Antony Ashley Cooper, then sitting in the House of Commons under the name of Lord Ashley, and after 1851 known to the world as the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was one of the most remarkable Englishmen of the century. This new-found champion of the working-classes was born in London, April 28, 1801. His father was the sixth Earl of Shaftesbury, and his mother was a daughter of the third Earl of Marlborough. The father's preoccupation in public life and his mother's social duties left the early home training of the lad to a pious domestic, an earnest Christian, whose precepts and example did more than anything else to give bent to his life. In later years the Earl freely owned his mother's housekeeper to be the best friend he had ever had. He did little to distinguish himself as a schoolboy at Harrow, but Oxford appealed to him, and he applied himself to classical studies at the university with a zeal which won for him a degree with the first honors. Parliament was the natural place for a peer's son in those days of pocket boroughs, and into the House of Commons he went as Lord Ashley at the age of twenty-five. In his diary he recorded his devout purpose to use his position "for the success of religion and true happiness," and on taking the oaths he "breathed a slight prayer for assistance in thoughts and deeds." A man of profound introspection, intense religious feeling, and sincere purpose to be of service to his kind, had some difficulty in adjusting himself to the selfish politics of the House. The first subject upon which he found voice was the reform of the laws for the care of lunatic paupers, a class whose pitiable state might have moved the most stolid heart. To this merciful project he addressed himself with a zeal and persistency which were to characterize his later efforts for other downtrodden classes. When the labor leaders turned to him, in 1833, to champion their cause, he took the question into consideration over night, obtained his wife's cordial approval, consulted his Bible, resorted to prayer, and the next day gave himself unreservedly to the cause. His friends of the aristocratic families shunned him, his parents discountenanced his design and closed their doors against him for many years, but, said he, in dedication of himself to the work, "I believe it is my duty to God and to the poor, and I trust He will support me."