526 S T A 
STANFIELD, a parish of England, in Norfolk ; 6 miles 
north-west of East ijereham. 
STANFOLD, a township of Lower Canada, in the county 
of Buckingham, situated on the south-east side of the river- 
Becancour, that bounds its front. 
STANFORD, a parish of England, in Norfolk; 6 miles 
south-west of Watton. 
STANFORD, a village and parish of England, in the 
county of Worcester. The church here is an elegant Gothic 
building of stone, recently erected. About one mile distant 
are the remains of an old hermitage, called Stonehouse, some 
of the rooms of which are hewn out of the solid rock; 11 
miles from Worcester. Population 122. 
STANFORD-ON-AVON, a parish of England, in North¬ 
amptonshire; 11J miles nortli-by-east of Daventry. 
STANFORD-ON-SOAR, a parish of England, in Not¬ 
tinghamshire, situated on the river Soar, opposite to Lough¬ 
borough, and 13 miles south-by-west of Nottingham. 
STANFORD-IN-THE-VALE, a parish of England, in 
Berkshire; 4 miles east-south-east of Great Farringdon. Po¬ 
pulation 677. 
STANFORD-LE-HOPE, a parish of England, in Essex, 
between Orset and the Thames, below Gravesend Reach. 
Here was formerly a ford, over the rivulet called by seatnen, 
the Hope, which is now passed by a bridge. 
STANFORD RIVERS, a parish of England, in Essex; 
2 miles south-west of Chipping Ongar. Population 704. 
STANFORD, a post township of the United States, and 
capital of Lincoln county, Kentucky, situated on a fertile 
and handsome plain. It contains a court-house, jail, a rope- 
walk, and about 100 houses; 40 miles south-south-west of 
Lexington, and 10 south-south-east of Danville. 
STANFORD, a post township of the United States, in 
Duchess county, New York; 18 miles north-east of Pough¬ 
keepsie. Population 2235. 
STANG, s. [pcaenj, Sax.; y stang, Welsh.] A perch; 
a measure of land.—These fields were intermingled with 
woods of half a stang, and the tallest tree appeared to be 
seven feet high. Swift. —A long bar; a wooden pole; the 
shaft of a cart: used in several parts of the north of England. 
To ride the Stang. The preceding sense, and the pre¬ 
sent expression connected with it. Dr. Johnson has over¬ 
passed. It is still remembered in paits of the north of Eng¬ 
land ; and may be traced to a very ancient origin. See Mr. 
Callender’s account of the Goth, nid stang, the spear or 
pole of infamy, in his Two Anc. Scott. Poems, 1782, p. 153. 
To ride the stang, is to be mounted on a strong pole, borne 
on men’s shoulders, and carried about from place to place; 
the rider representing usually a henpecked husband, and 
sometimes the husband who had beaten his wife. To ride 
skimmington, is, in some parts of England, of much the 
same import. See Skimmington, and Dr. Jamieson’s 
Scott. Diet, in V. Stang. —A custom [is] still prevalent 
amoDg the country people of Scotland ; who oblige any man, 
who is so unmanly as to beat his wife, to ride astride on a long 
pole, borne by two men, through the village, as a mark of 
the highest infamy. This they call riding the stang; and 
the person, who has been thus treated, seldom recovers his 
honour in the opinion of his neighbours. When they cannot 
lay hold of the culprit himself, they put some young fellow 
on the stang or pole, who proclaims that it is not on his own 
account that he is thus treated, but on that of another person, 
whom he names. Callander, Two Anc. Scott. Poems .— 
The riding of the stang on a woman that hath beat her hus¬ 
band, is, as I have described, by one’s riding upon a long 
piece of wood, carried by two others on their shoulders, 
where, like a herald, he proclaims the woman’s name, &c. 
Notes to Allan Batnsay's Poems, cited by Brand. —There 
used formerly, and I believe it is still now and then retained, 
to be a kind of ignominious procession in the north of Eng¬ 
land, called riding the stang, when, as the glossary to 
Douglas’s Virgil informs us, one is made to ride on a pole 
for his neighbour’s wife’s fault. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 
To STANG, v. n. [stanga, IeeL] To shooth with pain. 
North. Grose. 
S T A 
STANG-ALPE, a lofty mountain of the Austrian states, 
in Styria, to the south-west of Murau, between the circle of 
Judenburg and Carinthia. Elevation above the sea, 7550 
feet. 
STANGEBRO, a small town in the south of Sweden, in 
the province of Smaland, near Oalmar. 
STANGERODE, a village of Germany, in Upper Hesse, 
near Grunberg, where the allies were defeated by the French 
in 1761. 
STANGllOW, a township of England, North Riding of 
Yorkshire; 4 miles east-by-north of Guisebrough. 
STANHOE, a parish of England, in Norfolk; 4 miles 
south-west of Burnham Westgate. Population 374. 
STANHOPE (Philip Dormer), Earl of Chesterfield, a 
nobleman celebrated as a great wit, statesman, and a man of 
letters, was the eldest son of Philip, third earl of Chesterfield, 
by lady Elizabeth Saville, daughter of George, marquis of 
Halifax. He was born in London, in September, 1694. 
He had the misfortune to lose his mother while he was very 
young, and being neglected by his father, he was educated 
under the care of his grandmother, lady Halifax, who 
proved herself quite adequate to the task. His elementary 
instructions were received at home from able masters, who 
had the advantage of finding in their pupil admirable quali¬ 
ties, and an ardent desire of excelling in whatever he under¬ 
took. In his 18th year he was entered of Trinity-hall, 
Cambridge, where he applied himself with great assiduity 
to the studies pursued in that seat of learning. He was 
particularly attentive to eloquence, which he was aware 
was a principal requisite in a free senate; and with a view 
of becoming a good and forcible speaker, he marked down 
all the finest speeches of the ancients that came in his way, 
in the course of his reading, and formed his own style and 
manner by translating them; a practice which cannot be 
too warmly recommended to young men likely to come info 
public life. On quitting the university, this young noble¬ 
man made the usual tour of Europe; and it was at the Hague 
that he first began the cultivation of that enlarged acquaint¬ 
ance with mankind, which has been denominated seeing 
and knowing the world; but with this knowledge he ac¬ 
quired certain pernicious propensities, which adhered to him 
through life: among others was that of gaming. A visit 
of some length to Paris further contributed to fashion his 
manners, and to render him at length that model of true 
politeness, which he exhibited in after-life to his admiring 
countrymen. This was about the time of the demise of 
queen Anne, and he did himself high honour by the asser¬ 
tion of those principles of freedom which effected the suc¬ 
cession of the house of Hanover, and which, during the 
whole of his political life, he steadily maintained. On 
his return to England in 1715, he was presented to the new 
sovereign, and appointed one of the gentlemen of the bed¬ 
chamber to the prince of Wales. He was elected member 
of parliament for one of the Cornish boroughs, in the first 
parliament of George I., and commenced a speaker in the 
debate respecting the impeachment of the persons concerned 
in the peace of Utrecht. Upon this occasion he manifested 
a juvenile violence, which produced an intimation from the 
opposite side, that advantage would be taken of his being 
under the lawful age for sitting in parliament. Upon this 
hint he immediately quitted the house, and set off for Paris. 
On his return, he was sometimes the defender and sometimes 
the opponent of ministerial measures; but his talents, at this 
time, do not appear to have made much impression on the 
house or the country. In reward, however, for his support 
of a motion for the augmentation of the army, he was, in 
1723, made captain of the yeomen of the guards; and it 
was a proof of his disinterestedness, that when advised by 
his predecessor, lord Townsend, to make the post more 
profitable than he had done, by the sale of subordinate 
places, he replied, “ I rather wish, in this instance, to follow 
your lordship’s example than your advice.” He was dis¬ 
missed from this office in 1725 ; and i» the following year, 
on the death of his father, with whom he had never been 
on terms of cordiality, [he entered the House of Lords, and 
joined 
