F.R.S. on 6 June 1771, and from 1768 to 1806 he represented Sandwich in the House of Commons. In 1795 he applied for permission to resign his office at the admiralty, and was then, 17 March, created a baronet and appointed one of the lords of the admiralty. By a special recommendation on 15 Oct. 1806 (Orders in Council, vol. lxvi.) Stephens, at the age of eighty-one, was granted a pension of 1,600l., which he enjoyed till his death on 20 Nov. 1809. He was buried in Fulham church. His only son, Captain Thomas Stephens, was killed in a duel at Margate in 1790; and his nephew, Colonel Stephens Howe, who was included in the patent of baronetcy, predeceased him. The baronetcy thus became extinct. An elder brother, Nathaniel Stephens, died a captain in the navy in 1747; and two nephews, also captains in the navy, William and Tyringham Howe, died in 1760 and 1783 respectively.
[Burke's Extinct Baronetcies and Landed Gentry: Gent. Mag. 1809, ii. 1180, 1234; Faulkner's Fulham. pp. 272-3; Thomson's Royal Society; Official Returns of Members of Parliament. Stephens's name is very prominent in the admiralty correspondence of the last half of the eighteenth century.]
STEPHENS, ROBERT (1665–1732), historiographer-royal, born in 1665, was the fourth son of Richard Stephens of the elder house of that name at Eastington, Gloucestershire, by his wife Anne, eldest daughter of Sir Hugh Cholmeley, bart. His first education was at Wotton school, whence he removed to Lincoln College, Oxford, matriculating on 19 May 1681, but he left the university without taking a degree (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714, iv. 1420). He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1689, and was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries in 1717 (Archæologia, vol. i. p. xxxvii). Being a relative of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, whose mother, Abigail, was daughter of Nathaniel Stephens of Eastington, he was preferred by him to be chief solicitor of the customs, in which employment he continued till 1726, when he was appointed to succeed Thomas Madox [q. v.] in the place of historiographer-royal. He died at Gravesend, near Thornbury, Gloucestershire, on 9 Nov. 1732 (Gent. Mag. 1732, p. 1082), and was buried at Eastington, where a monument with an English inscription was erected to his memory by his widow, Mary Stephens, daughter of Sir Hugh Cholmeley, bart. (Bigland, Gloucestershire, i. 541).
Stephens began about 1690 to transcribe and collect unpublished ‘letters and memoirs’ of Francis Bacon, chiefly in private collections. The first result of his labours was ‘Letters of Sr Francis Bacon … written during the Reign of King James the First. Now collected and augmented with several Letters and Memoires … never before published. The whole being illustrated by an Historical Introduction,’ London, 1702, 4to. After this volume had appeared Harley ‘was pleased to put into my hands some neglected manuscripts and loose papers, to see whether any of the Lord Bacon's compositions lay concealed there that were fit to be published.’ His investigation induced Stephens to prepare another volume, the ‘Letters and Remains of the Lord Chancellor Bacon,’ London, 1734, 4to. The first 231 pages of this volume (it consists of 515), with a preface and introductory memoir, were sent to press by Stephens. The rest were selected from his papers by his friend John Locker, and the whole volume was edited by Stephens's widow. This work was reissued in 1736 as: ‘Letters, Memoirs, Parliamentary Affairs, State Papers, &c., with some Curious Pieces in Law and Philosophy. Published from the Originals. … With an Account of the Life of Lord Bacon.’
Among Stephens's collection in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 4259) is a catalogue of letters and papers connected with Bacon. Many of these documents cannot now be found, and a list of the missing papers is printed in Spedding, Ellis, and Heath's edition of Bacon's ‘Works,’ 1874, xiv. 590. It is possible that they are still in existence, and may yet be recovered. All the letters and papers described in Stephens's ‘Catalogue’ were most probably in the hands of Archbishop Tenison at Lambeth as late as December 1682.
[Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn) i. 96, 97; Spedding's Bacon, viii. 16, 119, ix. 2, 3, 18, xi. 3, xii. 349, 356, 372, xiii. and xiv. passim; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 51, 700, iii. 616, v. 373; Ayscough's Cat. of MSS. p. 784; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
STEPHENS, THOMAS (1821–1875), Welsh historian and critic, born at Pont Nedd Fechan, Glamorganshire, on 21 April 1821, was the son of Evan Stephens, shoemaker, by Margaret, daughter of William Williams, minister of the unitarian church grammar school at Neath. About the commencement of 1835 he was apprenticed to a chemist at Merthyr Tydfil, where subsequently, on his own account, he successfully carried on the business until his death.
From his earliest days Stephens devoted himself to the study of Welsh history. His taste was first stimulated by Eisteddfod competitions, in which, from 1840 onwards, be
