James Stanhope, First Earl Stanhope

French-born English administrator and diplomat

  • Born: 1673
  • Birthplace: Paris, France
  • Died: February 5, 1721
  • Place of death: London, England

The leading minister in the government of King George I, Stanhope was responsible for a series of measures that solidified support for the new Hanover Dynasty. His successful diplomacy enabled England to launch an extended period of peace, so necessary to the political and economic reforms of his successor, Robert Walpole.

Early Life

James Stanhope, First Earl Stanhope, was the son of Alexander Stanhope and Catherine Burghill. His grandfather, Philip Stanhope, was the First Earl Chesterfield. His father, the youngest son of Chesterfield, was an English diplomat to Holland and Spain. James was born in Paris and naturalized as a British subject in 1696. He had three younger brothers, Alexander, Philip, and Edward, all of whom died before James did. James had one sister, Mary, who outlived him. Two other children, a boy and a girl, died as infants.

Educated at Eton and, for two years, at Trinity College, Oxford, Stanhope left school before receiving a degree to accompany his father to Madrid in 1690. There, he acquired a knowledge of Spanish language and culture that would advance his diplomatic career. He served Eugene of Savoy in Italy before joining the English army as a volunteer in Flanders in 1694-1695. Wounded twice in 1694, once in a duel in which he killed his opponent and again at the Siege of Namur, Stanhope was soon commissioned a captain and lieutenant colonel. On February 12, 1702, he became colonel of the Eleventh Regiment of Foot.

Stanhope’s political career began a year earlier when he was elected to Parliament for Newport on the Isle of Wight. The next year, he was elected from the district of Cockermouth, whose constituents he represented for the next eleven years. Loyal to Whig principles, as was his father, Stanhope early supported the Act of Settlement of 1701, which established the progeny of Sophia, electress of Hanover, as the heirs to England’s throne after Anne.

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), “planned” by the late William III to keep the Bourbon family from holding the Spanish crown, Stanhope began a heralded but controversial career in the military. He took combat under James Butler, second duke of Ormonde, in Spain in 1702, and under John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, in 1703. After a campaign in Portugal, during which he suffered a severe attack of rheumatism, he returned home to receive a promotion to brigadier general in August, 1704. In the following year, Stanhope joined the assault on Spain, distinguishing himself by unusual bravery in entering the city of Barcelona to persuade the inhabitants to accept the surrender, an action that earned for him the notice of the queen.

Appointed minister to Spain on January 29, 1706, he urged allied forces to attack Madrid from Valencia and Catalonia, when Charles Mordaunt, third earl of Peterborough, and Archduke Charles of Austria preferred defensive tactics. When Spanish defenses proved too strong, Peterborough blamed Stanhope for the defeat. Five years later, a House of Lords inquiry sided with Peterborough, although the decision may have been influenced at that time by the lords’ attempts to restrain the aggressive operations of Marlborough and his party. Yet Stanhope was made major general and commander in chief of British forces in Spain, joining his forces in Catalonia in May, 1708. At Marlborough’s suggestion, Stanhope launched an attack on Minorca, securing the island and ports in which British vessels could winter.

Philippe, duke of Orleans and regent of France, opened negotiations with Stanhope in August, proposing his own candidacy for the Spanish throne instead of Philip V, the Bourbon duke of Anjou, or the Habsburg, Archduke Charles. After indecisive military engagements, Stanhope returned home to direct parliamentary proceedings against Dr. Henry Sacheverell, a preacher who accused Nonconformists of plotting the overthrow of the Church of England and the monarchy. Sacheverell, a popular hero of sorts, was found guilty of libel but given a light sentence that was suspended by the queen.

In May, Stanhope returned to the military front in Spain, once again pressing for offensive operations contrary to that of most allied commanders. This time the campaign went better as his troops advanced upon Aragon. Stanhope personally killed one of the Spanish leaders. By now Stanhope had won the majority of the officers to his point of view, and they launched an attack on Madrid. By September, both Stanhope and Archduke Charles were in the capital. French reinforcements and renewed Spanish support for King Philip, however, compelled the allies to leave Madrid for safer winter quarters. The swift-moving French troops, more numerous than the English, surprised the allies at Brihuega and compelled Stanhope to surrender. Stanhope’s military career ended. He was imprisoned for a year and a half in Saragossa. Following secret negotiations for peace, Stanhope was released, arriving home in August, 1712, refusing an audience with King Louis XIV arranged by Stanhope’s rival, Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke.

Life’s Work

Stanhope returned home to become one of the opposition leaders in the House of Commons. After an inquiry into his expenditures in Spain, government investigators discovered that, far from being guilty of extravagance, as suspected, Stanhope was owed money. When he lost his Cockermouth seat in Parliament, he ran and won from Wendover in 1713. He actively opposed the Commercial Treaty with France that year and fought the Schism Act of 1714 as well. His apprehensions about a Jacobite plot induced him to bring troops into England from Hanover to guarantee the succession following Queen Anne’s death in the early summer.

On September 14, 1714, Stanhope was appointed by the new monarch—who had not yet arrived from Hanover—to be secretary of state for the Southern Department; ten days later, he was made a privy councillor. Horatio Walpole, younger brother of Robert Walpole and a former secretary to Stanhope in Spain, is said to have influenced the choice of Stanhope, but surely the king was already acquainted with his diplomatic background. Since the principal secretary of state, Charles Townshend, Second Viscount Townshend, was in the House of Lords, Stanhope led the government’s case in the Commons, along with Robert Walpole, not yet a government minister.

In the first parliament of George I in 1715, Stanhope was elected once again from Newport. A leading supporter of impeachment proceedings against the former Tory ministers, Stanhope personally moved the case against Ormonde. Queen Anne’s Tory leaders were accused of promoting the Jacobite conspiracy to bring the Stuart pretender, James III, to England, and arranging a dishonorable, secret treaty preceding formal treaty negotiations at Utrecht in 1713. Ormonde was charged with deserting the Dutch allies on the field of battle to promote the secret Tory peace talks. The expected Jacobite rising took place in August, and Stanhope was appointed to direct its suppression. The Whig leader then actively supported the Septennial Act to give the new government and dynasty needed security.

Stanhope’s forte was foreign affairs. In October, 1714, he went to The Hague and Vienna to bring the Dutch and imperial negotiators to terms on the Barrier Treaty respecting the number of Dutch fortresses allowed in the Southern, or Habsburg, Netherlands; the treaty was signed a year later. He spent the last six months of 1716 with the king in Hanover, during which time he was negotiating an alliance with France in return for the regent’s promise to renounce James III (Francis Edward Stuart). George was anxious to complete the treaty since he feared new troubles with Sweden and Russia, but reluctant English ministers in London employed delaying tactics. This issue severed relations between the party of Stanhope and Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland, who represented the French party as well as English interests in the North and Baltic Seas, the party of Townshend and Walpole, who sided with the Dutch and who feared that an English alliance with France was to protect Hanoverian interests in Northern Europe. Walpole reminded the government that the Act of Settlement (1701) required parliamentary approval for any English military action on behalf of royal properties abroad. The Anglo-French alliance did succeed, perhaps owing to a discussion in a Dutch bookshop between Stanhope and Guillaume Cardinal Dubois, as related in one account, or, as a result of Stanhope’s success in inducing the cardinal to imbibe too much wine, as the English Whig had boasted.

On April 9, 1717, Townshend and Walpole were dismissed and Stanhope was made first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. He supported the repeal of the Schism Act of 1718, which had earlier imposed certain disabilities upon Nonconformist teachers. Stanhope, however, was ill-suited for these jobs, as he acknowledged, and to his satisfaction was able to switch positions with Sunderland. Stanhope resumed his former position as secretary of state for the Southern Department, but no longer sat in the Commons. On July 12, 1717, he was made Baron Stanhope of Elvaston, and then Viscount Stanhope of Mahon, in honor of his earlier capture of Port Mahon on Minorca. On April 14, 1718, Stanhope was made Earl Stanhope.

His major diplomatic feats followed. While in Hanover, Stanhope worked for a southern peace plan to forge an agreement between Philip of Spain and Charles of Austria; the former was to renounce any claims to Italian possessions, and the latter to the throne of Spain. The Habsburg emperor, Charles, would then aid Hanover to secure possession of Verden and Bremen and England’s gains in the Mediterranean at Utrecht would be confirmed. Not until 1720 and after another short war between England and Spain took place, following Admiral Sir George Byng’s destruction of the rebuilt Spanish navy, did this agreement come to pass. By this time, Stanhope had fashioned a quadruple alliance among England, France, Austria, and Holland. Anxious to make an accommodation with Spain, Stanhope and King George even offered to return Gibraltar, but, pressured by Walpole in Commons, the formal offer was made dependent upon Parliament’s consent. Nevertheless, the success of the quadruple alliance compelled several potential belligerents—Sweden, Denmark, Russia—and Spain to reduce their international demands.

Stanhope was successful in neutralizing Sweden, suspected of supporting the Jacobites. Sweden, however, renewed the English alliance following Charles XII’s death, and when Danes and Russians threatened Sweden, Stanhope sent the English fleet under Admiral Sir John Norris to treat the Russians as Byng had earlier treated the Spanish. Both Russia and Denmark backed away from hostilities.

Perhaps Stanhope’s greatest and least heralded diplomatic triumph occurred in 1719, when he secured an English-Prussian alliance designed to shore up English interests in the north against potential aggressors in Scandinavia and Russia. George’s Hanoverian advisers were pressing the elector (King George I) to maintain close ties with Austria instead, but Stanhope’s insistence on English interests prevailed. This was a turning point for the dynasty, since the monarch realized that his primary responsibilities were now to England.

In domestic politics, Stanhope managed to repeal the Schism Act of 1714 when he introduced a repeal on December 13, 1718. He and George tried to weaken the Test Act by granting some relief to Roman Catholics, but the proposal met with too much resistance from Walpole. When the Peerage Bill was introduced on March 5, 1719, designed to fix the number of peers and limit the Crown’s right of unlimited appointments, it was supported by Sunderland and Stanhope. It passed the Lords but was rejected by the Commons.

Stanhope was with the king in Hanover when news arrived about the collapse of the South Sea Company, the nation’s first stock-market crash. Although Stanhope had no investments in the venture, as minister he was partly responsible for promoting the folly that the company’s monopoly in America could absorb much of the national debt. When parliamentary debates opened on the question on February 4, 1721, Stanhope became ill when replying to highly intemperate charges by a younger colleague. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 6:00 p.m. the next day at his Hampton Court apartment, and was buried on February 17, 1721, at Chevening, the estate in Kent that he had purchased four years earlier. George I was genuinely grief-stricken, for Stanhope had been his closest confidant.

Stanhope was dark-complexioned and handsome, as may be seen in several paintings of him. On February 24, 1713, Stanhope had married Lucy, the younger daughter of Thomas Pitt, governor of Madras and grandfather to William Pitt the Elder. Stanhope and his wife had six children: three sons, Philip, George, and James, and three daughters, Lucy, Jane, and Catherine. The eldest son, Philip, was the Second Earl Stanhope (1717-1786). George I interceded to obtain a pension of œ3,000 a year for Stanhope’s widow.

Significance

A skillful diplomat, First Earl Stanhope surprisingly lacked parliamentary leadership. An impetuous debater, he demonstrated impatience and frankness, qualities that he suppressed in the international arena. He lacked an understanding of domestic politics but possessed an enormous knowledge of the intricacies of diplomacy. In such matters, Walpole was the reverse. Unlike the followers of Townshend and Walpole, he saw that the fortunes of Hanover did, indeed, coincide with the interests of England.

A student of the German philosopher Baron Samuel von Pufendorf, Stanhope believed that reason could truly devise ways to settle international conflicts and avoid warfare. The partnership of Stanhope and George I, at least in foreign affairs, marked a true watershed in European history. After 1721, England was secure abroad and was in a position to devote attention to the major economic and political changes associated with the work of Walpole.

Bibliography

Beattie, J. M. “The Council of George I and English Politics, 1717-1720.” English Historical Review 81 (January, 1966): 26-37.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The English Court in the Reign of George I. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Beattie demonstrates the importance of Stanhope’s pro-Prussian policies in protecting English interests in the Baltic and North Seas, interests that in fact coincided with those of Hanover.

Gibbs, C. G. “Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Age of Stanhope.” English Historical Review 77 (January, 1962): 18-37. The author probes the degree to which royal ministers increasingly provided data to Parliament concerning the management of foreign affairs.

Hatton, Ragnhild. George I: Elector and King. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Both entertaining and scholarly, this work explicates the diverse and complicated personal relationships among all members of the king’s court. The author speaks of the George-Stanhope team.

Hill, Brian W. The Early Parties and Politics in Britain, 1688-1832. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. This history contains some references to Stanhope and places him within the context of eighteenth century British history. Also contains an appendix with biographical data on leading political figures of the period.

O’Gorman, Frank. The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688-1832. London: Arnold, 1997. This overview of British history includes several references to Stanhope, including a brief description of his foreign policy.

Plumb, J. H. Sir Robert Walpole: The King’s Minister. Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1961. This first volume of a classic account of Walpole demonstrates his relationship and rivalry with Stanhope, a fellow Whig.

Williams, Basil. Stanhope: A Study in Eighteenth Century War and Diplomacy. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1932. The only full-length biography of Stanhope, written by a very competent and respected scholar. Williams regards Stanhope’s diplomatic triumphs as central to the progress of England later in the century.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1939. Places Stanhope’s achievements in the context of the long era of Whig control under the first two Hanover monarchs.