Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671 – 1713), the third Earl of Shaftesbury, was an English philosopher, writer, and politician. In his formative years he was educated at home by John Locke, later attending Winchester College. Following a period of travel and then quiet study, he served in Parliament for a short time. He soon retired from public life due to a constant battle with ill health, spending what energy he had on writing. Cooper’s most famous book, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711) was very well known and influential in England in the eighteenth century.