Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stone, George
STONE, GEORGE (1708?–1764), archbishop of Armagh, born about 1708, was younger son of Andrew Stone, an eminent banker of Lombard Street, London, by his wife, Anne Holbrooke. Andrew Stone [q. v.] was his elder brother. George was educated at Westminster school, where, at the age of thirteen, he was elected a king's scholar at Whitsuntide 1721. Four years later he obtained a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. on 7 May 1729, M.A. on 10 May 1732, and D.D. on 20 May 1740. Stone seems to have first thought of entering the army (Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, 1817–58, v. 383), but ultimately took orders, and, on the appointment of the Duke of Dorset as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, went over to Dublin as one of his chaplains. His rise in the church was remarkably rapid. He was appointed dean of Ferns by patent dated 22 Aug. 1733. On 11 March 1734 he was promoted to the deanery of Derry, and was installed on 3 April following. On 3 Aug. 1740 he was consecrated bishop of Ferns and Leighlin by the archbishop of Dublin, assisted by the bishops of Meath and Derry, in the parish church of Chapelizod, near Dublin. He took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on 6 Oct. 1741 (Journals of the Irish House of Lords, iii. 497). He was translated to the bishopric of Kildare by patent dated 19 March 1743, and in the same month was installed dean of Christ Church, Dublin. On 11 May 1745 he was translated to the bishopric of Derry, and thereupon resigned the deanery of Christ Church. He was appointed archbishop of Armagh by patent dated 13 March 1747, and took his seat on the archbishops' bench in the Irish House of Lords on 6 Oct. following, but he was not enthroned until 26 Sept. 1752.
Stone was sworn a member of the Irish privy council on 10 April 1747, and on the same day was appointed a lord justice along with Robert Jocelyn, Baron Newport, the lord chancellor, and Henry Boyle, the speaker of the House of Commons. Though Stone had already on several occasions ‘signalised himself by a most determined opposition to the Irish interest’ (Plowden, Historical Review of the State of Ireland, 1803, i. 304), it does not appear that he exercised much influence on the Irish administration during the viceroyalty of Lord Harrington. A rivalry, however, soon sprang up between the young primate and Boyle, who had been for a long time one of the most considerable men in the kingdom. On the reappointment of his old patron, the Duke of Dorset, as lord-lieutenant in 1751, Stone allied himself with Lord George Sackville, the new chief secretary. This alliance, combined with the influence of his elder brother, Andrew Stone, in England, enabled him more effectually to contest the supremacy of his rival in the direction of Irish affairs. The contest between Stone and Boyle was merely for power, but the question nominally at issue in the struggle between them from 1749 to 1753 was whether the Irish House of Commons had or had not the right to dispose of the surplus revenues of the country. Stone supported the claim of the crown, while Boyle, who had been driven into opposition by Lord George Sackville's attempt to induce him to resign the speakership in favour of John Ponsonby, took the popular side. In the session of 1749 heads of a bill for the appropriation of the surplus were sent over to England, but the English authorities insisted that the surplus belonged to the crown, and that the Irish House of Commons had not even the right to entertain any question of the kind without the express consent of the crown. In order to establish this principle Dorset, at the opening of the session in 1751, declared the royal consent to the proposed measure. The house, however, passed the bill without taking any notice of this consent. The bill was returned from England with an alteration in the preamble, signifying that the royal consent had been given. The Irish parliament thereupon gave way, and the bill was passed in its altered form. In the session of 1753 the struggle was renewed. Dorset again signified the king's consent to the appropriation of the new surplus towards the payment of the national debt. As in the previous session, the bill was sent over without any mention of the consent of the crown. It was returned with the same alteration as before; but by this time the opposition had grown stronger, and the bill was rejected by the Irish House of Commons on account of the alteration by a majority of 122 votes against 117. Hereupon strong measures were taken by the government; Anthony Malone [q. v.] and other servants of the crown who had voted with the majority were dismissed from their places, and a portion of the surplus was by royal authority applied to the liquidation of the national debt (Lecky, History of Ireland, 1892, i. 463–5).
Stone was now virtually dictator of Ireland. ‘Without this Wolsey's interposition it is vain,’ writes Adderley to Lord Charlemont, ‘to look after honours or any kind of preferment’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. app. x. p. 189). Though Boyle was excluded from the regency of 1754–5, he still continued his active opposition to the government until the Duke of Dorset's dismissal. During the Duke of Devonshire's viceroyalty the tables were turned. Boyle was created Earl of Shannon, and several members of the opposition received places or pensions, while Stone was forced to retire from the direction of affairs. Though he was excluded from the regency in May 1756, he was not struck off the list of Irish privy councillors, as Plowden and others assert. With the object of regaining power, Stone now entered into an alliance with John Ponsonby [q. v.] in opposition to the government. The House of Commons was at this time divided into three parties, of which Stone, John Ponsonby, and the Earl of Kildare were respectively the chiefs. Unable to govern Ireland independently of these factions, the Duke of Bedford, who succeeded the Duke of Devonshire as lord-lieutenant of Ireland in September 1757, attempted to induce Kildare to make up his differences with Stone. Stone had always been a special object of hatred to Kildare, who, in his famous petition to the king in 1754, described the primate as ‘a greedy churchman,’ affecting to be ‘a second Wolsey in the senate’ (Plowden, Historical Review of the State of Ireland, vol. i. app. pp. 255–257). Though Stone was willing to serve with anybody so long as he was restored to power, Kildare was inexorable. Ultimately Stone's intrigues prevailed, and, having promised to be faithful in future, provided he received a share of the public patronage, he was appointed a lord justice along with the Earl of Shannon and John Ponsonby, by patent dated 29 April 1758. With the aid of his old antagonist Shannon, and the steady assistance of John Ponsonby, Stone was enabled to carry on the government of Ireland during the remainder of his life, but he never regained his former ascendency. Stone died unmarried, at his brother's house in Privy Garden (now known as Whitehall Gardens), on 19 Dec. 1764, aged 56, and, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, was buried in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey on the 28th of the same month. There is no monument to his memory, and the large marble slab which formerly marked his burial-place has been removed. There is a portrait of Stone by Ramsay in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford.
Stone was an able but somewhat unscrupulous man, with a handsome presence and insinuating manners. His ambition and ostentation were unbounded, and he was much more of a politician than an ecclesiastic. His tact and finesse were alike remarkable. ‘No man,’ says Cumberland, ‘faced difficulties with greater courage, none overcame them with more address; he was formed to hold command over turbulent spirits in tempestuous seasons; for if he could not absolutely rule the passions of men, he could artfully rule men by the medium of their passions’ (Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, 1806, p. 172). According to Horace Walpole, Stone ‘ruined his constitution by indulgence to the style of luxury and drinking established in Ireland, and by conforming to which he had found the means of surmounting the most grievous prejudices, and of gaining popularity, ascendant, power—an instance of abilities seldom to be matched’ (Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, 1894, ii. 27). The appellation of ‘the beauty of holiness,’ which was given to Stone, as previously to Bishop Stillingfleet, on account of his good looks, was not confirmed by any singular excellence of his moral character. But though he did not conform to the decencies of his profession, he was probably innocent of the grosser charges which were brought against him by his numerous enemies. Stone was favourably inclined to the toleration of Roman catholics, and strongly opposed a bill for the registration of priests (Stuart, Memoirs of the City of Armagh, 1819, pp. 438–40). He was one of the very few persons who recognised the merits of Hume's ‘History of England’ on its first appearance (‘Life of David Hume, Esq., written by himself,’ 1777, pp. 17–20). Some satirical verses on Stone will be found in the ‘Twelfth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission’ (App. x. pp. 272–273). In ‘Baratariana’ he figures as ‘Cardinal Lapidario’ (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 211–12).
Many of Stone's letters to the Duke of Newcastle and others are preserved in the British Museum and the Public Record Office. A copy of verses by him is printed among the Oxford poems on the death of George I (Pietas Univ. Oxon. &c. 1727). Sermons by him were published in 1742, 1751, and 1760 respectively. He is said to have been the author, conjointly with Anthony Malone, of ‘The Representation of the L—s J—s of Ireland, touching the Transmission of a Privy Council Money Bill, previous to the calling of a new Parliament,’ Dublin, 1770, 8vo.
[Authorities quoted in text; Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 1846; A Letter from a Prime Serjeant to a High Priest, 1754; Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. i. pp. 175–81 et seq.; Bedford Correspondence, 1842–6, vol. ii. pp. xii–xiv, 348–52, 355–9, 377–82; Chatham Correspondence, 1838–40, i. 158–9, 229–30, ii. 59–67; Coxe's Memoirs of the Pelham Administration, 1829, ii. 284–8; Hardy's Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, 1810, pp. 41–2, 44–52, 80, 85–6, 94–9, 102–5; Mrs. Delany's Autobiogr. 1861–2; Lord E. Fitzmaurice's Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 1875–6, i. 346–8, ii. 81–91; Campbell's Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, 1777, pp. 55–6; Curry's Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland, &c., 1786, ii. 261–2, 270; Mant's Hist. of the Church of Ireland from the Revolution to the Union, 1840, ii. 580, 600–5, 617, 781, 784, 785, 786; O'Flanagan's Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland 1870, ii. 86–7, 101–5, 109–10; Froude's English in Ireland, 1872–4, i. 610–12, 617–22, ii. 39, 197, 449; Addit. MS. Brit. Mus. 5808, f. 232; Alumni Westmon. 1852, pp. 240–1, 270, 275, 278, 286, 290, 294; Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers (Harl. Soc. Publ.), x. 49, 405, 410, 418; Neale's Westminster Abbey, 1818–23, ii. 243; Gent. Mag. 1764, p. 603; Wood's Hist. and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the Univ. of Oxford, pp. 295, 446; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ, 1848–60, ii. 46, 234, 339–40, 351, iii. 26, 324, 333, v. 200; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, iv. 1359; Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniæ, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 12–13; Halkett and Laing's Dict. of Anon. and Pseudon. Lit. 1882–8, iii. 2181.]