"Not merely were the Whigs forced into total submission and inactivity in the years after 1683, but after 1688 those who called themselves Whigs explicitly repudiated Shaftesbury's example. To them, in retrospect, he appeared to have been a dangerous incendiary, another Pym. They revered Russell and Sidney as martyrs put to death by a tyrant, but they would not acknowledge Shaftesbury as their political ancestor. The frequent changes in his long career pointed to insincerity and opportunism, and his final conversion seemed to have been a tactical change of front rather than a genuine change of heart. It was not an accident that Shaftesbury had to wait so long for a biographer and apologist; he retained too much of the character of the age and circumstances which had produced Pym and Cromwell."
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PrisonersPoliticians from EnglandAcademics from EnglandCritics of religionWhig (British political party) politicians
Original Language: English
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J. R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1683 (1961), p. 216
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Ashley_Cooper%2C_1st_Earl_of_Shaftesbury
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Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683), known as Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Baronet, from 1631 to 1661 and as The Lord Ashley from 1661 to 1672, was a prominent English politician during the Interregnum and during the reign of King Charles II. A founder of the Whig party, he is also remembered as the patron of John Locke.
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