CHESTERFIELD, PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, fourth Earl of, wan born In London on the 22nd of September, 1694. Treated with coldness almost amounting to aversion by his father, he was placed first In the hands of a private tutor, and at the ago of eighteen sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, when he studied the Greek and Itonian writers with unusual diligence. Ile tells us that he narrowly escaped becoming a perlAnt, a character for which he had the greatest contempt In after life; and that ho drank and smoked at college notwithstanding his aversion to wine and tobacco, because ho thought such practices were gasket, and made him look like • man. In 1714 he left the university to make the usual grand tour of Europe. Ho pawed the summer at the Hague, when his fashionable associates not only laughed him out of Ids pedantry, but lultisted him Into a love of play which never forsook Lim. Many years after he tells his son in one of his letters that at the Hague ho thought gambling an acoomplialunent, and as he aimed at fashionable perfection, he adopted cards and dice as a necessary step toward, it. From the gamblers of the Hague he went to the fashionable ladies and titled courtezans of Paris, who, as he was accustomed to boast, completed his education and gave hint final polish.' Ho was at Venom when the accession of George L in 1715 induced him to return home with great speed, in order to be in time fur a court place. Through the interest of his family con neotions he was made a gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. In the first parliament of the new reign he was returned for St. Germaine in Cornwall, and as he was deter mined to attract attention, from the moment of his election ho studied nothing and thought of nothing, for a whole month, but his maiden speech. Though he afterwards became an accomplished orator, his first effort was rather a failure, and betrayed a violence of manner not at all consistent with his smooth silken code. The speech was other wiao unfortunate, for it attracted attention to the fact that he was not quite of age, and consequently liable not only to expulsion from the Commons' house, hut also to aline of 5001. An opponent mentioned this to him privately as a good mode of silencing his real : Chesterfield took the hint, acid withdrew for some months to Paris, where, as it was always suspected, he was engaged in some secret court intrigue. He returned in 1716, and, resuming his seat, spoke in favour of tho Septennial Act. In the inveterate quarrel which broke out between George 1. aud his heir he adhered to the Prince of Wales, nor could his uncle, General (afterwards Earl of) Stanhope, who was then at the height of favour, with plenty of places at his disposal, ever induce him to change sides. Being much with the heir-apparent, he undertook the difficult teak of transforming a German prince into a British king, and of making a fashionable and a most refined mac (as ho understood it) of the rough and homely George.
His first division in parliament against the ministry was on a motion for the repeal of the Schism Bills, where he decidedly took the illiberal side of the question, as he lived to regret. In 1726 he was removed by the death of his father to the House of Lords, where his mariner of speaking was much more admired than it bad been in the Commons. Ile was constitutionally weak and devoid of strong passions, and as a speaker had little faculty of touching the higher feelings of others; but ho was brilliant, witty, and perspicuous—a great master of irouy aud was allowed by all his contemporaries to be one of the most effective debaters of the day. On the accession of George IL, whom as prince he had steadily served for thirteen years, Chesterfield expected a rich harvest of honours and places ; but having mistaken the relative amount of the influence exercised on his master's mind by the queen and the mistress, he paid his court to Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk), and neglected Queen Caroline, who eventu ally proving to be more powerful than the mistress, checked his aspiring hopes. Ile was not alone in this error ; Lord Boliogbroke, Lord Bathurst, Swift, Pope, and many others of less fawn, shared iu it, aud in the consequent disappointment. Pope's villa at Twickenham was the place of rendezvous, where the royal mistress used to receive the incense of Chesterfield and the rest who had hoped to rise through her favour. In 1728, the year after the accession, Lord Chesterfield accepted the embassy to llolland, where ho gained the friendship of Simon Van Sliogeland, a distinguished statesman, and then Grand l'eueiouary, and assiduously cultivated his talent for diplomacy. To Sliogelaud lie
afterwards acknowledged the greatest obligations, midi% him hid " frioud, master, and guide," and adding, "for I was then quite new in business, and he instructed me, he loved me, he trusted me.' Chesterfield had the merit of avertiug a war from Hanover, for which service George II. made him High Steward of the Household and Knight of the Garter. Under the plea of ill-health he obtained his recall from Holland in 1732, and returning to court, where his office of Steward gave him constant access, ho again iudulgcd im tho hope of rising. No sooner however had his lordship shown his decided opposition to Sir Robert. Walpole, by making his three brothers in the House of Commons vote against the Excise scheme, than ho was deprived of the Iligh-Stowardship, and so badly received at court, that he soon ceased visiting there altogether. Lord Chesterfield now took a most decided and active part in the opposition to the minister, and it is even asserted that the real object of a visit which he paid to the Duke of Ormond, at Avigoon, during a visit lie made to Frauco for his health in the autumn of 1741, was to "solicit through the duke an order from the l'reteoder to tho Jacobites, that they should concur hereafter in any measures aimed against Sir Robert Walpole." The Stuart papers throw no light upon this question, and the supposition appears scarcely justified by any circumstances adduced in eupport of It. (See Horace Walpole's ' Memoirs, L 45 ; and Lord Mahon [Earl of Stanhope] ' I list. of F.ugland,' chap. xxiii.) In the ministry formed on the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole iu 1742, Chesterfield was excluded from office, and he at once went into opposition against the members of the now cabinet, with whom, when out of place, he had been accustomed to vote in the minority. On the coalition of parties known by the name of the "broad-bottomed treaty," ha took office, sorely against the inclination of the king, who cousidered him as a personal enemy ; but in order to satisfy his majesty, aud remove him from the royal presence, he was named while in Holland, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Chesterfield, while in opposition, had still further offended the king by repeatedly denouncing the union of the electorate of Hanover with the kingdom of Eugland, aud by proposing that they should be separated from each other, and allotted to different branches of the reigning fatally. Before' proceeding to Ireland, the new lord lieutenant, at the beginning of 1745, the year of the Pretender's las war in Scotland, and a time of intrigue and difficulties, consente• again to proceed as ambassador to Holland. On his return in a feN weeks, he immediately repaired to his Irish post, where he die tinguished himself, in a season of very great turbulence, by hi tolerant spirit, and conciliating popular manners. His short govern meat in Ireland was perhaps the most brilliant and valuable part o his public life. Instead of treating it as his predecessors had done, a a sinecure, Chesterfield made his post one of active exertion. HI reformed abuses, dealt out even-handed justice to all parties, an though entering on office at a time of turbulence and danger, acted et as to conciliate the disaffected, and to secure a "degree of tranquillity such as Ireland had not often displayed even in orderly and settle( times." George II., whose prejudices were removed or weakened recalled him from Dublin in April 1746, and appointed him principa secretary of state. In consequence of finding himself constant13 thwarted by the Pelhams, and being obstructed in some measure: which he considered important, and of his now really declining health he resigned his office in January 1748, much, it is said, to the regret of the king, who offered to make him a duke, an honour which Chesterfield respectfully declined. He was kept from the House of Lords by his giddiness and deafness, but in 1751 he delivered an elegant speech in favour of adopting the New Style, a measure in which he took great interest, and for which he had endeavoured to prepare the public mind by writing in some of the periodicals. His declining years, though now and then brightened by flashes of wit and merriment, were clouded by sickness and despondency arising from his loss of hearing. He died on the 24th of March 1773, in the 79th year of his age. His natural son, Philip Stanhope, to whom his well-known Lettere were addressed, died five years before him.