STANLEY, ARTHUR PENRHYN (1815-1881), English divine, dean of Westminster, was born on Dec. 13,1815, at Alder ley, Cheshire, the son of Edward Stanley (1779-1849), afterwards bishop of Norwich. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold, and at Balliol college, Oxford. In 1839 he was elected fellow of University college, also taking orders. In 1840 he travelled in Greece and Italy, and for ten years he was tutor of his college. In 5845 he was select preacher, and published in 1847 Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age. He was a strong advocate of tol eration and used his influence to protect from formal condemna tion the "Tractarian" party. In 1847 he resisted the movement set on foot at Oxford against R. D. Hampden's appointment to the bishopric of Hereford. Finally, in 185o, in an article in the Edin burgh Review, in defense of the "Gorham judgment" he asserted two principles which he maintained to the end of his life—first, "that the so-called supremacy of the Crown in religious matters was in reality nothing else than the supremacy of law," and, sec ondly, "that the Church of England by the very condition of its being, was not High or Low, but Broad, and had always included and been meant to include, opposite and contradictory opinions." He was greatly interested in university reform and acted as secretary to the royal commission reporting in 1852. Stanley was also appointed to a canonry at Canterbury. During his residence there he published his Memoir of his father (1851), and com pleted his Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (1855). In the winter of 1852-53 he made a tour in Egypt and the Holy Land, the result of which was his well-known volume on Sinai and Palestine (1856). In 1857 he travelled in Russia, and collected much material for his Lectures on the Eastern Church (1861).
At the close of 1856 Stanley was appointed regius professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford, a post which, with the attached canonry at Christ Church, he held till 1863. He published the first
two volumes of his History of the Jewish Church in 1863 and 1865. In the storm which followed the publication of Essays and Reviews Stanley opposed the High Church Party. In 1836 he published a Letter to the Bishop of London, advocating a relaxa tion of the terms of clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book. An act amending the Act of Uniformity, and carrying out in some degree Stanley's proposals, was passed in the year 1865. In 1862, Stanley accompanied the prince of Wales in Egypt and Palestine.
In 1863 he was appointed dean of Westminster. In December he married Lady Augusta Bruce, sister of Lord Elgin, then gover nor-general of India. He wrote a third volume of his History of the Jewish Church, a volume on the Church of Scotland, another of Addresses and Sermons preached in America, and another on Christian Institutions 0880. He was constantly fighting for the interests of the poor. He gave offence by defending Bishop Colenso, although he disapproved of Colenso's views, and, still more, by his invitation to the Holy Communion of all the revisers of the translation of the Bible, including a Unitarian among other Nonconformists. He desired that the Athanasian Creed be op tional instead of imperative in the Church of England. In 1874 Stanley, who was much esteemed by Queen Victoria, conducted the Anglican ceremony at the marriage of the duke of Edinburgh and the grand duchess Marie. He died on July 18,188i, and was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel.
Stanley's other works include: Life of Dr. Arnold (1844) ; Essays on Church and State (187o) ; Memorials of Westminster Abbey (i865).
See G. G. Bradley Recollections of A. P. Stanley (1883) ; R. E. Prothero and G. G. Bradley, Life and Correspondence of Dean Stanley (2 vols., 1893).