STANHOPE, Charles (1595-1675)

Stanhope was the eldest son of John Stanhope, a prominent courtier ennobled by James I as Baron Stanhope of Harrington in 1605. His only known brother, Michael, was baptized in 1599 but subsequently disappeared from the records, suggesting that he died in infancy.17 Reg. of St Martin-in-the-Fields (Harl. Soc. xxv), 28. When he received his MA from Cambridge, in 1612, Stanhope was described as ‘a comely gentleman’ who ‘well deserved it, as much by the proficiency of his learning, as by the title of his blood’.18 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 23. He evidently toured the Continent shortly after as, in later life, he recalled having met both Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Ralegh’s^‡ son and namesake at Lyon, which must have been sometime between the summer of 1612 and the early part of 1613, when Jonson, accompanying the younger Ralegh as tutor, was in France.19 Oxford DNB online sub Jonson, Ben (Sept. 2013).

Stanhope had presumably returned to England by 8 July 1613, when it was reported that he had ‘lately fallen lunatic’ with ‘little hope … of his recovery’.20 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 254. He was described as ‘the mad Lord Stanhope’ in 1645, but there is no evidence that he was ever formally declared insane and the extent of his mental incapacity is unclear.21 CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 190. He was evidently well read and retained at least some of his Latin; however, from at least the 1630s he annotated his books with extensive notes which are generally unrelated to the adjacent printed text. Analysis of this largely ‘nonsensical or utterly trivial … material’ has led one scholar to wonder whether ‘we have not here a brainsick lord and a subject for the psychiatrist’. Some of the more coherent passages suggest that Stanhope struggled to resist the temptations of taverns and gambling that London had to offer. He also appears to have had an obsession with money, possibly due to financial difficulties.22 G.P.V. Akrigg, ‘Curious Marginalia of Charles, Second Lord Stanhope’, Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies ed. J.G. McManaway, G.E. Dawson and E.E. Willoughby, 790-1, 796, 801; Osborn, 16. Perhaps due to his son’s mental incapacity, Stanhope’s father gave Stanhope’s mother control over the majority of the family estates. She may have managed Stanhope’s affairs after his father’s death in March 1621.23 CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 51; Addenda, 1625-49, p. 602; C142/434/100.

Stanhope succeeded to his title and estate during the third Jacobean Parliament. He took his seat in the Lords without ceremony on 17 Apr. 1621, when the session resumed after Easter.24 H. Elsyng, Manner of Holding Parls. in Eng. (1768), 96. In total he was recorded as attending 40 per cent of the sittings between Easter and the summer adjournment on 4 June (17 out of 43). However, his interest seems to have waned as the Parliament continued, as he sat only four times after 4 May. It is possible that he was named to a committee, for, on 25 May, the Journal records that a ‘Lord Stanhope’ was appointed to consider a naturalization bill. This could, of course, refer to his kinsman, Philip Stanhope^*, Lord Stanhope of Shelford (later 1st earl of Chesterfield), who, unlike Stanhope, was recorded as being present on that day. However, he committee book clearly states that it was Lord Stanhope of Harrington who was appointed.25 LJ, iii. 132a; PA, HL/PO/CO/2/1, p. 28. Stanhope’s attendance worsened after the session resumed in November, when he was recorded as being present at only four out of the 26 sittings. He left no further mark on the records of the third Jacobean Parliament.

Stanhope had been made postmaster general of England in conjunction with his father while still a minor, and, consequently, he became sole postmaster on the latter’s death in March 1621. The local postmasters, no doubt hoping to take advantage of Stanhope’s mental deficiencies, promptly started to challenge the fees taken from their wages, first suing the paymasters of the postal service and subsequently petitioning the Privy Council. In April 1623 a committee of the Council reported in favour of the postmasters. In December the paymasters themselves complained to the Council that the service had fallen into confusion, which they diplomatically attributed to the fact that Stanhope, unlike his father, lacked the authority of a privy councillor.26 APC, 1621-3, pp. 364, 473-4, 517; 1623-5, pp. 37, 46, 153; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 117.

The local postmasters were not the only source of difficulty for Stanhope in his new role as postmaster general. In 1623 he challenged the 1619 patent appointing Matthew de Quester head of a newly separated foreign postal service.27 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 514. He probably did so at the instigation of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company, which wanted to employ Henry Billingsley to carry their mail between London and the Continent and persuaded Stanhope to appoint Billingsley as his deputy for the foreign post.28 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 220; APC, 1625-6, p. 316. In December 1623 James I issued a proclamation confirming de Quester’s patent, but Stanhope did not let the matter rest, initiating a lawsuit against his rival.29 CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 131.

Stanhope was recorded as attending 44 of the 93 sittings of the 1624 Parliament, 47 per cent of the total, but was named to only three of the 105 committees of the upper House and made no recorded speeches. On 25 Feb. he assisted with the formal introduction of the new barons who had been created or inherited their titles since the 1621 Parliament.30 LJ, iii. 217b; Add. 40087, f. 21. He was subsequently absent from the chamber for most of March, when he may have attended on only six occasions. However, he resumed his seat after the Easter recess and was appointed to consider a naturalization bill on 6 April.31 LJ, iii. 291b. He again absented himself in late April, and also for substantial parts of May, although he was appointed to two further committees in the latter month, the first to consider two bills (relating to the dairy and south Yorkshire cutlery industries), and the second for a measure to regulate inns.32 Ibid. 393a, 407a.

Shortly after the accession of Charles I the lawsuit between Stanhope and de Quester was brought to a conclusion. However, although a jury in King’s Bench ruled in Stanhope’s favour, the judges in May 1625 decided to delay passing judgement. Stanhope promptly petitioned the king to void the patent held by de Quester, who was invited to make his response in early June. Thereafter proceedings were suspended.33 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 621; Eng. Reps. ed. A. Wood Renton et al., lxxxii. 288; Discourse Briefly Shewing the True State and Title of the Comptroller or Postmaster Generall of England (1646), 5-7; CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 34, 36.

Stanhope was recorded as present at 11 of the 31 sittings of the Lords (35 per cent) when the first Caroline Parliament met in the summer of 1625, but his attendance was restricted to the Westminster sitting, as he failed to attend Parliament when it reconvened at Oxford in August. He received no committee appointments and made no recorded speeches. Stanhope did not attend the start of the 1626 Parliament, and when the House was called, on 15 Feb., it was recorded that he had leave of absence and was going to send a proxy. Following the lead of Lord Stanhope of Shelford, whom he seems to have regarded as the head of his family, he granted his proxy to Philip Herbert^*, 1st earl of Montgomery (later 4th earl of Pembroke), but it automatically expired on 6 Mar., when Stanhope attended in person. He was marked as present at 33 of 81 sittings of the upper House during the Parliament, 41 per cent of the total. Again he left no further mark on the proceedings of the upper House.34 Procs. 1626, i. 49; iv. 12; Akrigg, 788.

On 9 Sept. 1626 Charles I referred the dispute between Stanhope and de Quester to the Council, which, on 10 Nov., ruled in de Quester’s favour, despite a last ditch appeal, made by Stanhope’s mother, to the lord president, Henry Montagu^*, 1st earl of Manchester.35 CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 425, 473; APC, 1626, p. 361. Possibly hoping that the decision would be reversed if he demonstrated his loyalty to the regime, Stanhope paid his £100 Forced Loan assessment on 8 December.36 E401/1386, rot. 39.

In the 1628 parliamentary session Stanhope was recorded as attending 26 of the 94 sittings of the upper House, 28 per cent of the total. His attendance was fairly evenly spread over the course of the session. He was recorded as absent at the call of the House on 22 Mar. but attended the next time the Lords met two days later.37 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 87. At the start of the session he again helped introduce new lords and took the oath of allegiance, but he received only one committee appointment, on 14 June, for the bill to confirm Henrietta Maria’s jointure.38 Ibid. 73-4, 641. He played no further recorded part in the proceedings of this session. His former deputy Billingsley, by now imprisoned in the Marshalsea, petitioned the Commons for his release, but there is no evidence that Stanhope intervened in the matter.39 CD 1628, iv. 464.

During the interval between the 1628 and 1629 sessions, Stanhope was one of the peers who attended the Lords on 20 Oct. 1628, when the Parliament was prorogued to 20 January.40 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 229. When the Parliament reconvened in 1629, the attendance record indicates that Stanhope was present at 13 of the 23 sittings of the House of Lords (57 per cent of the total). He was appointed to two of the 19 committees named by the upper House, one concerning the bill for the better maintenance of hospitals and almshouses and the other the delivery of a petition to the king for the relief or maintenance of Robert de Vere^*, 19th earl of Oxford.41 LJ, iv. 10b, 34b.

In September 1635 Stanhope appointed the courtier Endymion Porter^‡ as deputy postmaster general.42 CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 530. However, in April 1637, Stanhope was compelled to surrender his patent, despite having ‘sundry times been heard at the board’, because of ‘sundry abuses committed chiefly by his deputies and under officers’.43 PC2/47, f. 175. The postal service was placed under the direct supervision of the secretaries of state, and Stanhope spent the next 23 years seeking compensation.44 Coventry Docquets, 202; HMC 7th Rep. 82. In addition to losing his office, Stanhope and his mother were fined £300 in 1636 for depopulating their estates and converting arable lands to pasture.45 E403/3014, pp. 72-4,

Stanhope was slow to respond after the king summoned the nobility in January 1639 to fight the Scottish Covenanters, claiming that he had been incapacitated by a fever. Moreover, he stated that he could do nothing to aid his monarch unless he was given recompense for his loss of office and payment of between £1,400 and £1,500, which sum he claimed was due to him for arrears.46 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 602. Nevertheless, it may be a mistake to regard him as politically alienated in the late 1630s. Throughout his life Stanhope’s political views reflected those of whichever regime was in control. In the 1630s, for instance, he privately castigated the common people and the House of Commons, describing them as ‘like a drove of sheep, or a flock of cranes as one doth fly all will follow’, and made a note to himself to pay Ship Money ‘willingly’, yet during the 1640s he wrote that ‘the noble House of Commons’ would prevent the king from levying Ship Money, which he now considered an ‘irregular’ tax.47 Akrigg, 793-4.

Following his mother’s death in 1640, Stanhope finally married, although in the 1640s he raged against his wife’s extravagance and wrote abusive comments about her servants.48 Ibid. 793. Stanhope played no recorded part in the Civil War and was granted leave to go to France in March 1643 for his health, returning in October 1645.49 LJ, ii. 652a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 190. In November 1660 he finally secured £4,000 for his loss of the post office.50 CTB, 1660-7, p. 81. He subsequently purchased property at Nocton in Lincolnshire, where he mostly resided in the last years of his life, although he also seems to have retained a household at Harrington, the Northamptonshire property from which he derived his title.51 Norgate and Footman, 362.

Stanhope’s mental capacities appear to have declined in his final years; one correspondent, probably writing in the early 1660s, described him as ‘an idiot’ who ‘could not write or read’, although he was certainly literate earlier in his life. The same source claimed that ‘it is his lady that manageth all his affairs’.52 Devon RO, 3799M-3/F/1/5, ex inf. Ian Cooper (misdated, in HMC 15th Rep. VII, 61-2). Stanhope made his will on 17 July 1666, appointing his wife as his sole executrix and requested burial at either Harrington or Nocton. According to an article, published in 1898, he was buried at Nocton on 3 Dec. 1675, but this cannot be confirmed by the parish registers for the relevant period as none survive. His wife proved his will on 12 Feb. 1676.53 PROB 11/350, f. 186r-v; Norgate and Footman, 362; ex inf. Glenys Bowe, Lincs. AO. Having no children, his title became extinct.