Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope FRS (
August 3 1753 –
December 15 1816) was a
British statesman and scientist.
The son of the 2nd Earl Stanhope, he was educated at
Eton and the
University of Geneva. While in
Geneva, he devoted himself to the study of
mathematics under
Georges-Louis Le Sage, and acquired from
Switzerland an intense love of liberty.
He is sometimes confused with an exact contemporary of his,
the 3rd Earl of Harrington.
In politics he was a
democrat. As Lord Mahon he contested the city of
Westminster without success in 1774, when only just of age; but from the general election of 1780 until his accession to the peerage on
March 7, 1786 he represented through the influence of
Lord Shelburne the
Buckinghamshire borough of
High Wycombe. During the sessions of 1783 and 1784 he supported
William Pitt the Younger, whose sister, Lady Hester Pitt, he married on
December 19 1774. He was close enough to be singled out for ridicule in the
Rolliad:
:——This Quixote of the Nation
:Beats his own Windmills in gesticulation;
:To
strike, not
please, his utmost force he bends,
:And all his sense is at his fingers' ends, &c. &c.
When Pitt strayed from the
Liberal principles of his early days, his brother-in-law severed their political connection and opposed the arbitrary measures which the ministry favoured. Lord Stanhope's character was generous, and his conduct consistent; but his speeches were not influential.
He was the chairman of the "Revolution Society," founded in honour of the
Glorious Revolution of 1688; the members of the society in 1790 expressed their sympathy with the aims of the
French Revolution. In 1794 Stanhope supported Muir, one of the Edinburgh politicians who were transported to
Botany Bay; and in 1795 he introduced into the
Lords a motion deprecating any interference with the internal affairs of France. In all these points he was hopelessly beaten, and in the last of them he was in a "minority of one"—a sobriquet which stuck to him throughout life—whereupon he seceded from parliamentary life for five years. He was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society so early as November 1772, and devoted a large part of his income to experiments in science and philosophy. He invented a method of securing buildings from fire (which, however, proved impracticable), the
printing press and the
lens which bear his name and a
monochord for tuning musical instruments, suggested improvements in canal locks, made experiments in steam navigation in 1795–1797 and contrived two
calculating machines.
When he acquired extensive property in
Devon, Stanhope projected a canal through that county from the
Bristol to the
English Channel and took the levels himself. Electricity was another of the subjects which he studied, and the volume of
Principles of Electricity which he issued in 1779 contained the rudiments of his theory on the "return stroke" resulting from the contact with the earth of the electric current of lightning, which were afterwards amplified in a contribution to the
Philosophical Transactions for 1787. His principal labours in literature consisted of a reply to
Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) and an
Essay on the rights of juries (1792), and he long meditated the compilation of a digest of the statutes.
The lean and awkward figure of Lord Stanhope figured in a host of the caricatures of
James Sayers and
James Gillray, reflecting on his political opinions and his relationship with his children. His first wife died in 1780, and he married in 1781 Louisa, daughter and sole heiress of the Hon. Henry Grenville (governor of
Barbados in 1746 and ambassador to the
Porte in 1762), a younger brother of the
1st Earl Temple and of George Grenville; who survived him and died in March 1829. By his first wife he had three daughters, one of whom was
Lady Hester Stanhope. His youngest daughter, Lady Lucy Rachael Stanhope, eloped with Thomas Taylor of
Sevenoaks, the family apothecary, and her father refused to be reconciled to her; but Pitt made Taylor controller-general of the customs, and his son was one of
Lord Chatham's executors. His second wife was the mother of three sons. Lord Stanhope died at the family seat of
Chevening, and was succeeded as 4th Earl by his son Philip Henry (1781–1855), who inherited many of his scientific tastes, but is best known, perhaps for his association with
Kaspar Hauser. 
rss feed