STANHOPE, Charles (1595-1675)

Charles Stanhope was the first, and only surviving, son of John Stanhope, a prominent official under Elizabeth I and James I who in June 1603 was made keeper of Colchester Castle, with the reversion to his young son. CSP Dom. 1603–10, pp. 15, 354. In 1605 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Stanhope of Harrington, after the property in Northamptonshire which he had purchased in 1599. In 1607 Baron Stanhope was confirmed in his office of postmaster general, which he had held from 1590, with the reversion again vested in his son. Ibid. p. 366.

In July 1613 it was reported that the young Charles Stanhope had ‘lately fallen lunatic’ with ‘little hope that is conceived of his recovery’. T. Birch, Court and Times of James the First, i. 254. He inherited his father’s title, and the reversion of his principal offices, on 9 Mar. 1621, but by the 1630s the mentally unstable baron was in the habit of writing in his books extensive marginalia which had little or no relevance to the accompanying printed text and which showed an obsession with money and taverns, among other matters. Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. J.G. McManaway, 785–801. After his marriage in 1641 his wife, Dorothy Livingston, apparently managed Stanhope’s affairs for him. CSP Dom. 1637–8, p. 51; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 61–62 (misdated as 1611). A contemporary described him in 1645 as ‘the mad Lord Stanhope’ and a correspondent of Lady Anne Seymour wrote to her in 1661 of ‘Lord Stanhope, who (as the story goes), is an idiot … the Lord never used any spectacles, and could neither write nor read’, but was nevertheless shrewd enough, ‘out of a forward disposition, rather than understanding’. CSP Dom. 1645–7, 190; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 61 (misdated as 1611).

In 1635 Stanhope was persuaded, perhaps because of his perceived disability, to make the king’s favourite Endymion Porter^‡ his deputy postmaster general, with a reversion of this office to Porter’s eldest son, George. According to the later complaints of George Porter, Stanhope was forced to surrender his patent in 1637, ‘full sore against his will’, upon the ‘contrivance’ of his principal rival Thomas Witherings, who at that point controlled the carriage of the mails into foreign countries. CSP Dom. 1636–7, pp. 530, 534–5; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 255. The office of master of the posts was bandied about between many servants of Charles I, the Long Parliament, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate in the following years, but Stanhope always maintained his claim to the office and virtually his only contributions to public life during 1640–60 were the frequent petitions he submitted to the governing regime demanding restitution of the office of which he claimed he had been fraudulently deprived in 1637. H. Robinson, British Post Office, 25–50 et seq.

Stanhope did not sit in the Convention when it assembled in April 1660, although on 14 May he submitted to the House another petition setting out his case and asking to be restored to his former office, or at least to be paid his lost earnings. On 26 May the committee of 11 peers assigned to consider the petition reported that in their opinion Stanhope should be able to recover the profits of his office accrued since 25 April 1637. According to manuscript notes, this report was read and debated in the House, which then ‘respited’ consideration of it for a future date; there is no formal note of this debate in the Journal. HMC 7th Rep. 82–83. In August 1660 Stanhope petitioned the king directly. Edward Hyde, Baron Hyde (shortly to become earl of Clarendon), was of the opinion that he should be given the £4,000 which Charles I had promised him when he surrendered his patent, and supported his view with the report of the committee to the House of 26 May 1660 in which Stanhope had received a favourable judgment. CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 178. In early November 1660 the king issued his letters patent for a payment of £4,000 to Stanhope, thereby paying him off while the Convention set about establishing a new Post Office and a new postmaster general by statute. CTB, i. 81, 87, 111, 182.

In response to Stanhope’s petition, on 25 June 1660 the former deputy postmaster general and royalist officer George Porter, aggrieved at his loss of income from Stanhope’s enforced surrender of the patent, petitioned the House asking that Stanhope waive his privilege so that Porter could pursue legal redress on this matter. HMC 7th Rep. 82–83. In a further petition of January 1662 Porter complained that, despite Stanhope’s assurances, made to the House through John Carey, 5th Baron Hunsdon, styled Viscount Rochford (and later 2nd earl of Dover), that he would waive privilege to settle the matter, he still refused to appear in court. Furthermore, Stanhope, being now ‘very aged and infirm’ was likely to die soon, with his estate so unsettled that it could in no way satisfy Porter’s claims. Ibid. 109, 154–5. Porter shortly after abandoned his attempts to take Stanhope to law, perhaps because his appointment as a gentleman of the privy chamber to the queen consort in 1665 provided him with a steady income.

It may have been his age and infirmity, both physical and mental, which led Stanhope never to sit in the House after the Restoration. Nevertheless, he still played a part in the life of the House through his many proxy assignments over the following years, almost all of which went to peers supporting the court interest. On 14 May 1661 he registered his proxy with Clarendon for the first session of the Cavalier Parliament. Three years later, on 1 Mar. 1664, he appears to have attempted to assign it to Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, but as this was not allowed under the rules of proxy-giving the record was scratched out and the proxy transferred to Clarendon. Stanhope gave his proxy to Clarendon once more on 20 Sept. 1666 but switched his recipient to Horatio Townshend, Baron (later Viscount) Townshend on 6 Nov. 1667. His proxy to John Manners, 8th earl of Rutland, registered on 7 Mar. 1670, was vacated when Rutland assigned his own proxy on 2 April. Stanhope ensured that his vote was taken care of for the three sessions of 1674–5, first by Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, for the session of early 1674 (registered on 19 Dec. 1673, well in advance of the first meeting), then by John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, for the session of spring 1675 (registered 12 Apr. 1675) and finally by Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, for the autumn meeting of that year (registered 11 Oct. 1675).

Stanhope died in late November 1675 without children; his peerage died with him. He left his estate to his widow and executrix. An annotation noting the extinction of the title next to Stanhope’s name in a forecast drawn up by Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), on his impeachment proceedings suggests that Stanhope had been so far removed from the life of the House that as late as March 1679 the lord treasurer himself was unsure whether he was alive or dead.