Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Henry, Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751) are sometimes included among the writers known as the English deists. It is probably better, however, to treat them as independent philosophers with their own substantive views and projects.

Many scholars have read Shaftesbury's writings to fit in with preconceived notions of ‘deism’. Shaftesbury's thought, however, is not well captured by this label. Even though he believed in a governing mind, there is little evidence that he ever thought of himself as a deist in an exclusive religious identity sense. At one stage he knew little about the ‘deism’ of those who called themselves deists, as a hitherto little noted passage reveals:

Shaftesbury associated with Toland, Stephens and Molesworth in political campaigns in the 1690s. He admired Collins, distrusted Toland and was critical of Tindal. But this political association did not imply more than a limited philosophical convergence, mainly in the area of perfect theism and a secularizing deployment of Benjamin Whichcote's principles.