She, like her husband, patronised and was praised by the poets of her day. Milton's ‘Arcades’ was written in compliment to her. She died at Harefield, Middlesex, on 26 Jan. 1636–7.
There are portraits of Lord and Lady Derby at Knowsley Hall (Scharf, Catalogue, 1875, p. 79), and of the former in the possession of Lord Gerard and at Worden Hall, the residence of the ffaringtons. The last named is engraved in the ‘Derby Household Books’ (Chetham Soc.)
[The best account of Stanley is that by Canon Raines in Lancashire Funeral Certificates, p. 63. Heywood's Earls of Derby and the Verse Writers, Allen's Defence of Sir W. Stanley, ed. T. Heywood, p. xlii, Derby Household Books, ed. Raines, passim, Farington Papers, pp. 130, 136, Lancashire Lieutenancy, Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica (the foregoing are all published by the Chetham Soc.); Camden's Hist. of Elizabeth, 4th edit. 1688, p. 491; Lodge's Illustr. of British Hist. 1791, iii. 47; Sir R. Sadler's State Papers, iii. 20; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. 1591–1594, 1595–7; Masson's Life of Milton, i. (1881 edit.) 590; Manchester Court Leet Records, ed. Earwaker, ii. 92; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, iii. 80; Cokayne's Complete Peerage, iii. 72; Doyle's Official Peerage, i. 557, with portrait; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss) i. 250; Register of Univ. of Oxford (Oxford Hist. Soc.); Brydges's British Bibliographer, i. 281; Evans's Cat. of Portraits, i. 96, mentions a portrait engraved by Stow; Cat. of Exhibition of National Portraits, 1866, p. 51; Collier's Mem. of Edward Alleyn; Henslowe's Diary; Simpson's School of Shakespeare; Manchester Quarterly, April 1896, p. 113.]
STANLEY, HANS (1720?–1780), politician, was the only son of George Stanley of Paultons, near Owre, in the new parish of Copythorne, formerly North Eling, and close to Romsey in Hampshire. His father married in 1719 Sarah, elder daughter and coheiress of Sir Hans Sloane [q. v.]; he committed suicide on 31 Jan. 1733–4; his wife survived until 19 April 1764. A monument by Rysbrach, ‘in the bad taste of the time, with weeping Cupid, urn, and inverted torch,’ was erected by her in the chancel of Holy Rood church, Southampton, to her daughter, Elizabeth Stanley (d. 1738, aged 18), who is panegyrised in Thomson's ‘Seasons’ (Summer, ll. 564 sq.).
Hans Stanley is believed to have been born in 1720, and to have been baptised at St. George's, Hanover Square, London. He was returned as member for St. Albans at a by-election on 11 Feb. 1742–3, and sat for it until the dissolution in 1747. He had no place in the next parliament, and for a time meditated abandoning parliamentary life for diplomacy. He travelled frequently in France, resided for two years at Paris, and studied the law of nations. At the general election of 1754 he was elected in the tory interest by the borough of Southampton, and represented it continuously until his death (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. v. pp. 364–5; Oldfield, Representative Hist. iii. 551; cf. Davies, Hist. of Southampton, pp. 113, 206).
From 13 Sept. 1757 to August 1765 Stanley was a lord of the admiralty (cf. Letters of Lady Hervey, p. 265). Hearing from Lord Temple of Pitt's good opinion of him, he recounted in a letter to Pitt, 18 April 1761, his claims to employment should it be desired to open negotiations with France (Chatham Correspondence, ii. 116–19). He was at that time a follower of the Duke of Newcastle, but Pitt enlisted his services, ‘from opinion of his abilities.’ Stanley set out for Calais to meet the French agent on 24 May 1761, and early in the next month arrived at Paris as chargé d'affaires. There he remained until 20 Sept., when it became clear that the mission had ended in failure, and he demanded his passports (cf. Chatham Correspondence, ii. 124–42; Thackeray, Life of the Earl of Chatham, i. 505–79, ii. 519–626; Grenville Papers, i. 362–85; and Bedford Correspondence, iii. 11–46). Though his despatches did not please Charles Jenkinson, first earl of Liverpool [q. v.], they are described by Carlyle as ‘the liveliest reading one almost anywhere meets with in that kind.’ Stanley, adds Carlyle, was ‘a lively, clear-sighted person, of whom I could never hear elsewhere’ (Frederick the Great, vi. 204). He was disappointed at not being trusted with the conduct of the negotiations when they were renewed in 1762, but he wrote the Duke of Bedford a handsome letter on their success, and, though numbered at this time among Pitt's followers, defended the peace in the House of Commons with ‘spirit, sense, and cleverness’ (9 Dec. 1762). Pitt paid him ‘the highest compliments imaginable’ (Bedford Correspondence, iii. 150–68).
Stanley was created a privy councillor on 26 Nov. 1762. On 7 April 1763 he sent a spirited letter to George Grenville, who was then in office, and to whom he was then attached, declining a seat at the treasury, and setting out how his claims had been neglected. Next August he was at Compiègne. He solicited and obtained in July 1764 the post of governor of the Isle of Wight and constable of Carisbrook Castle. Lady Hervey described the governorship as ‘a very honourable, very convenient employment for him, and also very lucrative.’
