Sir Anthony was delighted with his grandson, and although at the time of the infant’s birth, the septuagenarian was on the point of espousing a young wife, his affection was in no wise diminished for his daughter, or her boy.
Lady Cooper and her father died within six months of each other. Sir John married again, a daughter of Sir Charles Morrison, of Cassiobury, county Herts, by whom he had several children. He died in 1631, leaving the little Anthony bereft of both parents, with large but much encumbered estates, and law-suits pending.
Many of his own relations being most inimical to his interests, Anthony went with his brother and sister to reside with Sir Daniel Norton, one of his trustees, who—we once more quote the autobiography—‘took me to London, thinking my presence might work some compassion, on those who ought to have been my friends.’
He refers to the suit in which they were now engaged. The boy must have had a winning way with him (as the old saying goes), for when only thirteen, he went of his own accord to Noy, the Solicitor-General, and entreated his assistance as the friend of his grandfather. Noy was deeply touched, took up the case warmly, and gained one suit in the Court of wards, stoutly refusing to take any fee whatever.
After Sir Daniel Norton’s death, Anthony went to live with an uncle, Mr. Tooker, near Salisbury, though it was supposed Lady Norton would gladly have kept him under her roof, with a view to a match with one of her daughters. He says himself,—‘Had it not been for the state of my litigious fortune, the young lady’s sweet disposition had made me look no farther for a wife.’
In 1637 he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he ‘made such rapid strides in learning as to be accounted the most prodigious youth in the whole University.’ By his own showing, he was popular with his companions and well satisfied with himself, indeed a general spirit of self-complacency pervades these pages. In little more than a year he went to Lincoln’s Inn, where he appears to have found the theatres, fencing galleries, and the like, more to his taste than the study of the law.
An astrologer who was in old Sir Anthony’s house at the time of the grandson’s birth, cast the horoscope, and to the fulfilment of these predictions, may probably be attributed young Anthony’s own predilection for the study of astrology in later days. The horoscope in question foreboded feuds and trouble at an early age, and some years afterwards the same magician, foreseeing through the medium of the planets that a certain Miss Roberts (a neighbour without any apparent prospects of wealth) would become a great heiress, he endeavoured to persuade his pupil to marry her. The lady did eventually come into a considerable fortune; but Mr. Tooker, who was not over-credulous, had other views at the time for his nephew; and accordingly, at eighteen, Ashley Cooper became the husband of Margaret, the daughter of my Lord Keeper Coventry, ‘a woman of excellent beauty and incomparable gifts.’
The young couple resided with the bride’s father in London, Anthony paying flying visits to Dorsetshire. He was subject to fits, but even this infirmity redounded to his advantage according to his own version; how that being in Gloucestershire on one occasion, and taken suddenly ill, ‘the women admired his courage and patience under suffering,’ and he contrived to ingratiate himself with the electors of Tewkesbury to some purpose.
He gives us an amusing and characteristic description of how he won the favour of the electors and bailiffs of this town by his conduct at a public dinner, where he and a certain Sir Henry Spiller were guests, and sat opposite each other. The knight, a crafty, perverse, rich man, a Privy Councillor, had rendered himself very obnoxious in the hunting-field, and at the banquet aforementioned, began the dinner with all the affronts and dislikes he could possibly put on the bailiffs and their entertainment, which enraged and disgusted them, and this rough raillery he continued. ‘At length I thought it my duty to defend the cause of those whose bread I was eating, which I did with so good success, sparing not the bitterest retorts, that I had a complete victory. This gained the townsmen’s hearts, and their wives’ to boot. I was made free of the town, and at the next Parliament (though absent at the time), was chosen burgess by an unanimous vote, and that without a penny charge.’
Sir Anthony had strange humours: he loved a frolic dearly. He had a confidential servant who resembled him so much that, when dressed in his master’s left-offs, the lackey was often mistaken for his better. This worthy was a clever man-milliner, and had many small accomplishments which made him popular in country houses, and his master confesses that he often listened to the valet’s gossip, and made use of it, in the exercise of palmistry and fortune-telling, which produced great jollity, and ‘of which I did not make so bad a use as many would have done.’ With this account he finishes the record of his youth. A time of business followed, ‘and the rest of my life is not without great mixture of public concerns, and intermingled with the history of the times.’