cooper, for the modest sum of £3,000, the level of debt – perhaps as much as £35,000 – left by the father necessitated the sale of land under the supervision of the court of wards.62WARD9/163, f. 28; Sales of Wards in Som. 101. As a result, relatives and neighbours, notably Sir Francis Ashley (brother of Sir Anthony Ashley), were able to influence the court to encourage the sale of lands at far less than their true worth. The case in the court of wards was still being pursued in 1635, and it was only on the death of Sir Francis Ashley in November of the same year that the threat began to subside, despite the efforts of Sir Francis’s heirs, especially his son-in-law, Denzil Holles*, to revive the legal proceedings in the 1640s.63Haley, Shaftesbury, 16-20.

After the deaths of his parents, Cooper was brought up in the households of his two guardians, Sir Daniel Norton and (after Norton’s death in 1636) Edward Tooker. Although his father was not notably religious, Cooper was from an early age provided with puritan-inclined tutors, including Aaron Guerdon; the Nortons were counted among the godly; and Cooper attended Exeter College Oxford, at that time headed by a notable Calvinist, Dr John Prideaux.64Haley, Shaftesbury, 12, 21; Oxford DNB. The loss of key manors and mounting legal costs during the minority severely damaged Cooper’s financial position, but his income was still substantial. In 1638 it was calculated that he received £2,349 per annum, with the potential to improve the estate to yield three times that amount.65PRO30/24/2, ff. 147-53; Haley, Shaftesbury, 20. It was presumably this actual and prospective wealth that made Cooper attractive as a potential husband, and in February 1639 he married Margaret, daughter of the lord keeper, Sir Thomas Coventry†, 1st Baron Coventry, described by her husband as ‘a woman of excellent beauty and incomparable in gifts of nature and virtue’.66Haley, Shaftesbury, 25; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxvi.

Early political career

The influence of the Coventrys can be seen in Cooper’s political activities during the early 1640s. A surviving letter of 29 February 1640 from Cooper to his brother-in-law, John Coventry, reveals that he stood as the Coventry candidate as knight of the shire for Somerset. ‘We are here canvassing very hard’, he reported, but he noted that the opposition was well organised and ‘Sir Ralph Hopton* and I as yet stand single; what we shall do I know not’.67Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 33-4; PRO30/24/2, no. 36. Cooper was unsuccessful in Somerset, but he was returned for the Gloucestershire borough of Tewkesbury in March ‘by a general and free election’, and again the Coventrys were behind his candidacy: the family held estates nearby, they were related to the other MP, Sir Edward Alford*, and it was while staying with them that Cooper was invited to dine with the corporation before the election.68Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxvi; Haley, Shaftesbury, 33-4. Although Cooper claimed that ‘he served them [the people of Tewkesbury] faithfully’ in the Short Parliament, there is no record of his activity in the curtailed session.69Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxvi.

The death of Lord Keeper Coventry in January 1640 had not proved fatal to Cooper’s electoral chances for the Short Parliament, but it weakened his connection with Tewkesbury in the longer term, and he was not re-elected in the autumn of 1640, instead standing in December as a candidate for Downton in Wiltshire. Downton was a pocket borough of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, and Cooper stood as a replacement for the earl’s second son, William Herbert II*, who had also been returned for Monmouthshire. The extent of Pembroke’s manipulation of this by-election is unclear, not least because the return was disputed, with Cooper being challenged by Richard Gorges*.70Haley, Shaftesbury, 35-6. When the Commons considered the election no decision was made, although, according to Cooper, ‘it was clearly decided’ by the committee of privileges in his favour.71Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxvii. There is no obvious connection between this delay and Holles’s attempts to re-ignite the dispute over Cooper’s lands, which erupted again in the spring of 1641.72Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 38-9. On 10 February the Commons allowed Holles to proceed with his suit in the court of wards as Cooper could not claim privilege of Parliament, and in May the question of privilege was again raised, prompting a declaration by the Commons that Cooper ‘hath as yet no privilege of Parliament whereby to hinder [Holles’s] proceedings’.73CJ ii. 82a, 151a, 152a.

Turncoat, 1642-52

Having failed to secure his seat, Cooper remained aloof from politics during the political crisis of 1640-2, although his strong connection with the Coventrys continued. After the death of the lord keeper, Cooper and his wife lived at Dorchester House in Covent Garden with the 2nd Baron Coventry (Thomas Coventry†), and in March 1642 they moved to Rufford in Nottinghamshire, the seat of his wife’s brother-in-law, the future royalist Sir William Savile*.74Haley, Shaftesbury, 38. In August Cooper ‘was with the king at Nottingham’ when the royal standard was raised, and he accompanied him to Derby in September, although his later account of this episode emphasised that he was merely a ‘spectator, having not as yet adhered against the Parliament’.75Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxvii.

If Cooper’s position was indeed undecided in the summer of 1642, this may have been because of divided loyalties. His friends in Dorset, like Thomas Erle* (‘there being the nearest friendship betwixt us was imaginable in our years’), and family friends including his former guardian, Sir Daniel Norton, had sided with Parliament; on the other hand, Cooper’s local enemy and rival for the affections of Margaret Coventry, Richard Rogers* – a man he dismissed as filled ‘with no small vanity’ – was emerging as a leading royalist in the county, and the prospect of working with men of that kind may have acted as a powerful disincentive.76Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 1, pp. x, xiii-iv. There may also have been an element of self-interested calculation in Cooper’s reluctance to throw in his lot with one side or the other. As a man of substance he had much to lose by making the wrong choice, and as he had only just attained his majority (in late July 1642) his reticence might well be overlooked by whoever triumphed. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1642 Cooper lingered in royalist areas, especially Yorkshire (where he again stayed with the Saviles) and County Durham, before moving down through the north-western counties to Shrewsbury and Caus Castle in Shropshire, the house of another of his wife’s relatives, Sir Henry Frederick Thynne.77Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx 2, pp. xxvii-xxviii. But as it became clear that a single battle would not decide the conflict, and that the peace talks at Oxford were likely to achieve little, in the spring of 1643 Cooper finally declared his hand.

Following his return to Dorset, Cooper raised a regiment of foot and a troop of horse for the king, and he was sent to Oxford with the county’s concerns, although later accounts that he sought a local cessation and was supported in this by Lord Falkland (Lucius Cary*) seem unlikely to be true.78Haley, Shaftesbury, 41-3. In any case, the fall of Bristol and the royalist invasion of Dorset in early August 1643 raised hopes that the national tide had turned in the king’s favour. Cooper joined Sir Gerard Naper* as commissioner to negotiate the surrender of Dorchester to the king, and he was promised the governorship of Weymouth by the commander in the west, William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford – an appointment that was commended by Sir Edward Hyde*, even though it was ‘the best port town of that county, and to be kept with great care’.79Clarendon, Hist. ii. 163. This appointment drew Cooper into the rivalries that had already started to weaken the royalist side. Hertford’s position as commander was challenged by Prince Maurice, and Maurice wanted Colonel William Ashbournham* to be governor of Weymouth instead.80Haley, Shaftesbury, 43-6; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xxviii-xxix. Apart from Hyde and Hertford, Cooper’s claim was supported by Lord Falkland and Sir John Culpeper*, both of whom were opposed to the ‘ultra-royalists’ associated with Princes Maurice and Rupert.81Clarendon, Hist. ii. 164. Charles I backed Maurice, saying that ‘he would not, to please the marquess in an unjust pretence, put a public disobligation and affront upon his nephew’; but after further representations he agreed to a compromise.82Clarendon, Hist. ii. 164-5. In a letter to Hertford, the king said that he had informed Prince Maurice ‘that our pleasure is that Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper … remains in those commands according to the tenor of your commission granted to him’, but he also insisted that, because of his youth and inexperience as a commander ‘we earnestly recommend it to you to prevail with them [Cooper and his deputy] to resign’ when they could do so with honour – perhaps by the end of the year.83PRO30/24/2, f. 243.

There were other moves to mollify Cooper in the following months: he was made president of the council of war in Dorset, appointed sheriff of the county and promised a peerage; but his loyalties had been shaken, not least by what the disagreement revealed of the divisions within the royalist camp, and how far the king was in the thrall of extremist – and especially Catholic – elements at court.84Oxford DNB. It was perhaps this, rather than mere pique (as Clarendon claimed) or innate political moderation (as his modern biographer has argued) that encouraged Cooper’s defection to Parliament in the new year of 1644.85Clarendon, Hist. ii. 362; Haley, Shaftesbury, 46-9. Cooper’s own comment was that he had jumped ship ‘plainly seeing the king’s aim destructive to religion and the state’: a statement that perhaps indicates his opposition to the king’s closest advisers, rather than a sudden rejection of the royalist cause per se.86Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxix. This is supported by Cooper’s actions after August 1643. As the king had allowed, he did not lose his command at Weymouth immediately, and was still governor in November when his troops captured a parliamentarian supply ship bound for Plymouth.87Mercurius Aulicus no. 45 (5-11 Nov. 1643), 645 (E.75.28). But at the end of December he wrote to Hyde asking for permission to leave Dorset, complaining that the king’s forces were too weak and ill-paid and that Hopton’s army was draining the county of men and money.88CCSP i. 245. At the beginning of January 1644 he gave up his commission as governor of Weymouth, as agreed.89CCC 839.

On 24 February 1644 Cooper, having ‘privately came away to Parliament’, gave himself up to the garrison at Hurst Castle in Hampshire, intending to make use of the parliamentary order giving life and liberty to all who came in before 6 March.90Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxix; CCC 839. He was taking a huge risk. His estates were under royalist control, and he had no assurances that a turn-coat would receive even a lukewarm welcome from the parliamentarians. Yet Cooper could be useful to Parliament, and he seems to have traded on that possibility. In early March the Committee for Compounding considered his case, and observed that Cooper had not only agreed to take the Covenant but also to reveal military secrets about the royalist garrisons in Dorset. They also noted that his income was £800 a year – a gross underestimate (compared with his own claim of £3,400 a year) that may reveal the willingness of MPs to accept his submission on lenient terms. It may also be significant that the decision about the level of fine to be imposed on him was not made immediately.91CCC 839; Haley, Shaftesbury, 49.

By mid-March Cooper was living with his wife at the Coventry home of Dorchester House in Westminster.92Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xxix. He remained there quietly until 10 July, when the Commons ordered that he ‘shall have liberty to go down into his own country’ now that much of Dorset had been regained for Parliament by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.93CJ iii. 556b. The local parliamentarians were aware of Cooper’s importance to their position – not least because of the financial resources at his disposal – and on 3 August the county committee issued a warrant appointing him ‘to command as field marshal to the brigade of horse and foot now under the command of the high sheriff’.94PRO30/24/2, f. 244. He was appointed to the Dorset county committee and set about raising a foot regiment.95PRO30/24/2/44; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 1v, 20-v. Cooper was eager to prove his worth, and on 10 August he was one of the commanders who led the attack on royalist-held Wareham. It is improbable that Cooper played a prominent role in the fighting that followed, but he was chosen to carry news of the surrender of the town to Westminster, and thus reaped the benefit of Parliament’s pleasure.96Haley, Shaftesbury, 50-1. He also took with him the county committee’s letter to Speaker William Lenthall*, which emphasised that ‘we have found Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper both active and cordial and so helpful unto us upon all our occasions’ and asked that he might be added to their number: a request that was granted by Parliament on 14 August.97Bodl. Nalson III, f. 246; PRO30/24/2, f. 245; CJ iii. 589b; LJ vi. 670a. On 16 August the Committee for Compounding fined Cooper a paltry £500, an amount confirmed by the Commons on 22 August.98CCC 839; CJ iii. 603a. The fine was not levied, and Parliament was in no hurry to do so. In November Cooper was reassured by his agent in London that ‘your business at their hall [Goldsmiths’ Hall] rests in peace’.99PRO30/24/2, f. 250.

During the autumn of 1644 Cooper was one of the most active parliamentarians in Dorset, signing numerous letters from the county committee, and was also the leading commander against Sir Lewis Dyve*, holed up in Sherborne Castle.100Add. 29319, ff. 15-26; Haley, Shaftesbury, 51. On 1 October he joined other committeemen in writing to Lenthall warning of ‘the sad condition of Poole, where plague and famine contend for pre-eminence’ and of the effects of disease on other towns in Dorset.101HMC Portland, i. 279. It was perhaps at around this time that the Dorset committee agreed to allow Cooper to take his troops to Shaftesbury, on the Wiltshire border and close to Wimborne St Giles, despite concerns that ‘it may be considered how safe a retreat may be made if a body of the enemy horse advance to Blandford’.102PRO30/24/2, f. 361. On 25 October the Dorset committee appointed Cooper as ‘commander-in-chief of the brigade of horse and foot appointed to march out of the three garrisons of Wareham, Poole and Weymouth … for this present expedition’ against the Sherborne forces, and this was seconded by an order of the earl of Essex of 31 October to the same effect.103PRO30/24/2, ff. 249, 359. In November Cooper took Abbotsbury, the house of Sir John Strangways*, by storm – an incident made notorious by his refusal to allow quarter to the garrison, even when the house was ablaze.104Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 62-7; Haley, Shaftesbury, 51-2. He was equally uncompromising in his suggestion, made shortly afterwards, that Wareham should be razed to the ground. The town was difficult to defend against raids from Corfe Castle, and, he claimed without a hint of irony, its people were ‘almost all dreadful malignants’.105Haley, Shaftesbury, 53; HMC Portland, i. 197. Later in November he signed a letter from the county committee at Blandford, asking for more troops and money to be sent to secure them.106LJ vii. 67b. In December Cooper again drew forces from the local garrisons, this time to march to the relief of Robert Blake*, besieged in Taunton. The Dorset forces were part of a larger body, commanded by Major-general Holborne, which included Wiltshire troops under Edmund Ludlowe II*, among others.107Ludlow, Mems. i. 107. Yet Cooper’s own account makes out that he was the commander-in-chief, and, in a piece of characteristic self-promotion, on 15 December he sent to Essex his personal account of the success of the expedition, and it was this letter that was read in the official report to the Commons on 24 December.108Haley, Shaftesbury, 53-4; CJ iii. 734b.

Cooper’s military career did not come to an end with the creation of the New Model army in April 1645, but he was much less active in the months that followed. On 17 May the Committee of the West ordered that the regiments of Colonels Alexander Popham* and Edward Cooke* would be sent to Wareham to assist local troops in blockading Corfe Castle, and that they should be under Cooper’s command.109PRO30/24/2, ff. 260-1. There is no evidence that Cooper ever took charge of the siege of Corfe, although his regiment was not officially disbanded until April 1646.110Haley, Shaftesbury, 54; Add. 29319. Instead of furthering his military career, he tried to revive his claim to a seat in Parliament, which had remained in limbo since 1641. On 1 September 1645 Sir Walter Erle* was ordered to report on Cooper’s election, but once again no decision was made, probably because of his earlier royalism; indeed, it seems that Cooper’s friends were trying to rush through the confirmation of his election before the Commons’ vote, taken immediately afterwards, to prevent those engaged in ‘active war’ against Parliament from sitting.111CJ iv. 260a; PRO30/24/2, f. 262; Haley, Shaftesbury, 56. It may have been in this context that Bulstrode Whitelocke* noted, on 18 September, that he was ‘courted’ by Cooper in London.112Whitelocke, Diary, 179. The failure of his latest bid to take his seat rendered Cooper politically impotent. Later stories that he made his peace with Holles by refusing to testify against him in the summer of 1645, or that he advised Holles and his Presbyterian allies to send Oliver Cromwell* to Ireland in order to remove him from Westminster, are unlikely to be true.113Cf. Haley, Shaftesbury, 57-8. A proposal, made by a committee of both Houses in August 1648, to appoint Cooper as governor of Poole, was not followed up.114CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 259.

Cooper was effectively barred from political influence, but did not remain idle during the later 1640s and early 1650s. After a period of ill-health, which forced him to take the waters at Tunbridge in 1645 and to undergo ‘operations’ on his nerves and veins in 1646, Cooper settled in the west country.115Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xxxi, xxxiii. He was not one of the most active members of the Dorset county committee – being present at only four meetings after September 1646 – but his diary reveals the extent of his activity in other areas.116Haley, Shaftesbury, 59-60. From 6 April 1646 he attended the quarter sessions at Dorchester, and in August 1646 he was first sworn as a justice of the peace for Wiltshire.117Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xxxiv, xxxvii. This was followed by his appointment as sheriff of Wiltshire on 1 December 1646, although within a month he was given permission to go to London or elsewhere despite his local duties.118List of Sheriffs, 154; CJ iv. 732b; CJ v. 43b, 50a-b; LJ viii. 589a, 668a, 669a. He was routinely appointed as commissioner for assessment and militia in Dorset and Wiltshire from 1647, and is known to have attended meetings in 1647 and 1648.119A. and O.; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xliv, xlviii

Cooper’s relations with the aristocracy of Dorset and Wiltshire were steadily improving during this period. In October 1646 he was at Shaftesbury to discuss how to get Edward Massie’s* unruly brigade ‘removed out of Dorset’; in the same month he hunted with John Fitzjames* and lent £100 to his old friend, Thomas Erle.120Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xxxix, xl. When the recruiter election took place at Shaftesbury during the same autumn, Fitzjames told Nathaniel Stephens* that he had high hopes of Cooper’s local influence, saying that ‘if Sir Anthony Cooper can be persuaded (by yourself or Mr Erle) to write effectually to Colonel [George] Starr*’ the colonel might be encouraged to stand down in his favour.121Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 58v. Whether Cooper intervened is unknown, but Fitzjames did not succeed in his bid for election. In June 1647 Cooper played bowls at the earl of Pembroke’s mansion at Wilton and in October he stayed with the marquess of Hertford at Tottenham Court.122Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xliii, xlv. His first wife died in 1649, severing his remaining links with the Coventry family, and in April 1650 he remarried, taking as his second wife a daughter of David Cecil,* 3rd earl of Exeter.123Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 86. The execution of Charles I seems to have had little impact on Cooper. There is no mention of the regicide in his diary, and in February he accepted commissions from the new commonwealth as justice of the peace for Wiltshire and Dorset and as a commissioner on the western oyer and terminer circuit, although he was not sworn in until August. In January 1650 he subscribed the Engagement.124Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. li-liv.

Aside from his activities in local government, throughout the late 1640s and early 1650s Cooper was steadily improving his financial position, both in England and abroad. The first fruits of this can be seen in his decision to build a new house at Wimborne St Giles, with the foundation stone being laid on 19 April 1650.125Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 86. He was also in a position to invest in the colonies. In his diary of March 1646 Cooper first mentioned ‘my plantation in the Barbados’; in April he engaged two fifteen-year-olds as indentured servants; in May he was arranging bills of exchange with Barbados; and on 20 August 1646 he signed a formal agreement with one Matthew Hopkins, who took charge of his newly-acquired plantation, which he held jointly with Captain Gerard Hawtaine. By April 1652 this plantation was prospering, with 60 acres under sugar cane, tended by 21 indentured servants and 15 slaves.126Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, pp. xxxiv, xxxvi; PRO30/24/49, ff. 1-4. Cooper had fingers in other colonial pies, and in November 1647 mentioned in his diary the safe return of ‘the little ship called the Rose, wherein I have a quarter part’, which had been to Guinea to buy slaves.127Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx 2, p. xlvi. Cooper sold his share – 105 acres – of the Barbados plantation in 1655 for £1,020.128Oxford DNB.

Cromwellian outsider, 1652-4

Cooper did not play a significant role on the national stage until the new year of 1652. On 9 January John Lisle* reported from the committee chosen to consider persons ‘out of the House’ to advise on ‘the inconveniences of the law’, and a week later Cooper was named as one of seventeen commissioners to discuss law reform.129CJ vii. 67b, 73b, 74a. The commission, led by Sir Matthew Hale*, was mostly made up of important MPs, including Oliver Cromwell, and its meetings over the next twelve months gave Cooper the chance to make himself more widely known.130Haley, Shaftesbury, 68-70. The benefits of this were soon apparent. On 17 March 1653 Parliament resolved that Cooper should be ‘pardoned of all delinquency’, and 8 April he was appointed judge for the probate of wills.131CJ vii. 268b; A. and O.

With the forced closure of the Rump Parliament and the new ‘rule of the saints’ under Cromwell, Cooper was suddenly catapulted into high office. On 6 June 1653 he was summoned to join the council of state, and he was granted lodging in Whitehall.132PRO30/24/2, f. 336; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 12, 23. His activity on the council of state was dominated by foreign affairs. He was added to the committee to meet the Dutch representatives on 14 July and was formally appointed to the committee for foreign affairs on 27 July.133CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 26, 53. In August Cooper was on the committee to treat with the Spanish ambassador; in October and November he was one of the commissioners to negotiate with the Dutch; and in the latter month he was reappointed to the committee for foreign affairs.134CSP Dom. 1653-4, 87, 223, 237; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 122. Security was another of Cooper’s concerns. In August he joined Cromwell in interrogating the suspected royalist agent Colonel Robert Phelipps, with a mixture of friendly questions and veiled threats.135CCSP ii. 243; Haley, Shaftesbury, 77. Cooper was involved in other moves against sedition during the summer and autumn, being appointed to committees to examine those who petitioned for clemency to the imprisoned Leveller, John Lilburne (and reporting the council’s findings to the Nominated Assembly), to investigate a recent royalist conspiracy in Dorset, and to suppress scandalous pamphlets.136CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 66, 157, 200; CJ vii. 309a. On 7 November Cooper was appointed to the new committee of examinations, with a specific remit to consider matters of public safety.137CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 233.

In parallel with his activity in the council of state, Cooper was a prominent Member of the Nominated Assembly, selected by the congregations in Wiltshire, and summoned by a warrant signed by Cromwell on 6 June.138PRO30/24/2/63. He soon became a leading light of the ‘conservative interest’, working with other young MPs, like Charles Howard*, Sir Charles Wolseley*, Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*) and Edward Montagu*, who, in the words of one historian, ‘might be thought to have had their eye more on the main chance than on the New Jerusalem’.139Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 157, 201. Cooper’s most important contribution to the assembly’s business was as a defender of tithes, which came under attack from those who opposed the national church. On 15 July he was teller against a vote to continue tithes after 3 November of that year, opposing attempts by Major-general Thomas Harrison I* and others to force MPs to come to a snap decision; conversely, four days’ later he was teller in favour of committing the matter, again coming up against Harrison and the radicals, and he was duly named to the tithe committee when it was formed.140CJ vii. 285b, 286a. Alongside Cooper’s rearguard action in defence of tithes, he was also eager to limit radical religion. On 27 July he was teller against a question to refer the general liberty of preaching to a committee – a motion that was defeated.141CJ vii. 290b. In October Cooper was named to the committee to prepare a declaration on religious liberty, but any support he might have had for toleration came up against his concerns as a landowner, and on 17 November he was again a teller against attempts to overturn tithes, this time by removing powers of patronage over livings.142CJ vii. 332b, 352a.

Cooper continued his involvement in legal matters during the Nominated Assembly, being named to the committee ‘for the business of the law’ on 20 July 1653.143CJ vii. 286b. On 23 July he was teller against replacing the third judge of admiralty with a civil lawyer, and on 29 July he was teller in favour of appointing the conservative, Lislebone Long*, as one of those judges.144CJ vii. 289a, 292b. In August Cooper was named to the committee on the bill for the registration of births, marriages and deaths, and he reported from this committee and was chosen on of those to amend the wording of the bill.145CJ vii. 300a, 301b. On 19 August he was teller against the creation of a new committee to consider the body of the law.146CJ vii. 304b. In the autumn Cooper reported to the assembly from the committee on wills and administrations, and he was also involved in the bills for the relief of creditors, acting as teller in favour of adding two lawyers to the commissioners for the upper bench for consideration of such cases.147CJ vii. 322a, 326a, 329b. Chancery was one of Cooper’s main legal concerns, and on 17 October he was teller against suspending the hearing of causes in the court.148CJ vii. 335b.

Cooper’s activity in legal and religious affairs is consistent with his membership of a conservative group within the Commons. As teller, Cooper often worked in harness with Alderman Robert Tichborne* and Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*, as well as Montagu and Wolseley.149CJ vii. 285b, 286a, 289a, 290b, 304b, 352a, 359a. He was also considered to have a good relationship with Cromwell at this time, as he was chosen to attend the general with the assembly’s offer of Hampton Court in exchange for New Hall.150CJ vii. 321a, 324b. This is supported by evidence that Cooper was one of the ‘most prominent’ of the group of conservative MPs whose coup brought the assembly to an end in December 1653, with one newsletter writer reporting that Cooper and his allies had interrupted parliamentary business, allowing Wolseley to call for a dissolution.151Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 343; Clarke Pprs. iii. 9.

It was Cooper’s prominence in the dissolution of the Nominated Assembly that ensured his inclusion in the new protectoral council, created on 16 December 1653, for ‘in the choice of this council such were put in for the most part who had been principal instruments in the interruption of the late assembly, and leading men in the resignation of that power in the hands of Cromwell’.152Ludlow, Mems. i. 371. The foundation of the protectorate provided Cooper with yet more opportunities for advancement, although rumours that he was to be appointed lord chancellor proved unfounded.153TSP i. 645. He was, however, heavily involved with discussion of legal reform in the first few months of the protectorate. On 20 December he was instructed to prepare an ordinance for renewing legislation on the probate of wills, and the next day introduced to the council measures for reviving the previous bill on the same.154CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 301, 308. On 23 December he was on the committee for an ordinance for settling the law courts under the new regime, and in January 1654 he was on committees to regulate commissions of the peace throughout the nation, as well as continuing his work on probate.155CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 309, 344, 349, 351, 356-7, Another issue that involved Cooper in his capacity as a ‘legal expert’ was the sale of forest lands from January 1654.156CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 350, 358, 363, 368; 1654, pp. 93, 98. In February he was on the committee to consider the petition of the Inner and Middle Temples and was also instructed to confer with the common law judges and sat on a subsequent committee on judges’ salaries.157CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 383, 385, 397, 404. From the spring of 1654, Cooper’s prominence in legal reform debates seems to have declined, although he was still called upon to sit on committees on prisoners, the duchy and admiralty courts.158CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 108, 133, 175, 190, 208.

Instead, Cooper became more closely involved in foreign affairs. His colonial interests ensured his inclusion on the committees of Virginia and Barbados from December 1653, and he was involved in the council’s response to petitions from Rhode Island and Newfoundland in the spring of 1654.159CSP Col. 1574-1660, pp. 412, 414, 416. In January 1654 the Dutch ambassador noted that he was one of four councillors conducting peace negotiations.160TSP i. 643. In May he was on the committee to consider a petition by the merchants trading with Russia, and he presented to the council the protector’s letter to the tsar in June.161CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 187, 219. In July 1654 he was one of the councillors authorised to sign the treaty with Portugal.162Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 375. In August he considered complaints by the Dutch of ships detained illegally, in September he was given power to treat with the Dutch, and in December 1654 he was one of two councillors who met the ambassador.163CSP Dom. 1654, p. 312; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 429; TSP iii. 32. On 2 January 1655 one of Cooper’s last tasks as a councillor was to receive the newly-arrived Genoese ambassador.164CSP Dom. 1655, p. 2.

A third aspect of government that involved Cooper at this time was the revenue. On 31 December 1653 he reported an ordinance for continuing the chief financial committees, and in January he was on committees to renew the powers of the Committee for Revenue, to consider proposals for improving the state’s finances, and to evaluate a scheme for establishing a bank.165CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 318, 345, 348, 364, 366. On 3 February he joined Edward Montagu on a committee to consider the public debts, and in April he was one of those considering the representations of the committee of accounts.166CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 385; 1654, p. 108. As with his legal responsibilities, Cooper was less involved in finance in the summer and autumn of 1654, and this may indicate that his function within government was shifting. Cooper was also involved in the financial aspects of the protectoral court and household. On 1 February, for example, he was on a committee to provide a settled revenue for Cromwell’s household, and a week later he was also considering the fate of the former royal palaces, deciding which should be retained for Cromwell’s use and which sold off.167CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 381, 397. In April he was treating with the purchasers of Hampton Court and Windsor Great Park in order to redeem the sold lands, in May this was extended to Windsor Little Park, and in August he was ordered to consider reports on the progress of the Hampton Court negotiations.168CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 99, 129, 144, 189, 347. Again, Cooper’s responsibilities appear to have been reduced as the summer continued. It may be significant that he played little part in religious policy throughout this period. Indeed, his only involvement was as a member of committees on a recusant petition in May, the accounts of Welsh livings in June and to explain the ordinance for the approbation of public preachers in August – and the first two of these were probably financial in nature.169CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 167, 211, 308. Equally worldly was the ordinance passed by the council on 29 August, which united the parishes of Wimborne St Giles and Wimborne All Saints, and granted the patronage to Cooper.170PRO30/24/2, f. 337.

Cooper’s activity within the protectoral council, the gradual decrease in his involvement in the law and finance, his apparent exclusion (by choice or otherwise) from religious affairs and his increasing part in foreign affairs, especially in an largely honorific role, suggests that he was not at the heart of the protectoral regime. It may be significant that there is little evidence of intimacy with the protector. Although they may have shared an interest in the law and were clearly seen as close during the Nominated Assembly, there was no meeting of minds on key subjects that were dear to Cromwell, and in particular Cooper lacked the religious zeal that characterised many of the protector’s closest friends. Indeed, his religious views seem to have derived from his concerns as a landowner, rather than as a servant of the Living God, although he was happy to promote the interests of moderate Independents like William Strong (whom he presented to a Dorset living in 1640) and Robert Ferguson (who would serve as his chaplain).171Oxford DNB. As a young, rich landowner, Cooper may have had more in common with Cromwell’s children, but again the evidence is slight. Several years later he wrote to Henry Cromwell* on behalf of his brother-in-law, Henry Moore, 3rd Viscount Moore of Drogheda, and referred to earlier correspondence between them, adding that ‘there is no person in the world more desires your lordship’s affection and good opinion. You have many love his highness’s son, but I love Henry Cromwell, were he naked, without all those glorious additions and titles’.172TSP vi. 506. This seems to be no more than exaggerated courtesy, and is noteworthy only for its hyperbole. Similarly, there is little doubt that earlier rumours of a match between Cooper and Mary Cromwell were unfounded.173Haley, Shaftesbury, 80-1; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 120. The personal connections that did exist were at one remove – for example, Cromwell’s close friend Richard Norton* was son of Cooper’s guardian, Sir Daniel Norton – and it is evident that Cooper was not one of the inner circle around the protector, nor one of the young civilian courtiers associated with his sons.174Haley, Shaftesbury, 68, 130.

First protectorate Parliament, 1654-5

Although he was not one of the protector’s closest advisers, as a councillor Cooper was courted by those seeking influential MPs to represent them in the first protectorate Parliament. He was prospective candidate for at least four seats. On 29 June 1654 the corporation of Salisbury made Cooper a free citizen of their city, in anticipation of the parliamentary elections to be held on 10 July; in early July the mayor of Poole paid the expenses of a man sent to Cooper ‘desiring him to be a burgess of Parliament’; and on 19 July Cooper attended the corporation in person ‘to be excused from being a burgess for this town’.175Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 82; Poole Borough Archives, MS 29(7), unfol. In October Poole chose Cooper’s younger brother, George Cooper*, as their MP instead.176C219/44, unfol. Sir Anthony’s other seats included Tewkesbury and Wiltshire, and he eventually selected the latter on 4 October.177CJ vii. 372b. The Wiltshire election was not uncontested, despite the intention of the government to contrive the ‘packing of the cards for the election’ there as elsewhere. Edmund Ludlowe, by now an open enemy of the protectorate, was countered by Cooper and the Presbyterian divine Adoniram Byfield, who ‘made harangues to the people, labouring to convince them that it was desirable to choose such as were of healing spirits’, and, according to Ludlowe, when faced with strong opposition, they and their supporters ‘unite[d] in their first vote for Sir Anthony Cooper, whom the under-sheriff on the view adjudgeth to be first chosen, though the party that appeared for me conceived themselves much injured’.178Ludlow, Mems. i. 388-90.

Cooper’s role in the 1654-5 Parliament has been greatly exaggerated. For example, while there is ‘not a spark of evidence’ that he acted as an intermediary between Cromwell and his Parliament on the question of the ‘recognition’ of the protectorate, historians, perhaps mindful of his future career, have declared that ‘every probability’ points in that direction.179Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, iii. 197; Haley, Shaftesbury, 84-5. However strong Cooper’s constitutional commitment might have become in later life, there is little indication of it in early months of the first protectorate Parliament, when he was very much the Cromwellian councillor. In the early weeks of the session he was named to the committees of privileges and those for Irish and Scottish affairs, and appointed to attend the protector with the Commons’ declaration for a fast day.180CJ vii. 366b, 368b, 371b. On 27 November he joined Richard Cromwell* as teller against a strongly-backed motion to reintroduce the 40 shilling freehold qualification for voters, and thus demonstrated his support for the Instrument of Government.181CJ vii. 391b. Similarly, on 30 November he opposed continuing the debate on the qualities expected of the protector and his council, which may have led to unacceptable restrictions on them.182CJ vii. 393b. His role as a government legal adviser was revived during this session. On 15 September he was named to the committee to investigate the judges at Salters’ Hall (who dealt with ‘poor prisoners’), and on 5 October to that drafting an ordinance for regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the court of chancery, and on 31 October to the committee to confirm earlier votes abolishing the court of wards.183CJ vii. 368a, 374a, 380b. On 3 November he was named to the committee to consider abuses in writs of certiorari and habeas corpus, and he was added to the same committee on the next day, when it considered the petition of the doctors of civil law.184CJ vii. 381b, 382a. Other legal business followed in December, including the reduction of burdens on sheriffs, the erection of a court of justice in the north, the encouragement of the study of civil law and the drafting of a bill on fines and forfeitures.185CJ vii. 394b, 401a, 407b, 409b.

Amid this heavy administrative and legislative workload, there were few signs of unease. In a new departure, Cooper seems to have become involved in religious affairs during December, being named to committees on the maintenance of ministers, the ‘enumeration of damnable heresies’ and the condemnation of the blasphemous books of the Socinian, John Biddle.186CJ vii. 397b, 399b, 400a. Whether this indicates that Cooper had sympathies the Presbyterians in the Commons, who sought to limit the freedom allowed to sectaries under the Instrument, is less than certain. Equally, the incident on 23 December, when Augustine Garland* moved that Cromwell should be offered the crown – a motion ‘seconded by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper’ – may have been little more than a heavy-handed joke.187Clarke Pprs. iii. 16; infra, ‘Augustine Garland’.

Cooper’s unremarkable performance in the Commons makes what happened next all the more extraordinary. He attended the council on 28 December, but he was absent from the next meeting on 5 January 1655, and his last official duty was on 2 January.188Haley, Shaftesbury, 87; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 2. By the end of that month it was commonly known that Cooper ‘hath not lately sat’, and that his role as a councillor was effectively at an end.189Clarke Pprs. iii. 20. It has been suggested that Cooper withdrew from the government because he was opposed to the influence of the army over the protectorate and supported civilian rule, but this was scarcely a novel position even within the council, and other councillors who shared this view were confident that they could change the regime from within, rather than be forced to join the ‘parliamentary opposition as a private gentleman’.190Haley, Shaftesbury, 86-7. Alternatively, Cooper’s actions could be seen as a rejection of protectoral rule altogether, perhaps having come to the ‘conviction that the government could no longer hope to rest on any foundation save that of the army’. There is, however, no evidence of a personal breach between Cooper and his colleagues over the Government Bill, nor of him coming under pressure from ‘Presbyterian friends’, even if he was beginning to agree with them over religion.191Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, iii. 240; Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 119. The overall problem with both accounts is that they rely too heavily on his later career, and an inflated view of Cooper’s probity and consistency, his skilfulness as a politician, and his overriding concern for the constitution.

A solution rooted in the politics of the early 1650s might provide a better starting point. The council records seem to suggest that Cooper’s influence within the council was in decline from the spring of 1654, and it is likely that he failed to establish a personal bond with the protector himself. This made Cooper slightly detached from the protectorate, and the failure of Parliament to curb the army-dominated government may have come as confirmation that his energies were being wasted, and that others were being promoted above him. As in January 1644, a fit of pique cannot be ruled out, even if the suggestion that Cooper was jealous of John Lambert’s* prominence within the protectoral council cannot be substantiated.192Haley, Shaftesbury, 88n. Whatever the reason for Cooper’s resignation, there is no doubt that it was an impetuous decision, and one that proved a serious miscalculation, for within two and a half years the civilian interest had successfully challenged the army and introduced a new, more broadly-based, constitution which was much more to his taste.

One thing is clear: Cooper had rejected the protectorate, but he did not have an alternative in mind. In February 1655, immediately after the dissolution of Parliament and his retirement from the council, Cooper received a letter from Charles Stuart, offering him forgiveness and rewards in return for support; but he did not respond, and remained inactive even when Penruddock’s Wiltshire rising created a crisis on his own doorstep.193CCSP iii. 17; Haley, Shaftesbury, 89-90. Having said that, in later years Cooper was prepared to foster his existing connections with prominent ‘malignants’. Following the death of his second wife, in 1656 he married into yet another royalist family, the bride being a sister of Henry Spencer, 3rd Baron Spencer, created earl of Sunderland by Charles I in 1643, and killed at Naseby two years later.194Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 121. At the same time he continued his connection with the Coventrys, as guardian and defender of his nephew, John Coventry, and of another relative, Sir George Savile, in the mid-1650s, and he even became involved in a scheme to secure Savile’s estates from sequestration by secretly conveying them to others.195E134/1655/Mich17; E134/1656/Mich10 and Mich 38; Haley, Shaftesbury, 91. These royalist connections should not be overplayed, however, and Cooper must be considered a political neutral, rather than a crypto-cavalier, at this time. He was certainly willing to cooperate with the regime in local government, being included in local commissions, such as oyer and terminer, throughout the protectorate, and reappointed assessment commissioner in Dorset and Wiltshire from June 1657.196C181/6, pp. 84-308; A. and O. He also retained tentative links with the protector and his family, as can be seen in his oleaginous letter to Henry Cromwell of 10 September 1657.197TSP vi. 506.

Rebel without a cause, 1655-8

Yet his earlier flirtation with royalism in the 1640s, and his inexplicable break with Cromwell in January 1655, meant that Cooper was viewed with a degree of suspicion by many in the government in the mid-1650s. During the elections for the second protectorate Parliament in August 1656 John Thurloe* commented coolly that ‘they say Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is chosen for one’ of the county seats for Wiltshire; and the council soon moved to exclude Cooper from Parliament, perhaps agreeing with one observer that he was one of ‘fiery spirits… that would make disturbances in the House if they were in’.198TSP v. 349; HMC Egmont, i. 579; Clarke Pprs. iii. 73. Cooper’s name was included in the printed letter sent by the excluded Members soon afterwards, complaining at the protector’s ‘arbitrary’ government, although it is not clear that he endorsed its sentiments.199To all the Worthy Gentlemen that are Duely Chosen for the Parliament (1656), unpag. (E.889.8). This perception of Cooper as a committed opponent of the regime was shared by the Dorset Presbyterian John Fitzjames*, who was keen to gain Cooper’s local influence in the Dorset election in August 1656, in an attempt to prevent Major-general John Disbrowe* from packing the seats with his own men. Fitzjames asked Cooper for a ‘private meeting’, adding that ‘the country hereabouts dare mutter, which I look upon as a pretty good sign’, and he hoped for help from other moderate critics of the protectorate, including Thomas Trenchard*, Sir Gerard Naper*, Robert Coker* and Sir Walter Erle*.200Alnwick, Northumberland 551, ff. 89v, 94v. These were Presbyterians and parliamentarian country gentlemen whose allegiances had been shaken by events following the first civil war, and their expectations of Cooper suggest that they now considered him to be a fellow traveller. Whether this was an accurate reflection of Cooper’s position is another matter.

As the second sitting of Parliament opened in January 1658, there were moves to neutralize members of the opposition. On 19 January 1658 Cromwell issued a warrant discharging Cooper from the £500 fine which had hung over his head since August 1644.201PRO30/24/1/13. If this was an attempt to buy Cooper’s support, it failed. Fitzjames classed Cooper with those critics of the government who now returned to the Commons, commenting to Baynham Throckmorton* that ‘the elbow room you mentioned is pretty well stuffed up’ with not only Cooper but also republicans like Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Thomas Scot I and John Weaver*, and Presbyterians like Thomas Gewen*, now allowed to attend the Commons.202Alnwick, Northumberland 552, f. 1v. One MP reported that ‘here are very strange spirits come in amongst us, and there are daily more flocking in’, and mentioned that Cooper took his seat with Hesilrige and Lambert, who shared his opposition to the protectorate.203Clarke Pprs. iii. 133. There is little in Cooper’s committee appointments to reveal him as an enemy of the protectorate, and he even joined a committee on 28 January to attend Cromwell and ask that his speech at the opening of the sitting be printed; but Cooper’s speeches in the Commons criticising the new upper chamber or Other House certainly suggest that he was now seeking to make common cause with the commonwealthsmen.204CJ vii. 589a. On 28 January he included himself among those who ‘are neither for another House, nor for the title; and if you put the question to return an answer to the Other House, you tacitly admit such a House without further debate’.205Burton’s Diary, ii. 378-9. He returned to the same issue on 30 January, when he questioned the wisdom of transacting with the new Other House, saying that ‘once you have made a return to the message from the Lords, the logic I have, which is but little, informs me that your return acknowledges them to be a House of Lords’, and this was seen by one commentator as an attempt ‘to take in the title of the [Other] House and their chooser [the protector]’.206Burton’s Diary, ii. 401; Clarke Pprs. iii. 135. In early February Cooper pressed home the attack, warning that they might ‘admit Lords, admit all’, and allow both the protector and the Humble Petition and Advice to enter through the back door.207Burton’s Diary, ii. 419. Cooper insisted that the inner workings of the new constitutional arrangements should be investigated thoroughly before the Other House could be countenanced

Words are the keys of the cabinet of things. Let us first take the people’s jewels out, before you part with that cabinet. If you part with all first, when you come to abatement, it is a question how you will redeem them.208Burton’s Diary, ii. 433.

On 3 February 1658 Cooper acted as teller in favour of the debate on the Other House being referred to a grand committee, but the motion was defeated, with John Fitzjames and John Trevor* being tellers against.209CJ vii. 591b. But his apparent opposition to Fitzjames and his friends did not reflect local political realities. In the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, held in early January 1659, Cooper was again returned for Wiltshire, apparently working in conjunction with the Presbyterians in Dorset and Somerset. In the previous December Fitzjames had announced that he would try for one of the Dorset county seats, as ‘by some I am assured that Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper will not stand’.210Northumberland 552, f. 50v. Fitzjames was unsuccessful, but his close connection with Cooper continued. It was through Cooper that the borough of Poole, which had once again returned him as their MP on 3 January, agreed to adopt Fitzjames instead, in a second, highly irregular, election held on 24 January. Fitzjames told Cooper that he acknowledged ‘the obligation both to yourself and to them [the Poole burgesses]’ and added that ‘if it ever lies in my power to serve you, none shall be more readily, nor more heartily, your affection friend’.211C219/46, unfol.; Northumberland 552, ff. 68, 70. This private arrangement to sew up the Poole election was naturally challenged in Parliament.212Northumberland 552, f. 73v; CJ vii. 616b-7a. Cooper was also working with Fitzjames over the election for Milborne Port in Somerset, with the hope that another moderate Presbyterian, Robert Coker*, would stand. Fitzjames’s letter to Cooper in January indicates that the two had had private meetings at Wimborne St Giles, that Fitzjames had then visited the reluctant Coker, and now asked Cooper ‘to lay your commands upon him in this particular’.213Alnwick, Northumberland 552, f. 70.

Third protectorate Parliament, 1659

This close alliance between Cooper and the moderate Presbyterians in the west country modifies the traditional view, that sees his activities in the third protectorate Parliament as those of a committed member of the faction known as the commonwealthsmen, headed by Hesilrige and Sir Henry Vane II*. The commonwealthsmen upheld the rule of law and the rights of Parliament against the army and the protectorate, and were bitterly opposed to the Humble Petition and Advice, which they saw as an instrument of protectoral tyranny. It is perhaps significant that they were not so unified when it came to what form the government should take, although the leaders usually held up the pre-1653 commonwealth as a preferable model to the protectorate.214Haley, Shaftesbury, 108. There is no doubt that Cooper was a member of the ‘opposition’ to the regime, but his precise factional alignment remained unclear. Contemporaries tended to lump him in with the republicans, but not always. On 5 February it was reported that Cooper ‘came into the House’ in the company not only of the commonwealthsmen Ludlowe and Thomas St Nicholas*, but also of the Presbyterian Lambarde Godfrey* and the former army grandee (but occasional ally of Hesilrige) Sir Thomas Fairfax* (now 3rd Baron Fairfax).215Clarke Pprs. iii. 179. Cooper was identified as one of those who opposed the recognition of Richard Cromwell, with Francis Lord Aungier* describing ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Sir Henry Vane, [Edmund] Ludlowe, [Thomas] Scot, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, [Henry] Neville* and all that gang’ as being the leading opponents of the measure in February 1659; Andrew Marvell*, writing to George Downing*, thought Cooper one of the commonwealthsmen; and in early March Jerome Sankey* also included Cooper in a list of those ‘who have notably bestirred themselves against the Petition and Advice’, most of whom were commonwealthsmen.216Henry Cromwell Corresp. 455, 472; Add. 22919, f. 78.

Cooper’s activity in the formal business of the Commons appears unexceptional. He was again involved in efforts to provide Wales with ‘a learned, pious, sufficient and able ministry’ – perhaps as an attack on Philip Jones* and other leading lights of the scheme for the propagation of the gospel in Wales – and in debate on 5 February he protested that the commissioner for scandalous ministers had not used their funds wisely, saying that he had ‘passed through Wales and found churches all unsupplied except for a few grocers, or such [lay?] persons that have formerly served for two years’.217CJ vii. 600b. He was also involved with legal matters, especially habeas corpus, and he was named to the committee to consider impeachment proceedings against Major-general William Boteler*.218CJ vii. 614b, 637a. He was one of three MPs instructed to visit the speaker, Chaloner Chute I*, during his illness in March, and on 1 April he was named to both the Irish and Scottish committees.219CJ vii. 615a, 616a, 623a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 203.

Yet Cooper’s recorded speeches were among the most controversial delivered in this acrimonious Parliament. On 11 February he attacked the government based on the Humble Petition (‘never was so absolute a government. If the Florentine [Machiavelli] and he that sat in the great chair of the world [the pope?] had all met together, they could not have made anything so absolute’) and warned that once Parliament was dissolved there was nothing stopping the protector and his friends from ruling arbitrarily. For Cooper, ‘the Petition and Advice is a military government’, and he was concerned that Parliament might ‘enslave the people’ by its compliance with the protector’s wishes. When it came to the recognition of the protector, he was equally doubtful: ‘I move to assert his authority together with the liberty of the people. This will be security and indemnity to all’.220Burton’s Diary, iii. 227-8; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 62. On 18 February Cooper addressed the problem of the powers of the protector and how they were to be bound, claiming that the issue had to be resolved before the Other House could be debated: ‘unless you know what power your single person shall have, how ill you declare the power of the Other House, for this will still lay in your way?’ This was a ploy to widen the debate still further, in the hope that it would become bogged down, rather than a serious matter of constitutional moment. Cooper went even further, by asking for a clarification of the new constitution itself:

I have not heard that debated yet, whether we are upon the footing of the Petition and Advice, or on a new foundation, or on the old constitution, unless something appears to the contrary. Therefore, I would not have us surprised in a vote.221Burton’s Diary, iii. 335; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 85.

In March 1659 it was the Other House that was the focus for Cooper’s wrath. As he told the House on 4 March, he saw this as but another chapter of the dispute started in January 1658: ‘I was here last Parliament, and the constitution of the Other House was disputed all along, and their coordinate power denied still, else we had not been so soon dissolved’.222Burton’s Diary, iv. 14. His first major contribution to the current debate came three days later, when he claimed that excluding the hereditary peers made no sense (‘a few new men, but in the room of old men, what will the nation say?’), and that the offer of preserving the traditional Lords’ rights was ‘but a shoeing horn’ to ease in the Other House as it stood. As before, he immediately opened up the argument to include an attack on the government as a whole: ‘Your laws and liberties are all gone. The negatives are in one hand. An army is in your legislature, and £1,300,000 per annum forever’. He then turned on the Humble Petition, upon which ‘foot’ the protector’s ‘possessory title’ was based, adding, ‘is there that done that will pass £40 per annum, and yet are passing three nations into the hands of some few persons to them and their heirs forever?’223Burton’s Diary, iv. 50-2. For Cooper, the only bulwark against this tyranny was Parliament: ‘this nation is too hot for the army to hold without their consent. For the council, it may be chosen by this House’ but to accept the Other House in its existing form, and to give credence to the Humble Petition, would be to create ‘the most absolute government’.224Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 178. On 8 March he returned to the question of the old peers, which he warned must not be done

upon the Petition and Advice, upon that foot, I should forever abhor them and myself for doing it. Upon this new foot, you cannot restore them; though I honour them as much as any man, and wish they were restored, but rather never see a lord, than have them on such a foot.

This speech prompted John Maynard*, to respond tersely that ‘that noble knight spoke the very same yesterday, and concluded so’.225Burton’s Diary, iv. 83-4. It was not just Maynard who was wearied by Cooper’s incessant – and repetitive – interventions in debate. The diarist Thomas Burton*, who had dutifully recorded Cooper’s words until then, rebelled on 28 March, merely writing that ‘Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper made a long speech till the House was fuller of those of his party’ – principally Hesilrige and Vane – as the vote on the Other House approached.226Burton’s Diary, iv. 286-7. There is no evidence that the speech of 28 March 1659, later printed as the Seasonable Speech … Concerning the Other House, was in fact by Cooper.227Haley, Shaftesbury, 104; Clarke Pprs. iii. 189n.

Cooper’s overt hostility to the protectorate is also clear from other debates. In his speech on foreign affairs, and specifically the proposed intervention in the war between Sweden and Denmark, on 24 February, he resisted the notion of referring the matter to the protector and his council, saying that it impinged on Parliament’s right to give consent to declarations of war: ‘this implies a war … if you will begin a war, it must be upon clear grounds’ and concluded that ‘I would move, upon the whole matter, to have the power of war and peace in this House’, linking the deployment of the navy to the Sound with the control of the militia, and advising Parliament to guard its rights jealously, ‘lest by quenching flames abroad you kindle flames at home’.228Burton’s Diary, iii. 465-6, 470. He was equally irascible during the debates on the right of Scottish MPs to sit at Westminster. On 9 March Cooper was one of those who called for the ‘persons concerned’ to withdraw from the House until the matter was decided, saying that ‘if they may have a vote in this case it will be in their power to keep this vote off themselves all the Parliament’.229Burton’s Diary, iv. 106, 108. On 18 March he tried to widen the scope of the debate once again, by reminding the House that ‘none have spoken to the legality of the Petition and Advice’ and questioning the validity of the act of union, stating that ‘it rests upon the same foot as the Petition and Advice’. He was at pains to stress that his opposition to the Scots was not a personal matter – indeed, ‘I am as much for the freedom of that nation as any man’ – but with the foundations of their right to sit: ‘they either come now on account of their own interest, or upon the interest of the chief magistrate’.230Burton’s Diary, iv. 189; Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 244. When the grant of customs and excise was debated on 1 April, Cooper again turned it into a matter of trust, for ‘once declare money, they may go on without you’, and he urged the Commons to restrict the grant only to the lifetime of the Parliament.231Burton’s Diary, iv. 324; Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 13v.

Cooper’s role in the 1659 Parliament was essentially a negative one. He took every opportunity to attack the validity of the government – whether the protector, the Humble Petition or the Other House – but he did not indicate what he would put in its place. Despite his usual identification as a leading commonwealthsmen, at no point did he promote a return to the pre-1653 republic, although he did make occasional approving noises about ‘that famous Long Parliament’.232Burton’s Diary, iv. 50. This leaves Cooper in an anomalous position, for he cannot accurately be classed as a commonwealthsman, he was not a crypto-royalist, and he certainly did not subscribe to the conservative agenda of the Presbyterians, even if he did share their desire for Parliament to have greater power and for the army to be restrained. In many ways, Cooper’s ideas did not seem to have developed since January 1655, when he had rejected the protectorate but did not have anything concrete to put in its place.

Reluctant commonwealthsman, 1659-60

There is no evidence that Cooper was involved in the events that led to the dissolution of the third protectorate Parliament, or to the collapse of the protectorate, but as an enemy of the regime he should have been well placed to take advantage of the sudden political change that followed.233Ludlow, Mems. ii. 83. Yet Cooper’s position was far from secure, and this is perhaps another indication that he was not a close ally of the commonwealthsmen who now took charge. When the Rump Parliament was revived on 7 May, he made yet another attempt to have his election for Downton in 1640 recognised, and the case was referred to a committee on 9 May, but it was not resolved.234CJ vii. 646b. On 13 May he was nominated by Parliament as one of those to be chosen for the new council of state, and this decision was ratified on 19 May despite opposition from those who suspected him to be ‘assured to Charles Stuart’s interest’.235CJ vii. 652b; A. and O; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 85. Cooper’s status as a former royalist and his more recent ambiguity of allegiance made him a figure of suspicion, however, and even as his appointment was confirmed there were allegations, voiced by Thomas Scot, that he and that other equivocal politician, Bulstrode Whitelocke, ‘had correspondence with Sir Edward Hyde beyond seas’.236Whitelocke, Diary, 515; Haley, Shaftesbury, 113. According to Whitelocke’s own account, Cooper ‘made the highest professions that could be of his innocency’; ‘his expressions were so high that they bred in some the more suspicion of him, but at this time he was believed’.237Whitelocke, Diary, 516. Despite being cleared, Cooper played little part in the business of the council of state in the spring and early summer of 1659, and was recorded as having attended only four meetings, one in the middle of June and three in early July.238CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. xxiv; 1659-60, p. xxiii. He was not entirely without friends, however. George Monck* considered Cooper to be one of the more reasonable members of the administration, and on 4 June 1659 he asked him to use his influence ‘that there may be no alteration amongst the officers belonging to the forces [in Scotland]’.239PRO30/24/2, f. 355.

Cooper withdrew from the council in mid-July, perhaps disappointed at the failure of his latest attempt to establish himself in political circles, and returned to Dorset.240Haley, Shaftesbury, 115; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxiii. His retirement came shortly after another royalist attempt to win him over. At the end of May, when plans for a royalist uprising were already well advanced, Hyde received news that Cooper was ‘engaged for three or four hundred horse in Dorsetshire’; in early June Hyde wanted to know if Cooper was still considered a likely convert; but in July John Mordaunt reported that they could not hope for help from that quarter, as Cooper was ‘rotten’.241Clarendon SP iii. 477-8; CCSP iv. 209, 236; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 20, 23. Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion, like that of Penruddock four years’ before, went ahead without Cooper’s help. Whether Cooper had ever seriously entertained supporting the king at this stage is uncertain, but his actions were undoubtedly suspicious. Further allegations against him resurfaced soon after the failure of the royalist rising, and he was accused of having been in communication with Boothe before the rebellion took place, and of having privately praised Boothe’s character.242Ludlow, Mems. ii. 116; CCSP iv. 348. On 20 August it was reported that the Commons had ‘approved of the securing of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper’.243Clarke Pprs. iv. 48. Witnesses were examined before the council of state in the days that followed, and further information was received from James Dewy I* and other Dorset gentlemen.244CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 140, 143, 155, 160; CJ vii. 768b. Cooper could still rely on some allies within the council of state, however, and the addition of Hesilrige and Neville to the committee on the case on 10 September may have been the crucial step.245CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 184. Cooper was formally cleared of all charges against him on 14 September, after a report by Neville that there was no ‘just ground of jealousy or imputation upon him’.246CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 189, 194; Whitelocke, Diary, 530; CJ vii. 778a.

Cooper returned to his seat in the council of state on 15 September, and became more active in its business during the following month.247CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxiv. He was appointed to committees to attend the ambassadors of Denmark and the Netherlands, and on 4 October attended the French ambassador at his arrival at Whitehall.248CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 213, 223, 228, 236, 251. In October, when the army finally moved against the council of state, Cooper’s only choice was to oppose military rule, and he joined the struggle with enthusiasm, becoming one of the most active of the nine remaining members of the deposed council of state, working closely with Hesilrige, Scot and Neville in November and early December.249Davies, Restoration, 180. In early November Cooper and his colleagues were trying to persuade the London common council to support the restoration of the Rump, and they were already in contact with Monck in Scotland, acknowledging his ‘faithful actings in discharge of your trust and duty to this Parliament’ and assuring him of their support for his purge of the army in the north.250Oxford DNB; Clarke Pprs. v. 343. In the same period there were clandestine meetings between the old councillors and Monck’s commissioners in London.251Haley, Shaftesbury, 117-8. In a provocative move in December, after the Portsmouth garrison declared for the Rump, Cooper was given command of the London forces. He was immediately arrested by Charles Fleetwood* on suspicion of plotting rebellion.252Davies, Restoration, 182-3; Haley, Shaftesbury, 118. On his release he went into hiding and was later involved in a plot to seize the Tower of London, and narrowly avoided being re-arrested by the supporters of the army.253CCSP iv. 481; Clarke Pprs. iv. 186, 188. On 16 December Cooper, Scot, Josiah Berners* and John Weaver* sent a letter to Fleetwood announcing that their attempt on the Tower had been ‘by authority from the council of state’ acting under Parliament, and denouncing him for ‘the shame you have brought upon God’s people, with the breach of faith to the Parliament’; adding that the army had now become no more than ‘the instruments of nine men’s ambitions’, and that they now put their faith in General Monck.254TSP vii. 797-8. This gamble paid off, as on 22 December Cooper joined the Speaker and others in announcing news that the army’s resistance had collapsed, and two days’ later Cooper was one of those negotiating the restoration of the Rump Parliament.255Clarke Pprs. iv. 217; Whitelocke, Diary, 554.

In the weeks after the Rump reconvened on 26 December, Cooper emerged as one of the leading men in London. On the same day Parliament ordered that he would be one of the six men ‘authorised to order direct and conduct the forces of the army … for the safety of the Parliament and this commonwealth’, and he was also one of the four instructed to take control of the Tower.256CJ vii. 797a. On 2 January 1660 Cooper was nominated to the new council of state, and five days’ later he received the news that he had awaited for nineteen years: his election as MP for Downton was recognised by the Commons, and he was invited to the House to take the Engagement.257CJ vii. 801a, 804a, 805a. The council of state granted him Edward Montagu’s old lodgings at Whitehall on 9 January.258CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 306. On 13 January he was commissioned as colonel of horse, taking over Fleetwood’s regiment and appointing new officers of his own.259PRO30/24/1/14; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 99.

Opposition to the army had brought Cooper and the commonwealthsmen closer together during the winter of 1659-60, but with his arrival in Parliament in January the alliance started to unravel. In the same month Mordaunt told Charles Stuart of the ‘pale’ state of the Rump, with ‘Hesilrige undermined by Cooper, [Harbert] Morley*, [John] Weaver’ and others, while Vane and Neville and other old republicans stood by him.260Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 152. Cooper was instrumental in having Ludlowe removed as commander-in-chief in Ireland in January, and it was reported that he and Morley were leaders of those who worked to root out the remaining supporters of Fleetwood and Lambert ‘by … active violence’ in the next few weeks. Cooper was by then an enemy of the republicans, and his nomination as one of the five commissioners in control of the army was rejected on 11 February, with the tellers against being Henry Marten* and Henry Neville.261Ludlow, Mems. ii. 209, 223-4; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 165; CJ vii. 841a. Cooper was already in close contact with Monck. On 16 January he was named to the committee to consider the lands to be settled on Monck as a reward, and on 31 January he was included in the committee to prepare a bill justifying the ‘late actings’ of the general.262CJ vii. 813a, 827a. There is also evidence for private communication between the two men in January and February, and he allegedly had some influence over Monck in February, when the general confronted the republicans and forced the return of the secluded MPs to the Commons.263Clarke Pprs. iv. 251, 264; Oxford DNB. Cooper was one of the MPs pushing for the readmission of the secluded Members on 21 February, and, two days’ later, Cooper was duly re-elected to the council of state by the newly enlarged House of Commons.264Whitelocke, Diary, 574; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 239; CJ vii. 847a, 847b, 848b, 849a-b. In late February and early March, while new elections were considered, Cooper was mostly involved in financial and security matters. He was instructed to attend the common council of London to raise money, and he reported the bill that was subsequently drafted to authorise the loan, and he was involved in the bill for settling the London militia.265CJ vii. 848b, 849a, 856a, 857b, 858a, 860a, 867b, 871a. On 9 March he was named to the committee to call a new Parliament on 25 April 1660, and in the elections that followed he was duly re-elected as MP for Wiltshire.266CJ vii. 868b.

Turning full circle, 1660

The royalists in exile remained unsure of Cooper throughout this period. In January 1660 Hyde thought him as enigmatic as Monck, asking Alan Brodrick† ‘will Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper ever serve the king?’267CCSP iv. 517. In February Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, complained that although his relations with Cooper were good, he would not tell him much about Parliament’s intentions.268CCSP iv. 544. Hyde responded with sour comments about Cooper, whom he considered ‘mad’, and he said that he could not understand his reluctance to deal with the royalists, especially as he was clearly not wedded to the cause of the commonwealth.269CCSP iv. 557-8. It was only at the end of February that there are the first signs that Cooper was turning towards a restoration of the Stuarts, possibly through the good offices of the Coventry family and Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton (the uncle of his third wife), and Lady Willoughby thought him and Sir William Waller* to be ‘friends to the king’.270Haley, Shaftesbury, 132; CCSP iv. 573. But Charles Stuart was still uncertain in mid-March, when, in another letter to Cooper, he chose his words carefully, appealing not only to his patriotism but also to his self-interest.271Haley, Shaftesbury, 133. In April Cooper attended a meeting of the ‘Presbyterian knot’ at Sussex House, and again his loyalties were in doubt.272Oxford DNB. Henry Coventry could assure Hyde of Cooper’s conversion only on 5 May, and even then he was defensive, explaining that ‘Cromwell had for some time abused and deceived him, but that it had lasted not long, and that from his first parting with him he never had other opinion, but that the king would come in, not other desire than that he should’.273Haley, Shaftesbury, 136. If this was true, Cooper’s ‘opinion’ was a private one, and not something that materially affected his political choices before the spring of 1660.

Contemporaries were well aware of the contradictions of Cooper’s actions in the spring of 1660. As Whitelocke commented when Cooper was feted at the entry of Charles II into London, and invested as a privy councillor, he had ‘formerly pretended much contrary things’.274Whitelocke, Diary, 589. Republicans were understandably bitter, with Ludlowe’s later memoirs tracing Cooper’s role as ‘a great instrument in this horrid treachery’, and especially resenting his earlier assurances that he was ‘very affectionate to the interest of the commonwealth’ and his ‘fair words’ of friendship to Ludlowe himself.275Ludlow, Mems. ii. 83, 155, 205. Lucy Hutchinson recalled that Cooper had

insinuated himself into a particular friendship with the colonel [John Hutchinson*], and made him all the honourable pretences that can be imagined; called him his dear friend, and caressed him with such embraces as none but a traitor as vile as himself could have suspected.276Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 360.

This could be rejected as mere bile, but Cooper’s insincere protestations of love and friendship towards Henry Cromwell, expressed in September 1657, show that he was not always entirely straightforward in his dealings with those who might be useful to him and his career.277TSP vi. 506. The more general charge, that Cooper was a self-serving hypocrite, is more difficult to evaluate. In many ways, the ‘great earl of Shaftesbury’ and Dryden’s ‘false Achitophel’ were both products of the post-Restoration era. When the pre-1660 career is taken in isolation, the abiding question is not of probity but of judgement. Cooper’s many changes of side were not well-timed or well-judged. He waited until long after the opening of hostilities before openly supporting the royalists in the first civil war; then broke with the king in the beginning of 1644 and joined Parliament without any assurance that he would be accepted by them. He waited until early 1652 before following Cromwell’s rising star, and then walked away from the protectorate in January 1655, without any clear idea of what alternative government he favoured. His behaviour in the later 1650s is puzzling, and although he sided with the commonwealthsmen in 1659, there is little sign that he was a committed republican, or, except for brief periods, a firm personal ally of Hesilrige and his kind. In 1660 he held back, raising suspicions of his motives in both England and the Netherlands, and almost missing the opportunity to proclaim himself a supporter of the king before his return from exile. There is little hint of political foresight in any of these decisions, and his main skill was in retrieving himself from self-inflicted crises, largely by playing on his social standing and wealth and his extensive family connections. Cooper’s reputation as the consummate politician would only develop after 1660.