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Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield Biography

Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield Image

CHESTERFIELD, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of (1694–1773). An English statesman and author, eldest son of the third Earl of Chesterfield. He was born in London, Sept. 22, 1694. He studied for about a year at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and then left to travel in Flanders (1714). The next year he was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales and entered the House of Commons as a Whig. On the death of his father (1726) he succeeded to the earldom and took his seat in the House of Lords. Two years later, he was appointed Ambassador to The Hague; in 1730 he was made a knight of the Garter and Lord Steward of the Household. Dismissed from office (1733), he became a bitter opponent of Walpole. Particularly brilliant was his speech against the Licensing Act (1737). In 1744 he joined the Pelham ministry, and in the next year was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a post for which he was admirably qualified. In 1746 he became Secretary of State and was offered a dukedom. In 1748 he resigned office and passed the rest of his life in leisure. Distinguished for wit and graceful manners, he was for a time on terms of intimacy with Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, and other eminent contemporaries. At an inopportune time he thrust himself forward as a patron of Dr. Johnson and was repudiated in a celebrated letter (Feb. 7, 1735). (See Johnson, Samuel.) Chesterfield's literary fame rests upon his Letters (published 1744) to his natural son, Philip Dormer, written for the improvement of his manners and inculcating the general standards of a man of the world rather than those of a moralist.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 156-157.