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BENJAMIN MARTYN, THE SHAFTESBURY FAMILY, AND THE REPUTATION OF THE FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2008
Abstract
In the late 1730s the fourth earl of Shaftesbury engaged Benjamin Martyn to write a biography of his great-grandfather, the first earl, defending his reputation against the accounts given by Gilbert Burnet and others. With the support of other members of his family a considerable body of source material (some now lost) was assembled, including a memoir of Shaftesbury by his steward Thomas Stringer and a defence of his character and actions by another former member of the household, Benjamin Wyche. Most of Martyn's Life had been written by 1740, but it was not published. After his death in 1763 the papers he had left were extensively revised by a team of historians that included Roger Flexman and Andrew Kippis. Versions of the Life were printed in 1770 and 1773 but not published. Neither the fifth nor the sixth earl had any interest in the project, but the only copy of the 1770 printing not in the hands of the Shaftesbury family was bought in 1830 by a London publisher, and after further changes made by G. W. Cooke the Life was finally published in 1836.
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References
1 K. H. D. Haley, The first earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968), p. 736.
2 The extreme youth of both bride and groom attracted unfavourable contemporary comment, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu informing her sister, the countess of Mar (c. 20 Mar. 1725), that ‘Lady Gainsborough has stoln poor Lord Shaftsbury, ag'd 14. and chain'd him for Life to her Daughter upon pretence of having been in love with her several years’, The complete letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband (3 vols., Oxford, 1965–7), ii, p. 48.
3 See Clive T. Probyn, The sociable humanist: the life and works of James Harris, 1709–1780 (Oxford, 1991). There is a family tree in Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, Music and theatre in Handel's world: the family papers of James Harris, 1732–1780 (Oxford, 2002), p. 1124.
4 His father Edward (d. 1750) married Lady Dorothy Ashley (d. 1749), another sister of the third earl, in 1700. There is a short biography in Romney Sedgwick, The House of Commons, 1715–1754, History of Parliament (2 vols., London, 1970), ii, p. 147.
5 The full text is given in Benjamin Martyn and Andrew Kippis, The life of the first earl of Shaftesbury, from original documents in the possession of the family (2 vols., London, 1836), ii, pp. 333–4.; cited below as ‘Martyn, Shaftesbury (1836)’. The earlier unpublished edition, described in section VIII below, is cited as ‘Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770)’; this does not mention the epitaph. Locke's shorter version appeared in Posthumous works of Mr. John Locke (London, 1706), p. 307.
6 Martyn's work for the Georgia Trustees (1732–52) is described in his entry in the ODNB; see also Baine, Rodney M., ‘James Oglethorpe and the early promotional literature for Georgia’, William and Mary Quarterly, 45 (1988), pp. 100–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 There may also have been a family connection: in 1725 Thomas Hooper (d. 1753), rector of Wimborne St Giles and Edward Hooper's uncle, married Rebecca Martyn, widow, of Salisbury: Dorset Record Office, Frampton of Moreton Archive, D/FRA/T232. Though Martyn was born in London, according to the ODNB his family came from Wiltshire.
8 Biographia Britannica (5 vols., London, 1778–93), iv, p. 264*.
9 17 Dec. 1736, 12 Oct. 1737, 2 Nov. 1737, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester (HRO), Malmesbury papers, 9M73/G348/7, 16, 17.
10 HRO, 9M73/G349/1.
11 HRO, 9M73/G349/2.
12 HRO, 9M73/G349/6.
13 Shaftesbury to Harris, 2 Aug. 1738, HRO, 9M73/G349/7.
14 Shaftesbury to Harris, 16 Sept. 1738, HRO, 9M73/G349/9; Martyn to Thomas Birch, 20 Sept. 1738, British Library (BL), Add. MS 4313, fo. 109r.
15 HRO, 9M73/G349/10.
16 2 Oct. 1738, HRO, 9M73/G349/11.
17 Shaftesbury to Harris, 29 Oct. 1738, HRO, 9M73/G349/14.
18 Birch was himself writing a biography of the third earl for the English translation of Bayle's Dictionary, A general dictionary, historical and critical (10 vols., London, 1734–41), of which he was one of the editors and the main contributor: see Martyn to Birch, 24 June 1738, BL, Add. MS 4313, fo. 105r; Shaftesbury to Birch, 22 July 1738, BL, Add. MS 4318, fo. 114; Birch to Harris, 2, 7 Dec. 1738, HRO, 9M73/G369/1, 2; Harris to Birch, 4, 6 Dec. 1738, BL, Add. MS 4309, fos. 86–9; Martyn to Birch, 24 June 1739, BL, Add. MS 4313, fo. 105. A draft in Birch's hand with comments by Harris and Shaftesbury is in BL, Add. MS 4254, fos. 184–226, 240. The life of the third earl was published in 1739 in vol. ix, pp. 179–86.
19 Martyn to Birch, 27 Nov. 1738, BL, Add. MS 4313, fo. 110v. Birch was himself compiling a biography of the third earl, published in 1739 in A general dictionary, historical and critical (10 vols., London, 1734–41), ix, pp. 179–86.
20 His travel arrangements are described in Shaftesbury to Harris, 29 Dec. 1738, 1 Jan. 1739, HRO, 9M73/G349/18, 20.
21 Shaftesbury to Harris, 6 Jan. 1739, HRO, 9M73/G349/21.
22 Shaftesbury to Harris, 15 Nov. 1739, HRO, 9M73/G349/26.
23 HRO, 9M73/G349/30.
24 HRO, 9M73/G1113. The page numbers cited in these comments show that they were made on the first of the two drafts in the National Archives (TNA), PRO 30/24/9; this is just over half the length of the final work.
25 HRO, 9M73/G349/31.
26 Martyn to Birch, 26 Sept. 1741, BL, Add. MS 4313, fo. 129. The bishop of London had been living at Petre House, nearly opposite Thanet House, ever since the Great Fire, when his town house near St Paul's had been destroyed: Thomas Pennant, Some account of London (2nd edn, London, 1790), pp. 238–9.
27 BL, Add. MS 4313, fos. 137, 139, 142, 144, 147, 150, 153, 155, 158; HRO, 9M73/G337/49, 9M73/G338/17, 22.
28 HRO, 9M73/G337–41, 9M73/G350.
29 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/42. Mr Yorke was Philip Yorke (1720–95; second earl of Hardwicke 1764).
30 Martyn to Birch, 23 Dec. 1744, BL, Add. MS 4313, fo. 141.
31 John Locke, An essay concerning toleration and other writings on law and politics, 1667–1683, eds. J. R. Milton and Philip Milton (Oxford, 2006), pp. 226–8, 238–43, 408–14.
32 Edward Hooper to Henry Martyn, 26 Sept. 1774, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 117. Henry was Benjamin's nephew: see his letter to Hooper, 1 Sept. 1774, ibid., fo. 105. The fair copy is probably PRO 30/24/10.
33 TNA, PRO 30/24/17, fos. 229–34, is a copy made c. 1770 of a catalogue begun by Martyn.
34 These are printed in W. D. Christie, A life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, 1621–1683 (2 vols., London, 1871), i, appendices i–ii.
35 Posthumous works of Mr. John Locke, pp. 281–304; TNA, PRO 30/24/42/62, fos. 9–15.
36 TNA, PRO 30/24/6B/441, printed in Christie, Shaftesbury, ii, Appendix iii; this is not a first draft, as Christie supposed, but a later copy, probably made in the late 1730s.
37 Christie, Shaftesbury, ii, pp. xxii–xxiii. References to Stringer's memoir are in Martyn, Shaftesbury (1836), i, pp. 43, 47, 126, 141–2, 203, 227, 399, 404, 423, ii, pp. 5, 15, 43, 51, 75, 88, 91. It was not cited for any events after the late autumn of 1673.
38 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770), p. xvi; when this was published in 1836 (i, pp. 21–2) the gross mistake of ‘Joychurch’ for ‘Ivychurch’ was left uncorrected.
39 Shaftesbury to Andrew Kippis, 7 Nov. 1770, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 21v.
40 Harris to [Edward Hooper?], 14 June 1772, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 61r; adapted for publication in PRO 30/24/15, fos. 112v–113r. For earlier testimony, see Thomas Jervoise to Harris, 15 Nov. 1738, PRO 30/24/28/28.
41 Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary politics & Locke's Two treatises of government (Princeton, 1986), gives a detailed and apparently well-documented account of Locke's involvement in Shaftesbury's most intimate political affairs, but as a corrective, see Milton, Philip, ‘John Locke and the Rye House Plot’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 647–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Locke the plotter: Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics reconsidered’, Locke Studies, 7 (2007), pp. 51–112.
42 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770), p. xxi; (1836), i, p. 29; TNA, PRO 30/24/10, fo. 17.
43 TNA, PRO 30/24/15, fo. 120. This is in the hand of Andrew Kippis; for his work in revising the biography after Martyn's death, see section VIII below.
44 Biographical data not otherwise attributed are taken from a family tree in Sir Richard Colt Hoare, The history of modern Wiltshire, v, part 2 (London, 1844), p. 35*.
45 ‘Benjamin Wych of White-parish (Wilts.), Gentleman’, University of Manchester, John Rylands Library, Tatton of Wythenshawe Muniments, TW/1346–50 (1682); ‘Benjamin Wyche of Whiteparish in the County of Wiltes[hire] Gent’, HRO, 9M73/G246 (1694).
46 At Audley House, now 97 Crane Street, Ancient and historical monuments in the city of Salisbury, i, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) (London, 1980), p. 76; Everett, C. R., ‘Notes on the history of the diocesan church house, Salisbury’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 49 (1941), pp. 435–79Google Scholar, at p. 475.
47 TNA, PROB 11/670, fos. 164r–165r. On 2 Aug. 1738 Shaftesbury told James Harris that he had been searching for printed papers connected with the first earl, and presumed that ‘either my aunt Harris yourself or Mr Wyche must have them’, HRO, 9M73/G349/7. ‘My aunt Harris’ was Lady Elizabeth, but who was Mr Wyche? It cannot have been either Benjamin Wyche senior or his son Richard, as by then both were dead. One possibility is Benjamin Wyche junior (1720–52), Richard's eldest son.
48 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770), p. xxi; (1836), i, pp. 29n–30n. There is a copy in Martyn's hand in TNA, PRO 30/24/12, fo. 35; the original document appears not to have been preserved.
49 Haley, Shaftesbury, p. 726n; see also TNA, PRO 30/24/19/7.
50 E. S. de Beer, ed., The Correspondence of John Locke (9 vols., Oxford, 1976–), i, pp. 454–5, VI, pp. 570–1, viii, pp. 148–50. Eyre is also mentioned in Stringer to Locke, 15 Feb. 1681, 19 Oct. 1692, ibid., ii, p. 376, iv, p. 542.
51 TNA, PRO 30/24/20/2.
52 Bodleian Library (Bodl.), MS Locke c. 1, pp. 16, 61.
53 Bodl., MS Locke c. 1, p. 85; journal 15 May 1680, MS Locke f. 4, p. 102. Wyche is also mentioned in Stringer to Locke, 5 Feb. 1680, Correspondence, ii, p. 157.
54 29 June 1685, 31 Dec. 1687, HRO, 9M73/672/27, 28.
55 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/8, 11.
56 HRO, 9M73/G349/6. On 11 August a ‘box of writings from Mr Cooper’ arrived safely at St Giles, HRO, 9M73/G349/8. Cooper's identity is uncertain but he may have been Ann Wyche's brother.
57 TNA, PRO 30/24/17/18; HRO, 9M73/G196/1, 2. According to the Hampshire RO catalogue the first of this latter pair came from James Harris's papers, the second from those of his youngest brother George. All three appear to be copies by amanuenses.
58 TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 21v.
59 Shaftesbury to Kippis, 12 Nov. 1770, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 23v.
60 Kippis to Edward Hooper, 12 Dec. 1772, TNA, PRO 30/24/28/89.
61 There is other evidence that Wyche was interested in Burnet's History: in the first London edition one of the subscribers listed was ‘Mr. Benjamin Wyche of Salisbury’, Bishop Burnet's history of his own time (2 vols., London, 1724–34), i, sig. c2r, italics reversed.
62 Ibid., i, p. 96.
63 Ibid., i, p. 97.
64 In the earliest version, HRO, 9M73/G196/1, the entire dedication is in Wyche's hand: compare a receipt by Wyche dated 2 Oct. 1729, PRO 30/24/28/16/1.
65 The Vindication also describes Stringer's memoir as ‘writt with his own hand above thirty years since’, TNA, PRO 30/24/17/18, fo. 20r.
66 TNA, PRO 30/24/17/18, fos. 34v–35r.
67 TNA, PRO 30/24/12, fo. 900; earlier drafts in PRO 30/24/9, fos. 176v–177r, 231r. The passage was subsequently revised stylistically though not in essentials by Kippis: Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770), pp. 433–4; (1836), ii, p. 320.
68 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1770), p. 434; (1836), ii, p. 325.
69 HRO, 9M73/G350/1.
70 He died in 1727, TNA, PROB 11/618.
71 There is a photograph of the memorial in Churches of south-east Wiltshire, Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (London, 1987), p. 65. TNA, PRO 30/24/28/31/3 is the cover of a letter with a note in another hand, ‘Memorandum December 21st 1739 Mrs. Hill is still living and enjoys her senses, she was born in the year 1651.’
72 TNA, PRO 30/24/5/286.
73 Nine letters from her to Locke are in Locke, Correspondence, ii, iii, vii; there is an unpublished one from Locke to her dated 3 Aug. 1689 in the Malmesbury papers, HRO, 9M73/672/22. Letters to her from other members of the household, notably the first earl's widow, are in HRO, 9M73/672/27–34.
74 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/31/3 is the cover of a letter with a later annotation: ‘Copy of Mrs. Hill's (widdow of Mr. Stringer) Memorial sent to the Lady Elizabeth Harris.’
75 TNA, PRO 30/24/6B/417; Christie, Shaftesbury, ii, appendix viii.
76 HRO, 9M73/G248/3.
77 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/31/5; no year given but contents indicate 1739.
78 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/31/6; again no year given.
79 HRO, 9M73/G350/2.
80 ‘Mémoires pour servir à la Vie d'Antoine Ashley, Comte de Shaftesbury, & Grand Chancellier d'Angleterre, sous Charles II’, Bibliothèque choisie, 7 (1705), pp. 146–91.
81 HRO, 9M73/G911.
82 HRO, 9M73/G349/18b.
83 HRO, 9M73/G232, printed in Milton, J. R., ‘Pierre Coste, John Locke and the Shaftesbury Family’, Locke Studies, 7 (2007), pp. 159–71Google Scholar.
84 ‘… ranimera dans ma memoire plusieurs de ces bons-mots, de ces fines reparties, de ces reflexions originales dont ses discours étoient assaisonnez, et dont j'ai ouï dire bon nombre à Mr. Locke, et MyLord Shaftsbury son petit-fils’, HRO, 9M73/G232.
85 HRO, 9M73/G349/23.
86 Biographia Britannica, iv, p. 264*.
87 The identifications were made by Edmond Malone, The critical and miscellaneous prose works of John Dryden (3 vols., London, 1800), i, part 1, p. 147n. Shaftesbury had been corresponding with Flexman in 1767 and with Sharpe in 1768, TNA, PRO 30/24/28/86.
88 British Library, 10816.f.9; TNA, PRO 30/24/13.
89 Copy in TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 4r; on his relation to Martyn, see Martyn's will, TNA, PROB 11/982, fo. 332.
90 Almost certainly William Richardson, nephew of Samuel Richardson, the author of Pamela etc., H. R. Plomer et al., A dictionary of the printers and booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1726 to 1775 (London, 1932), pp. 212–13.
91 TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fos. 6r, 9r, 12r, 15r, 25v.
92 Shaftesbury to Kippis, 28 Jan. 1771, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 29.
93 TNA, PRO 30/24/12 is a copy in a very neat hand of what Martyn had left, with some alterations by Kippis.
94 Kippis to Hooper, 16 Sept. 1774, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fos. 109v–110r.
95 These are now in TNA, PRO 30/24/13.
96 Hooper to Harris, 1 Aug. 1771, HRO, 9M73/628/15.
97 Hooper to Harris, 5 June 1772, HRO, 9M73/G330/4.
98 Worden, Blair, ‘The commonwealth kidney of Algernon Sidney’, Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985), pp. 1–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 32; Lois Schwoerer, ‘William Lord Russell: the making of a martyr’, ibid., pp. 41–71, especially p. 63.
99 Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (2 vols., London, 1771–3), i, pp. 44–5. When Martyn's Life was published in 1836, the editor commented (i, p. xi) that ‘Shaftesbury died in 1771, leaving the work still unprinted, as appears from the quotations it contains from Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs, the publication of which was not completed until 1773.’ The first printed version contains nothing whatever taken from Dalrymple, and his Memoirs are irrelevant to the question of when it was printed.
100 Hooper to Harris, 5, 17 June 1772, HRO, 9M73/G330/4, 5; see also Dalrymple to Hooper 21 Mar. 1772, Hooper to Dalrymple (draft), 22 Mar. 1772, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fos. 49, 51. A detailed rebuttal of Dalrymple's remarks, apparently intended for a new introduction, is in ibid., fos. 162–80.
101 Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, ii, pp. 324–5.
102 Kippis to Hooper, 6 Feb. 1773, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 78r.
103 TNA, PRO 30/24/13, fo. 1r; PRO 30/24/15, fo. 88r.
104 TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 81r.
105 26 Oct. 1773, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 92.
106 The sheets in TNA, PRO 30/24/14 are mostly from this second printing, though a few are from its predecessor; both sets appear to have been produced by the same printer.
107 Kippis to Hooper, 16 Sept. 1774, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fos. 111r, 113r–114v, 115r.
108 Hooper to Kippis, 28 Sept. 1774, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 119.
109 Hooper to Flexman, 14 Feb. 1775, TNA, PRO 30/24/16, fo. 129r.
110 TNA, EXT 6/105, dated 26 June 1776.
111 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1761–1811.
112 TNA, PRO 30/24/28/109. Soon afterwards the Edinburgh magazine, 7 (1796), p. 373, announced that an edition would be published once enough subscribers had been obtained. This was probably the same project, and it came to nothing.
113 Cropley Ashley Cooper, 1768–1851; obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine (July 1851), pp. 82–3.
114 The sixth earl had no attachment to the whig tradition: he has been described as ‘a tory dictator’ who ‘did not encourage visitors or even private conversation’, Mandler, Peter, ‘Cain and Abel: two aristocrats and the early Victorian Factory Acts’, Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 83–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 86. There is a concise and unflattering account in G. F. A. Best, Shaftesbury (London, 1964), pp. 13–14.
115 Augustus Fitzroy, third duke of Grafton, 1735–1811, bibliophile and former prime minister. In the copy of the auction catalogue in the British Library, shelf-mark SC.S.28(9), A catalogue of the entire and valuable library of the late Rev. Dr. Kippis (London, 1796), item 627, there is a manuscript note by the auctioneers that it was sold to Grafton for £3 13s 6d.
116 John Martin, A bibliographical catalogue of books privately printed (London, 1834), p. 70.
117 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1836), i, pp. xiii–xiv. TNA, PRO 30/24/28/112 is a copy of a letter from the sixth earl to Cooke, dated 18 Mar. 1836, after Cooke's work on the biography had been completed: see G. W. Cooke, The history of party (London, 1836), pp. vii, 251n.
118 BL, Add. MS 46612, fo. 200r, dated 4 June, no year given.
119 G. W. Cooke, Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke (2 vols., London, 1835), i, pp. xii–xiii.
120 Martyn, Shaftesbury (1836), ii, pp. 369, 370, 372.