IDDESLEIGH, STAFFORD HENRY NORTHCOTE, IST EARL OF (1818-1887), British statesman, was born in Lon don, on Oct. 27, 1818. On leaving Balliol college, Oxford, he be came in 1843 private secretary to Gladstone at the Board of Trade. He was afterwards legal secretary to the board; and after acting as one of the secretaries to the Great Exhibition of 1851, co-operated with Sir Charles Trevelyan in framing the report which revolutionized the conditions of appointment to the Civil Service. He succeeded his grandfather as 8th baronet in 1851. He entered parliament in 1855 as Conservative M.P. for Dudley, and was elected for Stamford in 1858, a seat which he exchanged in 1866 for North Devon. Steadily supporting his party, he be came president of the Board of Trade in 1866, secretary of State for India in 1867, and chancellor of the exchequer in 1874. In the interval between these last two appointments he had been one of the commissioners for the settlement of the "Alabama" difficulty with the United States, and on Disraeli's elevation to the House of Lords in 1876 he became leader of the Conservative party in the Commons. As a finance minister he was largely dominated by the lines of policy laid down by Gladstone; but he distinguished himself by his dealings with the Debt, especially his introduction of the New Sinking Fund (1876), by which he fixed the annual charge for the Debt in such a way as to provide for a regular series of payments off the capital. He was trans ferred to the Lords in 1885, when Salisbury became prime minister. Taking the titles of earl of Iddesleigh and Viscount St. Cyres, he was included in the cabinet as first lord of the treasury. In Salisbury's 1886 ministry he was secretary of state for foreign affairs, but the arrangement was unsatisfactory, and his resigna tion had just been decided upon when on Jan. I2, 1887, he died very suddenly at Salisbury's official residence in Downing Street.
He wrote Twenty Years of Financial Policy (1862) . See Andrew Lang, Life of Lord Iddesleigh (189o) .