STANHOPE, William (c.1591-aft. 1680), of Nottingham and Linby, Notts.

The Stanhopes had been one of Nottinghamshire’s leading families since the late fourteenth century and had represented the county on numerous occasions from 1402.29Vis. Notts. (Harl. Soc. iv), 5-7; ‘Sir Richard Stanhope’, HP Commons 1386-1421; ‘Michael Stanhope’, HP Commons 1509-58; ‘Edward Stanhope I’, ‘Sir Thomas Stanhope’, HP Commons 1558-1603. The Nottinghamshire estates of Stanhope’s father passed to his elder half-brother Philip, later 1st earl of Chesterfield, while William and his elder brother John inherited lands in Derbyshire. John Stanhope† sat for Derbyshire and Leicester in the 1620s and became a noted Ship Money refuser in 1635. William, on the other hand, apparently showed little interest in public life, although he did try to help his brother-in-law Framlingham Gawdy* secure election for Thetford, Norfolk, in 1628.30Eg. 2715, f. 420. He seems to have resided in Nottingham from the late 1620s, and by 1632 he was evidently on good terms with the municipal elite.31Add. 6670, f. 359; E407/35, f. 139v; Notts. RO, CA 3407, f. 46; Derbys. RO, D779B/T 25; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 532; ‘An assessment for St Mary’s church, Nottingham’ ed. F.A. Wadsworth, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xxxiii). 16. In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, the town returned Gilbert Millington and Stanhope – apparently with the backing of the corporation.32Supra, ‘Nottingham’.

The outlines of Stanhope’s career in the Long Parliament have been blurred as a result of the clerk of the Commons’ failure to distinguish between William and his half-nephew the Staffordshire MP Ferdinando Stanhope. The Nottingham MP was included on at least one list of the Straffordians – those MPs who voted against the bill for the attainder of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) on 21 April 1641.33Procs. LP iv. 51. But he does not feature on the lists compiled or reproduced by John Moore*, John Rushworth* and Sir Ralph Verney*, who were present in the House when the vote was taken.34Procs. LP iv. 42; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 248-9; Verney, Notes, 57-8. And Stanhope apparently had no qualms about taking the Protestation on the day of its introduction in the House, 3 May. At most, he was named to two committees; and he may have been the ‘Mr Stanhope’ who presented a petition to the Commons on 20 August 1641 from reformadoes (disbanded officers) of the English army in the north, requesting relief.35CJ ii. 114a, 164b; Procs. LP vi. 503. One of the Stanhopes – it is impossible to say which – was a teller with the future royalist Sir Frederick Cornwallis on 22 November 1641 in favour of putting the question that the court of requests be included in a clause of the Grand Remonstrance denouncing ‘arbitrary’ courts.36CJ ii. 322b. The opposing tellers were the godly pairing of Sir Thomas Barrington and Sir John Clotworthy, which suggests that this division, like those that followed it concerning the Grand Remonstrance, was a highly partisan affair.

Stanhope abandoned his seat at some point between late November 1641 and the outbreak of civil war, for on 30 August 1642 the House ordered that he be summoned to attend his place.37CJ ii. 744b. On 21 September, the Commons sent for him as a delinquent, and in mid-November it summoned him to Westminster under guard to answer for his negligence of its proceedings.38CJ ii. 775b, 845b. According to Lucy Hutchinson – wife of the parliamentary governor of Nottingham, Colonel John Hutchinson* – Stanhope had left Parliament ‘disaffected to them’, although on what grounds is not known.39Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 61. His eldest son was reportedly killed in the king’s service and many of his kinsmen were royalist officers, but Stanhope himself made no known contribution to the royalist cause.40Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 61; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales (New York, 1981), 355-6.

Stanhope was among those MPs summoned to attend the Oxford Parliament in 1644 who were listed either as employed in the king’s service, absent, or sick – and the likelihood is that he fell into the second or third of these categories.41Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575. It was probably his appearance on this list, and the mere fact that he lived in the king’s quarters, that prompted the Commons to disable him from sitting on 22 January 1644.42CJ iii. 374a. It has been suggested that he avoided having to compound for his estate because his lands at Linby were held of Sir John Byron† on a chattel lease.43CCC 307; ‘Sir William Stanhope’, HP Commons 1660-1690. However, Stanhope also owned lands in Derbyshire and possibly Leicestershire that could have been subject to a composition fine, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence of his delinquency to warrant proceedings against him. That said, he was included on a list of men sequestered in Nottinghamshire in 1648.44CCC 108.

Shortly after Charles II landed in Dover late in May 1660, Stanhope joined Sir Gervase Clifton*, William Pierrepont*, Robert Sutton* and other Nottinghamshire grandees in a congratulatory address to the king ‘for your so happy regaining at once both the affections and obedience of your people’.45SP29/1/42, f. 82. Appointed a Nottinghamshire magistrate in 1660, ‘old Mr William Stanhope’ – as the antiquarian Robert Thoroton referred to him in 1677 –was continued on the county bench when a new liber pacis was issued late in 1680.46Notts. Co. Recs. 10; Thoroton, Notts. i. 274; Catalogue of ... Justices of the Peace, 15. The date of his death and place of burial are not known, and no will is recorded. His only surviving son William Stanhope† sat for Nottingham in 1685.47HP Commons 1660-1690.