The Evangelical philanthropist Lord Ashley, whose family had long resided at St. Giles House, Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, was the most accomplished of the Ashley Coopers since the 1st earl of Shaftesbury, the seventeenth century statesman, and the 3rd earl, the eighteenth century philosopher. His father, a former ministerialist Member for Dorchester, where the family controlled one seat, succeeded his brother as 6th earl in 1811 and from 1814 was a brusquely efficient chairman of committees in the House of Lords.
Following two years’ private tuition under a Derbyshire clergyman, Ashley went up to Oxford in 1819, but, committing himself to matters of study and faith, did not emulate the high spirits of his friends.
I got from his conversation a much better opinion of his heart than I ever had before. His understanding is so warped by the most violent prejudices, that he appears quite ridiculous whenever he finds an opportunity to vent them.
Fox Jnl. 35, 116.
Although evidently ill at ease, he apparently grew in confidence away from his immediate family. George Howard* (later Lord Morpeth), who made a visit to Scotland with him in the autumn of 1820, when Ashley supported the Liverpool administration’s prosecution of Queen Caroline, found him a curious companion. He confided to Fox from Castle Howard a few weeks later that
Ashley stayed here a fortnight to my boundless surprise, but he is hand in glove with all the family; my venerable mother flirted with him as hard as ever ... I have made myself the magnanimous resolution of always sticking to him, or he will be really like Cain in the world.
Add. 52010, Howard to Fox, 12 Aug., 1 Sept., 7 Oct. [1820]; Finlayson, 17-19; P. Mandler, ‘Cain and Abel: Two Aristocrats and Early Victorian Factory Acts’, HJ, xxvii (1984), 85-87.
Having taken first class honours in 1822, Ashley left England for a two-year tour of Europe, to the relief of Lady Holland, whose daughter Mary at one point attracted his amorous attentions: ‘his absence will be a blessing for the young ladies. He is a male coquet, the cruellest of characters and the most cold hearted. But he is very handsome and captivating’.
In late 1825, when he was said to have ‘entirely lost his good looks’ and to ‘not seem so haughty’, he was denied lodging in St. Giles House and at his father’s London residence at 24 Grosvenor Square, and was turned out on an allowance of £2,000.
assured me he had never met a person with a more deranged system. Knew by my symptoms that my brain must be sadly loaded; enough to bring on an excess of bad spirits. I have suffered dreadfully for many years with headaches, low spirits and most wearisome sensations, attended by great weakness of limbs.
Hodder, 33.
During the late 1820s, when not involved with politics, he sought distraction in his study of the Welsh language, astronomy and Biblical exegesis, but his principal concern came to be to deepen his personal faith and to apply his Christian principles to practical purposes.
Ashley was rumoured to have declined a requisition to offer for Dorset on a vacancy in February 1823.
I am too bilious for public life. What I suffer from the brazen faces and low insults of that radical party! I am not fit for their accursed effrontery ... Hume’s conduct tonight [on Colonel Bradley’s case] was over-disgusting, and so was that of his civilized friends. I should have stormed in madness had it been against myself. I am not fit for the House of Commons.
In the Ilchester election committee, to which he was appointed on 15 Feb., he voted in the minority for confirming the election of Richard Sharp, 22 Feb. 1827, recording in his journal that ‘he and his colleague [are] against me in politics, but I gave him the benefit of the doubts, according to [the] custom of Parliament’.
Ashley regretted having promised his constituents to oppose Catholic relief, and wrote on 25 Feb. 1827 that
I am certainly more for the Catholics than I was before, but wholly as a matter of policy, because it does not seem that danger any longer exists. This is the result of private reason, uninfluenced by speeches or conversation; but as so little turns upon me I must and may conceal it; my father otherwise would go mad.
Ibid.; Lady Holland to Son, 57.
On 4 Mar. he expressed his disillusionment with politics and his frustration at his own lack of independence, complaining that
Shaftesbury came and requested me not to say anything in the House when [the] Arigna report was given in ‘because it concerned men with whom I was in the habit of voting’. Good God, is it possible that in a case of honour and gentlemanlike delicacy I am entreated to hold my tongue out of consideration of party? ... [The treasury secretary Stephen] Lushington* asked me the other night to make a speech upon the Catholic question; I refused positively to rise and state violent opinions for the mere pleasure of a few stubborn and ignorant politicians; what will be my situation, without the right of thinking for myself? Had I better not withdraw from public life? What is at the bottom of this request? Lushington is a friend to [William] Holmes*, a scoundrel and friend to [James] Brogden*; many men would not like my censure, as by God’s gift, I am yet reckoned an honest man; he may have had several applications to neutralize me ... [Alexander] Chin Grant* is the cause. The earl’s friend yet a slippery fellow, but unhappily Lord Shaftesbury forgets all that provided a man be what he calls ‘a sound Protestant’. Now Chin Grant has dabbled over much in the joint-stocks. I am sure Lord Shaftesbury called on me today with the intention of seconding Lushington’s request, but somehow or other he left it out, thank God!
Broadlands mss SHA/PD/1.
In fact, although Marlborough had gone over to the pro-Catholics, Ashley, who as John Robert Townshend* expressed it to Fox on 6 Mar. 1827, ‘raves about the House of Commons’, divided against relief that day. According to his diary, ‘I gave a vote "almost" against my conscience, and nothing but a determination not to think prevented it being "entirely" so’; he added that it ‘is in all likelihood the last I shall give, I shall perhaps withdraw from Parliament - but gently’.
Although he retained his admiration of Canning’s talents, he opposed his appointment as prime minister in April 1827, distrusting him personally and being aghast that such an irreligious man should be given control of church patronage. He was, therefore, entirely in sympathy with the duke of Wellington, with whom he had become friends during the previous year, Peel and the other anti-Catholics who resigned from office that month. He expressed his disgust that the ‘whole run of radicals, Whigs and Canning’s party is at the duke of Wellington’, and, dismayed at the divisions among the Tories, he even upbraided Wellington’s constant companion Mrs. Arbuthnot for indiscretions which might have jeopardized his return to office. In reply to a cautious approach from Mrs. Canning, he replied on 18 Apr., politely declining to accept office because of ‘a concurrence of circumstances’ and as ‘indeed, I feel so unqualified’. Described by his friends as being ‘high minded and unworldly’ and having ‘something so very fine about him’, he at least emerged from this episode convinced that he should apply himself to a political career.
On the formation of his administration, Wellington offered a place at the India board (with a salary of £1,500) to a highly gratified Ashley, 25 Jan. 1828, when he reported to Charles Arbuthnot* that the prime minister’s ‘intentions were to put me in some situation where I should be the principal man of my department in the House of Commons, and so it would be necessary to make a speech now and then’.
I ventured to speak and, God be praised, I did not utterly disgrace myself, though the exhibition was far from glorious; but the subject was upon lunatic asylums, mere matter of plain business and requiring simplicity alone with common sense.
Bathurst congratulated him on it, but remarked that ‘Peel said that if your speech had been uttered with as loud a voice as that of Lord Morpeth, everybody would have said it was an excellent speech’. He became one of the members of the commission established under the lunacy legislation which he helped to oversee that session.
Ashley, who was listed by Planta, the patronage secretary, as likely to side ‘with government’ for Catholic emancipation, expressed himself ‘delighted’ with Wellington’s decision in its favour. This was despite his father’s continued opposition to relief, and his own fear that Catholic domination of certain constituencies would increase the demand for parliamentary reform. He commented in his diary, 5 Feb. 1829, that
I have long and deeply desired this policy. Who but he would have dared to conceive and execute it, persuade the king and overcome popular abhorrence? Peel has resolved to aid him; this is public virtue. I offered to say a few words expressive of my hearty concurrence. Peel was delighted. I did not know that my opinion was of such value.
Ellenborough Diary, i. 334; Hodder, 60.
He therefore defended emancipation on the basis of political expediency that day, jotting down afterwards that ‘I have spoken; I am but just saved from disgrace’, although the speech was again described as inaudible.
Disappointed in his hope of marrying Lady Selina Jenkinson, the former prime minister’s niece, in late 1829, Ashley fell in love with ‘Minny’ Cowper, whose mother’s lover, Lord Palmerston*, was reputed to be her father and certainly treated her as a favourite.
Emily was in the most captivating beauty. Lady Cowper very much in love with Lord Ashley and I too, we agreed, much more than the girl. However, I think her pleased with him and that she will like and marry him. He is quite willing to wait and hope and try everything to gain her affections. His manner of making up to her is so exactly what we all like and admire that everybody was in astonishment at her insouciance. So passioné, so devoted, yet so manly, si noble, nothing of the commonplace rôle in it.
It was said that ‘he does not care what risks he runs for the slightest hope’, but that he was so wretched that he even talked of giving up office and going to America.
In January 1830 Ellenborough wished that Ashley would replace Horace Twiss* as colonial under-secretary, and was disappointed to be told by Wellington that he had declined the offer of a place at the treasury.
out of office and into the ranks of the opposition. I dare say she will succeed, a man in love is always a fool, and I have observed he is becoming a frondeur. However, he will be no loss for, in talent and sense, he has disappointed us grievously.
Arbuthnot Jnl. 338.
Ashley, who defended Ellenborough’s conduct over the publication of a private letter, 5 Feb., was appointed to the select committee on the affairs of the East India Company, 9 Feb. He ‘spoke good stuff apparently’, as Ellenborough put it, when he vindicated the conduct of Sir John Malcolm* as governor of Bombay over the administration of justice there, 4 Mar., and he was a teller for the majority against the production of papers on this, 8 Mar.
Ashley was, of course, listed by ministers among their ‘friends’, but Lord Durham noted on 8 Nov. 1830 that Wellington, with whom Ashley had indeed had a brief misunderstanding, was ‘almost abandoned by his own party, who openly say (even his subalterns Ashley, Wortley, etc.) that he ought to give it up, and make way for Lord Grey’.
In general those who are out looked very cheerful, even Lord Ashley, who was quite adorable. He has the most solemn way of talking of the state of the country and says he certainly shall, and knows that it is Peel’s intention, as much as possible to support the future government. He is delighted to have gone out with that great man (the duke), but is not in the least factious; in a beautiful state of mind, notwithstanding his poverty, which I am afraid will be extreme.
Howard Sisters, 166.
On the 19th the new foreign secretary, Palmerston, who had left office with Huskisson in 1828, asked Ashley to be his under-secretary, an office incompatible with a seat in the Commons, and urged him to take Peel’s advice on the offer. He replied the next day that he had been unable to see Peel, but, although grateful for this act of friendship, he was convinced that he should decline because
the peculiarity of circumstances now attending party and the business of politics has, I know, greatly changed the grounds upon which public men of different, though approximating, opinions, must regulate their conduct. It has become a matter of feeling much more than of principle to decide the acceptance or refusal of office; and feelings, perhaps unfortunately for the interests of mankind, maintain their spirit of exclusiveness, long after principles have ceased to present any distinction.
Broadlands mss GC/SH/2; SHA/PC/62; Finlayson, 58-59.
He was at St. Giles House during the ‘Swing’ riots, when Portman, the county Member, complained to Lord Ilchester, 27 Nov. 1830, that ‘Ashley is very ill used by Lord Shaftesbury, for his presence would have been invaluable’.
Ashley voted against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., after which he was described by Sir John Benn Walsh* as ‘very low about it’, and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, which brought about a dissolution, 19 Apr. 1831.
whatever be the result of this general election relative to the bill, the ministers have succeeded in rendering some reform inevitable. In my daily unguarded talk I curse them for their wicked ambition, in my reflection I say ‘God forgive them’, but both the curse and the deprecation arise from a sense of their abominable selfishness.
Broadlands mss SHA/PD/1; Hodder, 66.
Neither he nor any of the other Ashley Coopers were put up for Chippenham, as had been expected, but his brother John came in for Gatton, and he was returned unopposed for Dorchester, as an opponent of the bill which would partially disfranchise this borough.
After a good deal of hesitation, caused partly by the assumption that one of the Bankes family would stand and Shaftesbury’s initial opposition to the idea, Ashley finally picked up the anti-reform mantle in Dorset, where a vacancy had been caused by John Calcraft’s death. By an address of 27 Sept., he offered in opposition to the reformer William Ponsonby*, the husband of his first cousin Barbara, who enjoyed a considerable head start.
Ashley, who was returned for Dorset as a Conservative at the general election in December 1832, feared for the constitution after the passage of the Reform Act, but thereafter turned his attention to social questions, notably factory legislation, and became known as the ‘working man’s friend’.