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than any conscientious change of sentiment, seems to have dictated his conduct in the present instance, but Clarendon stoops to the part of a defamer when he avers that from the moment of his making common cause with the parliament, he "became an implacable enemy to the royal family." On the contrary, he had a considerable part in bringing about the private negotiation between Charles and Lord Hollis, on the occasion of the treaty of Uxbridge; and it is said that the insurrection of the club-men was a contrivance of his to check the power which, after the battle of Naseby, was assumed by the leaders of the army. In 1646 he was appointed sheriff of Wilts. On the breaking up of the long parliament, Sir Anthony was one of the members of the convention which succeeded it. Cromwell had marked the talents and knew the influence of the young man, and did his best to attach him to his party, but failed. In 1654, we find Sir Anthony signing the famous protestation against the tyranny and arbitrary measures of the protector; yet he retained a seat in the privy-council while opposing the head of the government.

After the deposition of Richard Cromwell, Sir Anthony was named one of the council of state, and a commissioner of the army; but he had now chosen his part with Monk, and was actively engaged in concerting those measures which led to the Restoration. He was one of the twelve members who carried the invitation to Charles II.; and on the arrival of the king in England, he was appointed a member of the privy-council. It would have been well for his political memory that he had declined the office which was soon afterwards conferred on him, of a commissioner in the trial of the regicides. He accepted it, per

haps, with reluctance, and it is certain that he evinced no rancour towards the unfortunate objects of his sovereign's hatred; but he ought at once peremptorily to have declined the task of sitting in judgment upon men for offences in which he was not altogether guiltless of participation.

On the 20th of April, 1661, Sir Anthony was created Baron Ashley of Winborne, St Giles; soon after, he was made chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer, and one of the lords commissioners for executing the office of high-treasurer. He was now a leading member of the famous cabal ministry; and it is really doubtful whether or not he was the spirit which actuated that infamous association in some of its worst plots against the liberties and constitution of the country. The testimony on this point is conflicting and very puzzling; and his public conduct at this period is not a little enigmatical. For example, we find him promoting the declaration for liberty of conscience, and uttering many very just and manly sentiments on the subject of religious toleration. We know also that Charles hesitated to entrust him with the secret of his disgraceful treaty with the French king; but then, on the other hand, we find him strongly charged with having originated the plan for shutting up the exchequer, and with issuing writs for the election of members of parliament during a recess. We know, also, that he strenuously supported the unjust and ruinous war with Holland.

In 1672 he was created Baron Cooper of Pawlet, in Somerset, and earl of Shaftesbury; and in the following November, he was named lord-high-chancellor. His conduct on the bench was able, impartial,

and resolute; but it failed to satisfy the court. It approximated too much to political independence. The duke of York became restless for the dismissal of a man whose principles he dreaded; and Shaftesbury, before he had been much more than a year in office, saw the seals pass from his hands to those of a much less considerable, but more pliant man, Sir Heneage Finch.

Shaftesbury now became one of the most active and powerful leaders of the opposition. We are not prepared to vindicate the facility with which he passed from the extreme side of the state of one party to the extreme side of the other; on the contrary, we admit the charge, that he was both a factious and an interested man; but we maintain that the principles to which he now gave his support were sound and constitutional; and that when with Buckingham he was committed to the Tower for the boldness with which they maintained that a prorogation of fifteen months amounted to a dissolution of parliament, he, and his associate lords were entitled to the respect and gratitude of every lover of his country's liberty. He has been charged with the contrivance of the popish plot in 1678, for the purpose of embarrassing the ministry. It is difficult to determine what was the nature of his connexion with that extraordinary piece of political knavery; but it is certain that he made a very able use of the occurrence to force out Danby's administration, and compel the king once more to replace him at the head of affairs. On the 21st of April, 1679, Shaftesbury was appointed lordpresident of the new privy-council; but he remained in office only four months. The duke of York laboured to displace a minister whose endeavours to promote a bill for his exclusion from the succession he knew to have been unremitting; and he soon carried his point with his weak and infatuated brother. On his dismissal from office, he was charged by some of the duke's creatures with subornation of perjury, and was tried for that offence, but acquitted by his jury. Soon after this Dryden's severe satire of Absalom and Achitophel appeared, in which the fallen minister was very roughly treated. The earl fully felt the poet's lash, but nevertheless acted most generously towards his satirist. Having the nomination to a scholarship as governor of the charter house, he gave it to one of the poet's sons, without any solicitation. This act of generosity melted Dryden, and in the next edition of the poem, he added the four following lines in praise of the earl's conduct as lord-chancellor.

"In Israel's court ne'er sat an Abethdin

With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbrib'd, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of dispatch, and easy of access."

Shaftesbury, now thoroughly disgusted with political life, resolved to bid a final adieu to the scene of his alternate triumphs and disappointments, and to every thing which could tempt him once more to descend into the arena of party-strife. With this view, he arranged his affairs in England, and embarked in November, 1682, for Holland, where he purposed to spend the remainder of his days in complete retirement. He arrived in Amsterdam, and had just completed an establishment suitable to his rank in that city, when he was attacked by gout in the stomach, which terminated his existence on the 22d of January, 1683.

Shaftesbury has been unfortunate in his biographers. They were ail men of high party-spirit, and have in many instances dealt unfairly by his memory. It is also unfortunate both for the earl and for posterity, that the history of his own times which he had himself drawn up and submitted for publication to John Locke, should have perished as it did. Locke, on the execution of Algernon Sidney on a charge of treason, substantiated only by his private papers, became apprehensive for himself, and committed Lord Shaftesbury's manuscripts with other papers to the flames. Had this document seen the light, it is probable that Shaftesbury's character would have stood much higher than it does with posterity; much of his history would have been rescued from actual misrepresentation; and some dubious points might have been cleared up to the satisfaction of his friends. It is hardly possible to conceive that a man whom Locke honoured with his friendship and confidence, was all that Needham, Otway and the Oxford historian have represented him.

Charles Fleetwood.

DIED A. D. 1688.

CHARLES FLEETWOOD, lord-deputy of Ireland during the protectorate, was the son of Sir William Fleetwood. He took an early and decided part with the parliamentary party on the breaking out of the civil war, and in October, 1645, was made governor of Bristol. After the establishment of the commonwealth, he was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general, and had a considerable share in the victory at Wor

cester.

On the death of Ireton, he married his widow, and thus became the son-in-law of the protector, who appointed him commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland. In this post he acquitted himself so vigorously that Ireland was soon reduced to perfect subjection. His services were rewarded with the lord-deputyship of the subjugated territory. Notwithstanding of his relationship to the protector, and the favours he had received at his hand, Fleetwood, in conjunction with Disbrowe and Lambert, vigorously opposed the proposition for conferring on Cromwell the title of king.

On the death of Oliver Cromwell, Fleetwood joined the party who deposed Richard; and in May, 1659, was chosen one of the council of state. On the 17th of the following October, he was nominated commander-in-chief of all the forces. While the negotiations were going forward for the recall of the king, Whitelock advised Fleetwood to communicate with Charles at Breda, and thus anticipate Monk; but the remonstrances of Sir Henry Vane and Colonel Barry prevented him following this sagacious advice. After the Restoration, he retired to Stoke-Newington, where he died in 1688.

Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

BORN A. D. 1627.-DIED A. D. 1688.

THIS brilliant but abandoned nobleman was the son of George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, by Lady Catherine Manners. He was an infant of only one year at the time of his father's assassination by Felton.

He studied at Cambridge; and, having performed the usual continental tour, was presented at court. On the decline of the king's cause he attended Prince Charles into Scotland. After the battle of Worcester, he retired to the continent, and attached himself to the exiled court. Desirous, however, of retrieving his affairs, he came privately to England, and, in 1657, married Mary, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, through whose influence he recovered a considerable portion of his forfeited property. He contrived, however, to preserve his interest with the king, while thus making his peace with the parliament, for, immediately after the Restoration, we find him appointed one of the lords of the bed-chamber, and master of the horse.

In 1666 he forfeited his high offices by engaging in some very treasonable practices, the object of which seems to have been nothing less than to have thrown the whole kingdom into a state of rebellion, and to have availed himself of whatever opportunity might have presented itself during the crisis for gratifying his boundless ambition and rapacity. The detection of the plot at first highly irritated the king, who threatened to proceed to extremities against the duke. But, within less than a year after, we find him restored to his seat in the privy-council, and his offices at court. Charles was too much dependent on the ministers of his pleasures to deprive his court of the presence of one so fitted by his varied accomplishments to amuse and gratify him. But the duke's malevolence and love of intrigue suffered no abatement from his experience of the past. He is supposed, on pretty good evidence, to have been the prime instigator of Blood's atrocious attempt to put the duke of Ormond to death.1 Ormond had taken an active part in exposing Buckingham's treasonable practices, and that was sufficient to excite the latter to the deadliest purposes of revenge.

A still more infamous transaction was his murder of the earl of Shrewsbury in a duel, after having debauched his countess. Malone nas copied the following account of this affair from a MS. letter, dated Whitehall, 10th January, 1673-4:- Upon Wednesday the 7th, the two houses met. In the lords' house, immediately upon his majesty's recess, the earl of Westmoreland brought in a petition against the duke of Bucks, in the name of the young earl of Shrewsbury, desiring justice against him for murdering his father, making his mother a whore, and keeping her now as an infamous strumpet. To this the duke replied 'Tis true he had had the hard fortune to kill the earl of Shrewsbury, but it was upon the greatest provocation in the world:

1 See Carte's Life of the duke of Ormond.

that he had fought him twice before, and had as often given him his life that he had threatened to pistol him wherever he should meet him, if he could not fight him: that for these reasons the king had given him his pardon. To the other part of the petition concerning the Lady Shrewsbury, he said he knew not how far his conversation with that lady was cognizable by that house; but if that had given offence, she was now gone to a retirement." The whole transaction may afford some idea of the profligacy of the reign in which such a tragedy could be acted with impunity; for although a day was appointed to consider the petition, it does not appear that any thing farther was done in the business, and Buckingham continued at court, the favoured and envied of all his competitors.

In 1671, this notoriously profligate and abandoned nobleman was installed chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Soon after, he was sent on an embassy to the French court, where his manners and person fascinated the king so much that on his departure he presented him with a sword and belt, set with jewels, and valued at 40,000 pistules.

In 1674, a change seems to have come over the whole policy of the duke. He now courted the favour of the puritan party, and set himself in sturdy opposition to the court. But about the period of Charles's death, his own health became so much affected that he was reluctantly compelled to retire into the country to recruit himself. The spot which he made choice of with this view was his own manor of Helmesley, in Yorkshire. Here he generally passed his time betwixt the sports of the chace and the pleasures of the table. An ague and fever which he caught by sitting on the ground after a long hunt, terminated his life. The attack was so sudden and violent that he could not be removed to his own house, but was conducted to a wretched village inn, where, after languishing three days, he expired, unregretted, and almost unattended. He had lived the life of a profligate, and

he died the death of an outcast.

It is impossible to say any thing favourable of such a man as Villiers, whose sole aim throughout life seems to have been self-gratification, and who scrupled not to commit any crime in the pursuit of this single object. He was a wit, and his writings possess considerable merit. particularly his comedy of the Rehearsal.'

Lord Jefferies.

BORN A. D. 1648.-DIED A. D. 1689.

THIS thrice infamous man was born at Acton near Wrexham, in the county of Denbigh, about the year 1648. He was the sixth son of John Jefferies, Esq. of that place. He received his education successively at the free school of Shrewsbury, at Saint Paul's, and at Westminster. At an early age he became a member of the Inner Temple, where, under the united impulses of necessity and ambition, he applied himself with extreme diligence to the study of law. It has been alleged that he was never regularly called to the bar; but that, taking advantage of the extreme confusion produced by the breaking out of the

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