plishment to her pupil. A house was taken at Clapham, in which she lived with him, while Locke paid them frequent visits. After the death of the grandfather, the boy was taken out of Locke's charge by the parents, and in November 1683 was sent to Winchester, where he stayed till 1686 (according to his son. Mr. Bourne in ‘Life of Locke’ (i. 273) gives the date 1688). His schoolfellows, it is said, made him suffer for his grandfather's sins as a politician. He then made a foreign tour in company with Sir John Cropley (his close friend through life) and Mr. Thomas Sclater Bacon, under the tutorship of a Mr. Daniel Denoune. He visited Italy, travelled through Germany, and learned to speak French so perfectly as to be taken for a native. After his return he passed some years in study. He was elected member for Poole in William's second parliament, 21 May 1695; and after the dissolution in the autumn he was again elected (4 Nov. 1695) for the same place.
In November 1695 a bill allowing counsel to prisoners accused of treason came before the house. Lord Ashley, as his son says, made his first speech in its favour, and was so confused as to break down. The house encouraging him to go on, he made a great impression by the ingenious remark: ‘If I am so confounded by a first speech that I cannot express my thoughts, what must be the condition of a man pleading for his life without assistance!’ (General Dict., where it is said that the story was erroneously applied to Charles Montagu, lord Halifax, in a ‘Life’ published in 1715; an error repeated by Johnson in ‘Lives of the Poets’). His health was unequal to parliamentary labours, and he retired after the dissolution of 1698. He spent a year in Holland, where he lodged, as Locke had done, with Benjamin Furly, a quaker merchant, afterwards his attached friend, and became known to Bayle and Le Clerc. His first book, the ‘Inquiry concerning Virtue,’ was surreptitiously printed by Toland during his absence. No copy of this, if published, has been found. On 10 Nov. 1699 he became Earl of Shaftesbury upon his father's death. He attended the House of Lords regularly till William's death; but his health limited his participation in political struggles. He was, however, an ardent whig, and was exceedingly keen in supporting the cause. When the great debates upon the partition treaty began in March 1701, he was ‘beyond Bridgewater in Somersetshire,’ but, on a summons from Lord Somers, posted to London at once, in spite of weakness, and was in the House of Lords next day—a feat then regarded as extraordinary. Somers afterwards held his proxy. His letters show that his zeal never cooled. He boasts that he was at one time alone in urging a dissolution in the last year of William's reign. He did his best to influence elections, and to support the war party. William made offers to him, and it is said desired to make him a secretary of state. The statement that he had a share in William's last speech (31 Dec. 1701) is perhaps due to the fact that he published an anonymous pamphlet called ‘Paradoxes of State relating to the present juncture … chiefly grounded on His Majesty's princely, pious, and most gracious speech’ (1702).
Soon after the accession of Anne he was removed from the vice-admiralty of the county of Dorset, ‘held by his family for three generations.’ Warrants (preserved in the Record Office), at the end of William's reign and the beginning of Anne's, order him to impress five hundred seamen, and take other military steps in his capacity as vice-admiral. His political activity injured both his health and his fortune. He retired to Holland for a year during 1703–4. He lived on 200l. a year, being alarmed, needlessly as it seems from his steward's reports, at the state of his income. Returning in the summer of 1704, he was kept at sea for a month by contrary gales, and came home in a very delicate state of health. He afterwards suffered continually from asthma, and found the smoke of London intolerable. When not residing at his house at Wimborne St. Giles, he was often at Sir J. Cropley's house at Betchworth, near Dorking, and at the time of his marriage took a house at Reigate. He did not venture to stay nearer London than Chelsea, where he had a small house. In 1706 the ‘great smoak’ forced him to remove from Chelsea to Hampstead. In 1708 his friends, especially Robert, afterwards Viscount, Molesworth, pressed him to marry. After a long and unsuccessful negotiation for a lady whom he admired, he was forced to put up with Jane, daughter of Thomas Ewer of Lee in Hertfordshire. He was married in August 1709. His chief end, he says, was the ‘satisfaction of his friends,’ who thought his family worth preserving and himself worth nursing; and he scarcely ventures afterwards to make the claim, which would be audacious for any man, that he is ‘as happy a man now as ever.’ He had not seen the lady till the match was settled, and then found, in spite of previous reports, that she was ‘a very great beauty’ (to Wheelock 8 Aug. 1709, Shaftesbury Papers). His modest anticipations of happiness seem to have been fulfilled; but his health rapidly declined, and in July 1711 he set out with Lady Shaftesbury for Naples to try the warmer climate. He passed through France, and was civilly
