Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield PC FRS (1634 – 28 January 1714) was a peer in the peerage of England. [1]
Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield PC FRS (1634 – 28 January 1714) was a peer in the peerage of England. [1]
He was the son of Henry Stanhope, Lord Stanhope and his wife, Katherine Wotton. [1] He inherited the title of Earl of Chesterfield on the death of his grandfather in 1656. [1] He was educated by Poliander, Professor of Divinity at Leyden (1640) and at the Prince of Orange's College at Breda. In 1669 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws by the University of Oxford.
His first marriage was to Lady Anne Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland. Following her death, a marriage had been arranged between him and Mary, daughter of Anne and 3rd Lord Fairfax. Despite the fact the banns had been read twice, Mary jilted Chesterfield for the 2nd Duke of Buckingham with whom she had fallen in love. [2] Chesterfield subsequently married Elizabeth Butler, daughter of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond and his wife, Elizabeth Preston. [1] They had one daughter, Lady Elizabeth (from whom descends Queen Elizabeth II), but it is not certain that Chesterfield was the father. Elizabeth died in 1665, and he married a third time to the second daughter of Charles Dormer, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon, Lady Elizabeth Dormer, who finally provided him with two sons. [1]
According to Samuel Pepys, Chesterfield was a ladies' lord, and had been one of the many lovers of Barbara Villiers, the most notorious mistress of King Charles II. His second wife, tired of his neglect, began flirting with the king's brother, the Duke of York, and also with James Hamilton.
He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for wounding Captain John Whalley in a duel (1658) and on suspicion of involvement in Sir George Booth's rising (1659). He also killed Francis Wolley in a duel on 17 January 1660, and fled to Holland. After having obtained pardon from Charles II, he returned to England. [3]
He was Lord Chamberlain to Catherine of Braganza (1662–1665) and a member of her Council (1670). He was Colonel of a regiment of foot (1667, 1682), a Privy Councillor (1681) and the Warden of the royal forests south of Trent (1679). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in November 1708. [1] [4] He died at his home in Middlesex, and was buried in Shelford, Nottinghamshire.
Lieutenant-General James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, KG, PC, was a statesman and soldier, known as Earl of Ormond from 1634 to 1642 and Marquess of Ormond from 1642 to 1661. Following the failure of the senior line of the Butler family, he was the second representative of the Kilcash branch to inherit the earldom.
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, 20th Baron de Ros, was an English statesman and poet.
Vice-Admiral Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, KG, PC, PC (Ire) (1634–1680) was an Irish soldier and politician. He was the eldest son of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond but predeceased his father and therefore never succeeded as duke.
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, Countess of Castlemaine, was an English royal mistress of the Villiers family and perhaps the most notorious of the many mistresses of King Charles II of England, by whom she had five children, all of them acknowledged and subsequently ennobled. Barbara was the subject of many portraits, in particular by court painter Sir Peter Lely.
Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, PC (1634–1705) was an English courtier, diplomat, and briefly a member of parliament, sitting in the House of Commons of England for part of 1660. He was also a noted Roman Catholic writer. His wife Barbara Villiers was one of Charles II's mistresses.
Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester, PC, FRS, FRCP was an English peer. He was the son of Robert Pierrepont, 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, and his wife, the former Gertrude Talbot, daughter of George Talbot and Elizabeth Reyner, and cousin of the Earl of Shrewsbury.
James Stewart, 1st Duke of Richmond, 4th Duke of Lennox KG, lord of the Manor of Cobham, Kent, was a Scottish nobleman. A third cousin of King Charles I, he was a Privy Councillor and a key member of the Royalist party in the English Civil War. In 1641–42, he served as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He spent five months in exile in 1643, returning to England to defend the city of Oxford for the king.
Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, KG, styled Lord Wriothesley before 1624, was an English statesman, a staunch supporter of King Charles II who after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 rose to the position of Lord High Treasurer, which term began with the assumption of power by the Clarendon Ministry. He "was remarkable for his freedom from any taint of corruption and for his efforts in the interests of economy and financial order", a noble if not a completely objective view of his work as the keeper of the nation's finances. He died before the impeachment of Lord Clarendon, after which the Cabal Ministry took over government.
Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Orkney was an English courtier from the Villiers family and the reputed mistress of William III & II, King of England and Scotland, from 1680 until 1695. She was a lady-in-waiting to his wife and co-monarch, Queen Mary II.
George Feilding, 1st Earl of Desmond was an English aristocrat, awarded the title of Earl of Desmond in the Peerage of Ireland by Charles I of England under the terms of a letter patent issued by James I of England.
Charles MacCarty, Viscount Muskerry, called Cormac in Irish, commanded a royalist battalion at the Battle of the Dunes during the interregnum. He was heir apparent to Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty but was killed at the age of 31 at the Battle of Lowestoft, a sea-fight against the Dutch, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and thus never succeeded to the earldom. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield was the daughter of Charles Dormer, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon, and the third wife of Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield.
Elizabeth Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield was an Irish-born beauty. She was a courtier after the Restoration at the court of Charles II of England at Whitehall. She was the second wife of Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield.
Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury, 11th Earl of Waterford, was an English peer who was a Royalist officer in the English Civil War. He survived the war only to be mortally wounded in a duel with the Duke of Buckingham who was having an affair with his wife.
Sir Charles Dormer of Wing, 3rd Baronet, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon, 2nd Viscount Ascott, 3rd Baron Dormer of Winge was an English peer. On his father's death at the First Battle of Newbury, on 20 September 1643, he succeeded to his father's titles, at just 10 years of age. His mother had died in June, a few months earlier. He married twice, had four children, but his only son predeceased him and so when he died in 1709 the earldom and the viscountcy became extinct. The baronetcy and barony were inherited by Rowland Dormer, 4th Baron Dormer, a grandson of the second son of the 1st Baron Dormer.
Anna Maria Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury was Countess of Shrewsbury from 1659 to 1668, by virtue of her marriage to Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury.
Anne, Lady Fairfax was an English noblewoman. She was the wife of Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, commander-in-chief of the New Model Army. She followed her husband as he fought and she was briefly taken prisoner. It is said that she was ejected after heckling the court at the trial of Charles I.
Elizabeth Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, was an English noblewoman and the wife of Scottish peer John Lyon, 4th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. Born to Lady Elizabeth Butler and Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, her paternity was in doubt. It is possible that her actual father was James, Duke of York, who would in 1685 ascend the throne as King James II of England.
Mary Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham, was the wife of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.
Elizabeth Butler, Duchess of Ormond and 2nd Baroness Dingwall reunited the Ormond estate as her maternal grandfather, Black Tom, 10th Earl of Ormond had it, by marrying James Butler, later Duke of Ormond, her second cousin once removed. She had inherited her share of the Ormond estate through her mother, Elizabeth Preston, who was Black Tom's daughter and only surviving child. Her husband had inherited his share from his grandfather Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, Black Tom's successor in the earldom. Her share was the bigger one and included Kilkenny Castle.
