065 



STANHOPE, EARL. 



STANHOPE, EARL. 



666 



had begun to take an active part in politics on tho side of the Whig 

 patty, to which he had always adhered. One of the first objects 

 against which his friends and he directed their attacks was the com- 

 mercial treaty with France. Besides his exertions in the Houae, 

 Tiudal says that Stanhope was one of a number of gentlemen (Walpolo 

 among them) who attacked the proposed treaty through the press in 

 several excellent pieces ; and the editor of the collection of papers 

 called the 'British Merchant,' the publication of which is believed to 

 have chiefly prevented the ratification of the treaty, declares that the 

 great patrous of that work were Stanhope and Charles Montagu (after- 

 wards earl of Halii'ax). "When our trade was just expiring in the 

 late reign," says this writer, in his preface to tho republication of the 

 papers, " General Stanhope came into the House of Commons, as a 

 vote was ready to pass for taking off the duties on French wines for 

 two mouths, by which our treaty with Portugal would have been 

 instantly broken, by which we should have lost above a million 

 i-tcrliug per annum, and have reduced several hundred thousand 

 families to the parish for subsistence. But he opposed the vote, began 

 the debate, and brought them to consent that our merchants should 

 first be heard before it passed." This appears to have been on the 

 14th of May 1713, when, according to the 'Parliamentary History,' 

 the general made a long speech, the first made by him of which any 

 note has been preserved. We find him afterwards, in the same session, 

 moving an address to the queen (which was carried), to beseech her 

 to use her influence with the Duke of Lorraine and all other princes in 

 amity with her, to prevent them from giving shelter to the Pretender. 



On the accession of George I., Stanhope received the reward of his 

 abilities and his party zeal, by being immediately taken into favour 

 and office. On the 24th of September 1714, he was appointed one of 

 the principal secretaries of state, Viscount Townshend being the other. 

 Stanhope and Walpole now became the ministerial leaders in the 

 House of Commons ; and in that capacity the former, in the next 

 session, impeached two of the late Tory ministers, the Duke of Ormond 

 and the Earl of Strafford (who had been plenipotentiary to the United 

 Provinces at the negociation of the treaty of Utrecht). 



But it was not long before intrigue and disunion crept in among 

 the knot of attached friends who had thus obtained possession of the 

 government. Stanhope is said to have been indebted for his appoint- 

 ment as secretary of state mainly to Horace Walpole (Sir Kobert's 

 younger brother), who was brother-in-law and confidential secretary 

 to Townshend, and who recommended him to that lord, to whom the 

 king had left the selection of his colleague : " Stanhope himself," 

 Coxe tells us, on the information of Lord Orford, " made no applica- 

 tion for the office of secretary. His frequent residence in camps, and 

 skill in the profession of arms, rendered him, in his own opinion, 

 more fit for a military than a civil station; and when Walpole proposed 

 it, he considered the offer as a matter of raillery, and applied his hand 

 to his sword. It was not till after much persuasion, and the most 

 solemn assurances that his compliance would materially contribute to 

 the security of the new administration, that he was induced to accept 

 the post." ('Memoirs of Walpole/ i. 96.) Walpole, who had been 

 long on terms of the most intimate friendship with Stanhope, in 

 seconding his brother's recommendation of the latter to Townshend, 

 had, to use Coxe's expression, " answered for his integrity as for his 

 own." But from the first there had been a latent rivalry between 

 Townshend and the ambitious Earl of Sunderland, who had been very 

 ill-pleased with the office of lord-lieutenant of Ireland, a sort of banish- 

 ment, as he considered it, to which he had been appointed on the 

 formation of the new government, and was not much better satisfied 

 with that of lord privy seal, to which he had been since transferred 

 holding, in fact, as he did, that he ought to have been at the head of 

 the administration. When the king went over to Hanover, in the 

 summer of 1716, Stanhope was sent with him, specially charged by his 

 colleagues to protect their royal master (and themselves) against the 

 intrigues of Sunderland, who, under the pretext of ill health, had also 

 sought the Continent. But the end was that Sunderland managed to 

 gain over both his Majesty and Stanhope ; and that, after much corre- 

 spondence and negociation, the details of which may be read in Coxe, 

 Towusheud was dismissed from his secretaryship, with an offer of the 

 Irish lieutenancy, which he at first refused, and then accepted, to be 

 turned out of it after only a few weeks' possession. Even Coxe how- 

 ever, who takes an unfavourable view of Stanhope's conduct in this 

 affair, admits that " he did not yield to the suggestions of Sunderland 

 from venal or ambitious motives," but rather from a conviction that 

 Townshend and Walpole were really pursuing an objectionable course 

 of policy. A defence of Stanhope's share in this transaction will be 

 found in chapter seven of Lord Mahon's (Earl Stanhope's) ' History of 

 England.' All the changes consequent upon this commotion were not 

 completed till about the middle of April 1717, when the cabinet was 

 at last reconstructed by Sunderland being made secretary of state, 

 with Addison for his colleague ; and Stanhope taking the post of first 

 lord of the treasury, along with that of chancellor of the exchequer. 

 Even this however was only an interim arrangement : in July following 

 Stanhope was removed to the House of Lords, by being created Baron 

 Stanhope, of Elvaston, and Viscount Stanhope, of Mahon in the island 

 of Minorca; and in March 1718 he took the office of secretary, and 

 Sunderland that of first lord of the treasury, Mr. Aislabie being 

 appointed chancellor of the exchequer. A few weeks after Stanhope 



was made an earl by the title of Earl Stanhope : that same year he 

 proceeded first to Paris and thence to Madrid, to endeavour to avert 

 hostilities with Spain, an attempt in which he did not succeed ; and 

 he was afterwards more than once employed in similar negotiations 

 abroad, being apparently the member of the cabinet who was considered 

 to ba best acquainted with foreign countries and foreign politics. 



His death was very sudden, and accordant in the circumstances of 

 it with his constitutionally warm and sensitive temper, and with the 

 impetuous bearing of the camp, which he had never altogether shaken 

 off. In the course of the discussions on the South Sea Company affair, 

 which so unhappily involved some of the leading members of the 

 government, the Duke of Wharton had, on the 4th of February 1721, 

 delivered some severe remarks in the House of Lords, comparing the 

 conduct of ministers to that of Sejanus, who had made the reign of 

 Tiberius hateful to the old Romans. Stanhope, in rising to reply, 

 spoke with such vehemence in vindication of himself and his colleagues, 

 that he burst a blood-vessel, and died the next day. "May it be 

 eternally remembered," says the writer of the preface to the ' British 

 Merchant,' " to the immortal honour of Earl Stanhope, that he died 

 poorer in the king's service than he came into it. Walsingham, the 

 great Walsingham, died poor ; but the great Stanhope lived in the tune 

 of South Sea temptations." 



Lord Stanhope has the reputation, among other accomplishments, 

 of having been well acquainted with ancient literature; and some 

 evidence of his research into Roman history remains in a correspond- 

 ence between his lordship and the Abbd Vertot on the constitution 

 of the Roman senate, which was printed the same year in which he 

 died : ' Memorial to the Abbe" Vertot concerning the Constitution of 

 the Roman Senate, with the Abbe's Answer,' London, 4to, 1721, 

 commented upon by Hooke, in his ' Observations on the Roman 

 Senate,' 8vo, 1758. 



He married Lucy, daughter of Thomas Pitt, Esq., governor of 

 Madras, the grandfather of the first Lord Chatham. In addition to 

 Coxe and the older writers, the -' History of England from the Peace 

 of Utrecht,' by his descendant the present Earl Stanhope, may be 

 consulted for the latter part of his political course. 



STANHOPE, CHARLES, THIRD EARL, a nobleman remarkable 

 for the eccentricity of his character, and for his talents, was born in 

 August 1753. He was the eldest son of Philip, the second earl Stan- 

 hope, and his mother was Lady Grisel Hamilton, granddaughter of 

 the Earl of Haddington. On the death of his father, in 1786, he suc- 

 ceeded to the peerage. He was twice married, and his first wife was 

 Lady Hester Pitt, the eldest daughter of the first Earl of Chatham. 

 By this lady he had three daughters, of whom the eldest, Lady Hester 

 Stanhope, quitting her family and connections in Europe, retired to 

 Syria, in which country, after a residence of several years, she died. 

 After the death of his first wife, he married, in 1781, Louisa, daughter 

 of Mr. Henry Grenville, and a relative of the Marquis of Buckingham ; 

 and by this lady he had three sons, of whom the eldest waa the late 

 earl. 



It is to his mechanical inventions that Earl Stanhope principally 

 owes his celebrity. He conferred on mankind an important benefit by 

 the invention of the printing press which goes by his name. He also 

 made some improvements in the process of stereotype printing; in the 

 construction of locks for canals ; and among the lighter efforts of his 

 mind may be ranked the invention of an ingenious machine for per- 

 forming arithmetical operations. 



During great part of his life he had studied the action of the electric 

 fluid; and in 1779 he made public his theory of what is called the 

 returning stroke. He imagined that when a large cloud is charged 

 with electricity, it displaces a considerable portion of that fluid from 

 the stratum of air in its neighbourhood ; and he considered that, on 

 the discharge of the cloud, the electric matter returns into the portion 

 of the atmosphere from which it had been driven. By this theory he 

 was able to explain in a satisfactory manner the cause of the death 

 (in Berwickshire) of a man and two horses by lightning, at a time 

 when the only thunder-cloud from which a discharge could have taken 

 place was at the distance of several miles from the spot. ('Phil. 

 Transactions/ 1787.) 



Earl Stanhope was a decided opponent of the ministry of the day ; 

 and probably, if he were living in the present times, he would be 

 considered as a radical Whig. Full of enthusiasm for the improve- 

 ment of social institutions, he looked with complacency on the great 

 French Revolution, which he considered as an important step towards 

 the attainment of that end ; but he is said to have carried out his 

 principles beyond the point to which men of his own party were 

 prepared to follow him. He wrote a reply to Mr. Burke's ' Reflections 

 on the Revolution in France;' a refutation of a 'Plan for a Sinking 

 Fund/ which had been proposed by Dr. Price ; and an ' Essay on 

 Juries.' He died in 1816. 



*STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY, FIFTH EARL, only son of Philip 

 Henry the fourth earl, was born at Walmer, Kent, in 1805. He 

 was educated at Oxford, where he graduated B,A. in 1827, and was 

 created D.C.L. in 1834. In 1832, as Lord Mahon, he was elected 

 member of parliament for Wotton Basset, which place he continued 

 to represent till its disfranchisement by the Reform Act. He was 

 then (1832) returned for Hertford, but unseated on petition. He was 

 however again elected in 1835, and continued member for Hertford 



