George Stanhope 1660-1728
George STANHOPE 1660-1728
Biographical Note
Born at Hartshorne, Derbyshire, son of Thomas Stanhope and — Allestry or Allestree. Attended Uppingham School and Eton College. Matriculated at King’s College, Cambridge in 1678, becoming a Fellow of the College in 1680; MA 1685; DD 1697. He was ordained in 1683, and held several clerical positions before becoming Vicar of Lewisham, Kent in 1694 until his death, and Dean of Canterbury from 1704. He was active in church politics, noted for his preaching, and prolific as an author of sermons and translations. Married 1. Olivia Cotton; 2. Ann Parker.
Books
Stanhope’s will bequeathed to his successor Deans of Canterbury his ‘manuscript Bookes’ concerning the Cathedral estate and related matters, and similar materials to his successor Vicars of Lewisham, including some in the hand of Abraham Corfe. He left his wife ‘all the Bookes in her common use in the Closet within my upper study and Bedchamber at Lewisham’, as well as his ‘interleaved Common Prayer Booke and Bible in Nine volumes Quarto’ together with his manuscript sermons, which were not to be published without ‘very mature deliberation and advise’. John Hill, vicar of Preston, Suffolk, was left ‘my large folio manuscript Common place booke and the history of Thuanus four volumes in folio which was formerly his good fathers’.
He used an engraved armorial bookplate (‘George Stanhope, D.D., Dean of Canterbury’): Franks 27876; *587 (another impression).
Examples (with bookplate on verso of title pages): All Soul’s College Oxford Y.13.28(1); Cambridge University Library U*.4.61(C); Chetham’s Library F.8.63; John Rylands Resarch Institute & Library R166313; Merton College Oxford 12.E.2-4.
Sources
- CCEd Clergy of the Church of England database.
- Gambier Howe, E. R. J. Franks bequest: catalogue of British and American book plates bequeathed to the ... British Museum. London, 1903-4.
- Warner, R. L. 'Stanhope, George (1660–1728), dean of Canterbury’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- Will of George Stanhope. The National Archives, PROB 11/622/48.