cf. Pepys, 9 June 1667). Towards the close of Charles II's reign he was again employed. He was a member of the new privy council appointed on 26 Jan. 1681. On 6 Nov. 1682 he became colonel of the Holland regiment of foot, but resigned his command two years later in consequence of a quarrel about precedence (Dalton, i. 298; Chesterfield, Letters, p. 252).
On 2 Dec. 1679 Charles appointed Chesterfield warden and chief justice in eyre of the royal forests south of the Trent (Doyle). This office had formerly been held by the Duke of Monmouth, and Chesterfield's offer to restore it to Monmouth, when the latter was restored to favour, earned him the ill will of the Duke of York. Nevertheless Chesterfield acted as lord sewer at the coronation of James II (23 April 1685), and held the post of chief justice in eyre till the following October, when he resigned on the plea of ill health (Letters, pp. 252, 292). He disapproved of the ecclesiastical policy of James, and placed his proxy in the hands of George Savile, marquis of Halifax [q. v.]; but Halifax found it extremely difficult to persuade him to more active measures of opposition (ib. pp. 297-310, 325). In like manner when the Revolution took place Chesterfield got together a hundred horse and escorted the Princess Anne from Nottingham to Warwick, but refused to take arms against James II, in spite of the solicitations of his old ally, Lord Danby (ib. pp. 47, 335). In the Convention he both spoke and voted against the proposal to declare the throne vacant and make the Prince of Orange king (Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, p. 233). James sent over a commission appointing Chesterfield and three others regents of the kingdom, but he refused to accept it. He likewise refused William Ill's offers to make him privy councillor, gentleman of the bedchamber, and ambassador, and declined to take the association in support of William's title imposed by parliament in 1694. To William himself he explained his aversion to all such oaths, saying that if the oath of allegiance which he had taken could not bind him nothing would, and protesting his veneration for his majesty's person and his resolution not to act against the government.
Similar scruples and his increasing infirmities debarred Chesterfield from employment during the reign of Anne, at whose accession he was one of the few who refused the oath abjuring the Pretender (Letters, pp. 51-63; cf. Swift, Works, ed. Scott, xii. 243). He died on 28 Jan. 1713, in his eightieth year. Chesterfield was the friend of Charles Cotton and the patron of Dryden; to him Dryden dedicated his translation of the Georgics. Grammont describes Chesterfield thus: 'Il avait le visage fort agréable, la tête assez belle, peu de taille et moins d'air.'
By his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Butler, Chesterfield had a daughter Elizabeth, born in 1663, who married John Lyon, earl of Strathmore. He took for his third wife Lady Elizabeth Dormer, eldest daughter of Charles, second earl of Carnarvon. By her he had two sons and two daughters: (1) Philip, third earl of Chesterfield, who married Elizabeth Savile, daughter of the Marquis of Halifax, was father of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth earl [q. v.], and died in 1726; (2) Charles, who inherited the estate of the Wottons, changed his surname to Wotton, and died without issue; (3) Mary (1664-1703), wife to Thomas Coke of Melbourne, Derbyshire; (4) Catherine (1675-1728), wife to Godfrey Clarke of Chilcot, Derbyshire (, Peerage, ed. Brydges, iii. 425).
Chesterfield wrote an account of his own life, portions of which are printed in the biography prefixed to the collection of his letters published in 1835. The original is now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 19253).
[Doyle's Official Baronage, i. 371; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, vol. iii.; Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 1835.]
STANHOPE, PHILIP DORMER, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), politician, wit, and letter-writer, was son of Philip Stanhope, third earl of Chesterfield, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter (by his second marriage) of George Savile, marquis of Halifax [q. v.] Philip Stanhope, second earl of Chesterfield [q. v.], was his grandfather. Of his four brothers, two enjoyed much popularity in the world of fashion, viz.: William (1702–1772), who was created K.B. on 27 May 1725, and was M.P. for Lostwithiel for a few months in 1727, and for Buckinghamshire from that year until his death; and John (1705–1748), who was M.P. for Nottingham from 1727 and for Derby from 1736 till his death, and was a lord of the admiralty for the last ten months of his life.
Born in London on 22 Sept. 1694, and baptised at St. James's, Piccadilly, on 9 Oct., Stanhope was educated privately. His father neglected him, but his maternal grandmother, the Marchioness of Halifax, actively interested herself in his early education. A French tutor named Jonneau perfected him in French in youth, and he spoke and wrote it with ease and correctness before he
