STANHOPE, CHARLES STANHOPE, 3RD EARL (1753 i 816) , English statesman and scientist, was born on Aug. 3, 1753, and educated at Eton and Geneva, where he studied mathematics. In politics he was democratic; he represented High Wycombe from 1780 until his accession to the peerage in 1786, giving his support (1783-84) to the administration of Pitt, whose sister, Lady Hester Pitt, he married in 1774; but when Pitt forsook his Liberal principles, Stanhope severed their political connection. He was the chairman of the "Revolution Society," which ex pressed its sympathy, in 1790, with the aims of the French Repub licans, and in ins he introduced into the Lords a motion deprecat ing any interference with the internal affairs of France, on which point he was in a "minority of one." He thereupon retired from politics for five years. He spent much money on experiments in science and philosophy. His inventions include the printing press and the lens which bear his name, a monochord for tuning musical instruments, and two calculating machines. He projected a canal
through Devonshire, and took the levels himself. His writings include Principles of Electricity (1779); a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (179o) ; and an Essay on the rights of juries (1792). The lean and awkward figure of Lord Stanhope figured in a host of caricatures. His first wife died in 1780, and in 1781 he married Louisa, daughter and heiress of the Hon. Henry Grenville, who survived him, and died in 1829. Lady Hester Stanhope (q.v.) and Lady Lucy Rachael Stanhope, who eloped with the family apothecary and was never reconciled with her father, were daughters by his first wife. Lord Stanhope died at Chevening, Kent, on Dec. 15, 1816.
See G. P. Gooch, Life of Charles, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1914).