Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/44

 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 (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., 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, 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, 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.



STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY, fifth (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, first baron Carrington [q. v.] [q. v.] was his aunt. His father, eldest son of, third earl Stanhope [q. v.], was born on 7 Dec. 1781, sat in parliament for Wendover