or secular. It was one of the objects of his life to open the abbey pulpit to churchmen of every shade of opinion, to give to laymen and ministers of other communions opportunities of speaking within its walls, to make its services attractive to all classes and all ages, to communicate to the public generally his own enthusiasm for its historical associations by conducting parties over the building, as well as by compiling his ‘Memorials of Westminster Abbey’ (published in 1868).
As a preacher he pursued the same objects. He insisted that the essence of Christianity lay not in doctrine, but in a Christian character. He tried to penetrate to the moral and spiritual substance, which gave vitality to forms, institutions, and dogmas, and underlay different and apparently hostile views of religion. On this bed-rock, as it were, of Christianity he founded his teaching, because here he found the common ground on which Anglican, Roman catholic, presbyterian, and nonconformist might meet (see his Lectures on the Church of Scotland, 1872; Addresses and Sermons delivered at St. Andrews, 1877; Addresses and Sermons delivered in the United States and Canada, 1879; Christian Institutions, 1881.
In the midst of multifarious activities, social, political, literary, and official, he continued his annual tours, on the continent, in Scotland, or in America, the record of which is preserved in some of his published letters. In January 1874 he performed at St. Petersburg the marriage service between the Duke of Edinburgh and the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia. Later in the same year Lady Augusta Stanley, who had represented the queen at the wedding, fell ill, and, after months of suffering, died on Ash Wednesday, 1 March 1876. Her portrait, painted by George Richmond, R.A., belongs to the Lady Frances Baillie. By her bedside the third part of her husband's ‘Lectures on the Jewish Church’ was mainly written (1876). Stanley never recovered the shock of his wife's death, though his life to the last was full of activity. In the summer of 1881 he was preaching a course of sermons on the Beatitudes on Saturday afternoons in Westminster. At the service on Saturday, 9 July 1881, he spoke his last words in the abbey. He left the pulpit for his bed. His illness proved to be erysipelas, of which he died on Monday, 18 July 1881. On Monday, 25 July, he was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife.
Stanley's principal works have been already mentioned. None of them, with the possible exception of the ‘Life of Dr. Arnold,’ belong to the highest or most permanent class of literature. His personal charm was a stronger influence than his books. Of the fascination that he exercised over his friends, a vivid picture will be found in Dean Bradley's ‘Recollections of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’ (1883).
A full-length recumbent figure of Stanley, modelled by Sir Edgar Boehm, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, of which Stanley had been appointed a trustee in 1866. A portrait by G. F. Watts is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
[Prothero's Life and Correspondence of Dean Stanley (1893) and Letters and Verses of Dean Stanley (1895) contain the fullest information respecting the life and works of Stanley. Other books which also illustrate the subject are Dean Bradley's Recollections (1883), My Confidences, by F. Locker-Lampson (1896), and the Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by Messrs. Campbell and Abbott, 1897.]
STANLEY, CHARLOTTE, Countess of Derby (1599–1664), born at Thouars early in December 1599 (Louise de Coligny, Corresp. ed. 1887, p. 166), was the second child but eldest daughter of Claude de la Trémoille, duc de Thouars, by his wife Charlotte (1580–1626), third daughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange, by his third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon (‘Chartrier de Thouars,’ 1877, pp. 153, 162, 272–9, apud Documents Historiques et Généalogiques; Sainte-Marthe, Hist. Généalogique de la Maison de la Trémoille, 1668, p. 260; Les La Trémoille pendant Cinq Siècles, Nantes, 1890–6). Louisa, wife of the elector palatine Frederick IV, was her aunt; the Duc de Bouillon, head of the French protestants, and Prince Maurice of Nassau were her uncles. Her father died in 1604, and Charlotte spent most of her early days at Thouars, occasionally paying visits to her relatives at The Hague. Her mother came to England in 1625 in the train of Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria, and during her visit arranged a marriage between Charlotte and James Stanley, lord Strange (afterwards seventh Earl of Derby) [q. v.] Charlotte was then staying at The Hague with Elizabeth, the daughter of James I and fugitive queen of Bohemia, whose husband, Frederick V, was Charlotte's cousin. There the marriage took place on 26 June 1626 (Belli, Osservazion, p. 95), the ceremony being disturbed by a contest for precedence between the English and French ambassadors. The statement that she was of the same age as her husband was a polite fiction to cover the fact that she was seven years his senior.
