SHAFIROV, PETER PAVLOVICH, Baron (1670–1739), Russian statesman, one of the ablest coadjutors of Peter the Great, was of obscure, and in all probability of Jewish, extraction. He first made himself useful by his extraordinary knowledge of foreign languages. He was the chief translator in the Russian Foreign Office for many years, subsequently accompanying Peter on his travels. Made a baron and raised to the rank of vice-chancellor, he displayed diplomatic talents of the highest order. During the unlucky campaign of 1711, he succeeded against all expectations in concluding the peace of the Pruth (see Turkey: History). Peter left him in the hands of the Turks as a hostage, and on the rupture of the peace he was imprisoned in the Seven Towers. Finally, however, with the aid of the British and Dutch ambassadors, he defeated the diplomacy of Charles XII. of Sweden and his agents, and confirmed the good relations between Russia and Turkey by the treaty of Adrianople (June 5th, 1713). On the institution of the colleges or departments of state in 1718, Shafirov was appointed vice-president of the department of Foreign Affairs, and a senator. In 1723, however, he was deprived of all his offices and sentenced to death. The capital sentence was commuted on the scaffold to banishment, first to Siberia and then to Novgorod. Peculations and disorderly conduct in the senate were the offences charged against Shafirov, and with some justice. On the death of Peter, Shafirov. was released from prison and commissioned to write the life of his late master. He had previously (1717), in an historical tract on the war with Charles XII., in which Peter himself collaborated, epitomized, in a high panegyric style, some of the greatest exploits of the tsar-regenerator. The successful rivalry of his supplanter, Andrei Osterman, prevented Shafirov from holding any high office during the last fourteen years of his life.
See B. M. Solovev, History of Russia, vols. xiii.-xvi. (Rus.) (Petersburg, 1895). (R. N. B.)
SHAFT (O. Eng., sceaft, from scafan, to shave; the word is
common to Teutonic languages), any slender, smoothed rod or
stick, and so first used of the body of an arrow or spear to which
the head is attached; hence the word is applied to the handle of a
tool, and to the pair of bars between which a horse is harnessed to
a vehicle, and in machinery to connecting bars or rods conveying
power from one part of a machine to another. It is also applied
to an opening sunk in the ground for mining or other purposes
(see Shaft-sinking). This use is probably due to the use of
Ger. Schacht, a variant of schaft. In architecture the term
“shaft” is applied to the body of a column between the capital
and the base. In Romanesque work shafts are occasionally
octagonal, and are sometimes ornamented with the zigzag or
chevron, or fluted vertically or in spirals; the most beautiful
examples of the latter being found in the cloisters of St John
Lateran and at St Paul’s outside the walls at Rome, where they
are enriched with mosaics. Perhaps the earliest ornamented
shafts are those of the Parthian Palace, now the mosque, at
Diarbekr in Mesopotamia.
SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 1st Earl of (1621–1683), son of Sir John Cooper of Rockbourne in Hampshire, and of Anne, the only child of Sir Anthony Ashley, Bart., and was born at Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, on the 22nd of July 1621. His parents died before he was ten years of age, and he inherited extensive estates in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, much reduced, however, by litigation in Chancery. He lived for some time with Sir Daniel
Norton, one of his trustees, at Southwick, and upon his death in 1635 with Mr Tooker, an uncle by marriage, at Salisbury.
In 1637 he went as a gentleman-commoner to Exeter College,
Oxford, where he remained about a year. No record of his
studies is to be found, but he has left an amusing account of
his part in the wilder doings of the university life of that day,
in which, in spite of his small stature, he was recognized by his
fellows as their leader. At the age of eighteen, on the 25th of
February 1639, he married Margaret, daughter of Lord Coventry,
with whom he and his wife lived at Durham House in the Strand,
and at Canonbury House in Islington. In Marcy 1640, though
still a minor, he was elected for Tewkesbury, and sat in the parliament which met on the 13th of April, but appears to have taken
no active part in its proceedings. In 1640 Lord Coventry died,
and Cooper then lived with his brother-in-law at Dorchester
House in Covent Garden. For the Long Parliament, which met
on the 3rd of November 1640, he was elected for Downton in
Wiltshire, but the return was disputed, and he did not take his
seat—his election not being declared valid until the last days of
the Rump. He was present as a spectator at the setting up of
the king’s standard at Nottingham on the 25th of August 1642;
and in 1643 he appeared openly on Charles’s side in Dorsetshire,
where he raised at his own expense a regiment of foot and a troop
of horse, of both of which he took the command. He was also
appointed governor of Weymouth, sheriff of Dorsetshire for the
king and president of the king’s council of war in the county.
In the beginning of January 1644, however, for reasons which
are variously reported by himself and Clarendon, he resigned
his governorship and commissions and went over to the parliament.
He appeared on the 6th of March before the standing
committee of the two Houses to explain his conduct, when he
stated that he had come over because he saw danger to the
Protestant religion in the king’s service, and expressed his
willingness to take the Covenant. In July 1644 he went to
Dorsetshire on military service, and on the 3rd of August received
a commission as field-marshal general. He assisted at the
taking of Wareham, and shortly afterwards compounded for
his estates by a line of £500 from which, however, he was afterwards
relieved by Cromwell. On the 25th of October he was
made commander-in-chief in Dorsetshire, and in November
he took by storm Abbotsbury, the house of Sir John Strangways—an
affair in which he appears to have shown considerable
personal gallantry. In December he relieved Taunton. His
military service terminated at the time of the Self-denying
Ordinance in 164 5; he had associated himself with the Presbyterian
faction, and naturally enough was not included in the
New Model. For the next seven or eight years he lived in comparative
privacy. He was high sheriff of Wiltshire during 1647,
and displayed much vigour in this office. Upon the execution
of Charles, Cooper took the Engagement, and was a commissioner
to administer it in Dorsetshire, On the 25th of April 1650,
he married Lady Frances Cecil, sister of the earl of Essex, his
first wife having died in the previous year leaving no family.
In 1651 a son was born to him, who died in childhood, and on
the 16th of January 1652, another son, named after himself,
who was his heir. On the 17th of January he was named on
the commission for law reform, of which Hale was the chief; and on the 17th of March 1653, he was pardoned of all delinquency and thus at last made capable of sitting in parliament. He sat for Wiltshire in the Barebones parliament, of which he was a leading member, and where he supported Cromwell’s views against the extreme section. He was at once appointed on the council of thirty. On the resignation of this parliament he became a member of the council of state named in the “Instrument.” In the first parliament elected under this “Instrument” he sat for Wiltshire, having been elected also for Poole and Tewkesbury, and was one of the commissioners for-the ejection of unworthy ministers. After the 28th of December 1654, he left the privy council, and henceforward is found with the Presbyterians and Republicans in opposition to Cromwell. His second wife had died during this year; in 1656 he married a third, who survived him, Margaret, daughter of Lord Spencer, niece of the earl of Southampton, and sister of the earl of Sunderland, who died at Newbury. By his three marriages he was thus connected with many of the leading politicians of Charles II.’s reign.
Cooper was again elected for Wiltshire for the parliament of 1656, but Cromwell refused to allow him, with many others of his opponents, to sit. He signed a letter of complaint, with sixty-five excluded members, to the speaker, as also a “Remonstrance” addressed to the people. In the parliament which met on the 20th of January 1658, he took his seat, and was active in opposition to the new constitution of the two Houses. He was also a leader of the opposition in Richard Cromwell’s
