BENJAMIN MARTYN, THE SHAFTESBURY FAMILY, AND THE REPUTATION OF THE FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]