STANHOPE, Arthur Philip, Viscount Mahon (II), of Chevening, Kent.

Scion of the eccentric Stanhope family, Earls Stanhope, Mahon had little time to make an impact in his first spell in the House of Commons. His father Philip Henry, Viscount Mahon (I), had represented Hertford as a Conservative, held junior office under Peel on two occasions, and succeeded as 5th Earl in 1855. He was better known as a historian rather than a politician, and best of all as the founder of the National Portrait Gallery. It was Stanhope’s successful motion in the Lords in 1856 that led to the foundation of the Gallery, of which he became a trustee.1H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Stanhope, Philip Henry, fifth Earl Stanhope (1805-75)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Mahon’s aunt was the mother of the future Liberal prime minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th earl of Rosebery.

Stanhope’s heir Mahon served in the Grenadier Guards but was eager to enter Parliament. When his uncle Sir Edward Kerrison, 2nd baronet, MP for and patron of the Suffolk borough of Eye, contemplated retirement in 1866 he sought the advice of the Conservative prime minister Lord Derby. The premier wrote to Disraeli that ‘I am inclined to suggest to Sir E.K. his own nephew Lord Mahon, who wants to come into Parlt. [Lord] Stanhope is very angry at being passed over [for office]; his son is a sure and steady vote’. Even if Kerrison did not agree, at least the news that Derby had suggested their son would go some way to mollifying his formidable parents.2Lord Derby to Benjamin Disraeli, 14 July 1866, qu. in M.G. Wiebe et al, Benjamin Disraeli letters (2013), ix. 104.

Ultimately, Mahon had to wait until a vacancy arose for Leominster in April 1868 to enter Parliament. He appears to have had no personal connection with the borough, which had previously been represented by Gathorne Hardy, a Kent neighbour of the Stanhope family. Returned without a contest, Mahon, who styled himself as a ‘Liberal Conservative’, declared that he was not ‘opposed to the progressive spirit of the age’, advocating a settlement of the church rates question, for example.3The Times, 26 Mar. 1868. He was elected too late to vote in the key divisions on Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions and had to find himself a new constituency at the 1868 general election as Leominster was reduced to one MP. He was defeated by Gladstone and another Liberal at Greenwich, but came in for Suffolk East in 1870, which he represented until succeeding as 6th Earl Stanhope in 1875. Although Disraeli had appointed him as a lord of the treasury in 1874, his political career was eclipsed by his younger, more talented brother Edward Stanhope (1840-93), MP for Horncastle, who held a succession of junior posts in the late 1870s, before holding cabinet office in Lord Salisbury’s first and second ministries.4H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Stanhope, Edward (1840-93)’, www.oxforddnb.com. However, ‘a strong Churchman of High Church views’, Lord Stanhope did serve as chairman of the National Union of Constitutional and Conservative Associations in 1875.5The Times, 20 Apr. 1905.

It was fairly said of the 6th Earl that he was ‘never himself an active parliamentarian’, preferring to focus on his administrative and proprietorial duties in Kent, where he owned 4,000 acres and which he served as lord lieutenant from 1890.6Manchester Courier, 20 Apr. 1905; Kent and Sussex Courier, 21 Apr. 1905; J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. D. Spring (1971), 419. Stanhope died after a ‘severe operation’ in 1905.7The Times, 20 Apr. 1905. A personalty sworn under £117,691, the title and family lands in Kent passed to his elder son James Richard (1880-1967), 7th Earl Stanhope, who held numerous positions in the National Governments of the 1930s, including as Leader of the House of Lords, 1938-40.8National Probate Calendar: 13 July 1905. He became 13th earl of Chesterfield on the death of a kinsman in 1952, but both titles became extinct on his death. The family seat of Chevening was left to the nation and has since been used as one of the official residences of British foreign secretaries. The correspondence and papers of the 6th Earl, including his diaries, are held by the Centre for Kentish Studies.91590/A124-30, C513-72, C716, O188-218; NRA 25095.