favourable notice of George III, and afterwards spent much time with the king at Weymouth. His wealth alone and his personal relations with the king account for the occasional bestowal upon him of political office. He was appointed ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Madrid on 1 Jan. 1784, and was admitted to the privy council on 7 Jan. But he never went to Madrid, and resigned the nominal post in 1787 (Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 434). On Pitt's nomination he was master of the mint from 21 Sept. 1789 to 20 Jan. 1790, joint postmaster-general from 12 March 1790, and master of the horse from 14 Feb. 1798 to 21 July 1804. On 17 Jan. 1805 he was made K.G. He lived in London in some magnificence during the season, and had a French cook, Vincent la Chapelle, who dedicated to him two manuals of cookery. But the country chiefly attracted him. He was an enthusiast for hunting, and delighted in superintending the operations of his farms. But he showed his normal lack of taste in pulling down the old mansion of Bretby and erecting in its place a modern residence from Wyatt's plans. He died at Bretby on 29 Aug. 1815. Three interesting portraits are at Bretby, and are reproduced in Lord Carnarvon's 'Letters of the Fourth Earl to his Godson,' 1890. One by John Russell (1745-1806) [q. v.], painted in 1769, when the earl was fourteen, represents him in fancy dress; the second by Gainsborough an admirable picture portrays him in hunting dress with a dog; in the third, by T. Weaver, he figures in a group which consists of his son (afterwards the sixth earl), his agent, and a fine heifer. Another portrait, by Sir William Beechey, was engraved by J. R. Smith (cf. Bourke, Hist. of White's, ii. 46). The fifth earl was twice married: first, on 16 Sept. 1777, to Anne, daughter of Thomas Thistlethwaite, D.D., of Norman Court; and secondly, on 2 May 1799, to Henrietta, third daughter of Thomas Thynne, first marquis of Bath [q. v.] He was succeeded as sixth Earl of Chesterfield by his son George Augustus Frederick (1805-1866); the marriage of the latter's only daughter, Evelyn (d. 1875), with Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth earl of Carnarvon [q. v.], brought the Bretby property on the death of her mother in 1885 into the possession of their son, the fifth and present Earl of Carnarvon. On the death of the sixth earl's only son, George Philip Cecil Arthur, seventh earl, unmarried, on 1 Dec. 1871, the earldom passed in succession to two collateral heirs, George Philip Stanhope, eighth earl (1822-1883), and Henry E. C. S. Stanhope, ninth earl (1821-1887). The latter's son is the tenth and present earl.
[The main authority is Maty's Memoirs prefixed to Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. 1777. Some interesting marginal notes by Horace Walpole were printed privately in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. x., 1866. A catchpenny ‘Life’ (1774, 2 vols. 12mo) and three collections of anecdotes by Samuel Jackson Pratt [q. v.], published between 1777 and 1800, are of no authenticity. The Memoirs prefixed to Lord Mahon's edition of Chesterfield's Works (5 vols. 1845–53), and to Lord Carnarvon's edition of the Letters to his godson, are of value. Some further information appears in Abraham Hayward's short biography (vol. xvii. of the Travellers' Library), London, 1854, 8vo. But the fullest biography is Mr. William Ernst-Browning's Memoirs … with letters, now first published from the Newcastle Papers (London, 1893, 8vo). Other sources, apart from Chesterfield's voluminous correspondence enumerated above, are Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II, and his Letters, ed. Cunningham; Suffolk Correspondence, 1824; Papers of the Earl of Marchmont, 1831; Memoirs of George II, by Lord Hervey, ed. Croker, 1884; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope; Ballantyne's Life of Carteret; Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill; Bedford Correspondence, 1846, ed. Lord John Russell, vol. iii. p. lxxxii; Colley Cibber's Apology; Lord Mahon's History of England; W. P. Courtney's Parliamentary Representation of Cornwall; Bourke's History of White's Club. A foolish endeavour to place the Letters of Junius to the credit of Lord Chesterfield was made by William Cramp in several pamphlets—The Author of Junius discovered in … Lord Chesterfield, 1821; Junius and his Works compared with the Character and Writings of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, 1851; Fac-simile Autograph Letters of Junius, Lord Chesterfield, and Mrs. C. Dayrolles, 1851. Cramp's theory was that Chesterfield wrote them and Dayrolles's wife copied them. But Junius's first letter is dated January 1769, when Chesterfield was in his seventy-fifth year, and his state of health and habit of mind had, as his letters show, long withdrawn him from politics (cf. Dilke's Papers of a Critic, 1875, ii. 140–54).]
STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY, fifth Earl Stanhope (1805–1875), historian, born at Walmer on 30 Jan. 1805, was the elder and only surviving son of Philip Henry Stanhope, fourth earl Stanhope, by his wife Catherine Lucy, fourth daughter of Robert Smith, first baron Carrington [q. v.] Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope [q. v.] was his aunt. His father, eldest son of Charles Stanhope, third earl Stanhope [q. v.], was born on 7 Dec. 1781, sat in parliament for Wendover
