Biography of Thomas Stanhope 1540-1596

Archaeologia Volume 31 Section V. Melford, Suffolk, May 8th, 1844.

MY DEAR SIR,

In the valuable collection of Original Letters edited by Sir Henry Ellis (Vol. II. second Series), I observe two in 1569 and 1570 from [his mother] Lady Stanhope to Sir William Cecill, respecting the unhappy marriage of her [his sister] daughter with Mr. afterwards Sir John Hotham of Scorborough in Yorkshire, and also Sir John's letter to Cecill, as "Master of the Wards and Lyveries," defending himself, and in which he expatiates on the "Stanhopes eville delinge many wayes," but with less asperity than the lady, who not only reviles him, but, in fact, the whole county of York, and says "especially in Yorkshire, where he may suborne men and women to say what he listeth to serve his devilishe purpose." The lady had purchased the wardship of Hotham, and married him to her daughter, but it appears that after all it was a bad bargain, as she had not purchased his love. The Lord Treasurer Burghley found time for everything, and this lady even troubled him after her death. I shall be glad if you think the letter which I inclose worthy of notice by the Society of Antiquaries; the foolscap sheet is very neatly folded up, and endorsed in Lord Burghley's business-like manner, "6. Ap. 1588, Sr Thomas Stanhoppe, Towchinge his Mothers funeralls." Anne Lady Stanhope was the widow of Sir [his father] Michael Stanhope, who was beheaded in 1551 on a charge of conspiring with the Protector Somerset, who had married his [his aunt] half-sister, to assassinate the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquess of Northampton, and the Earl of Pembroke, at a banquet at the Lord Paget's, but his chief offence appears to have been that he was brother-in-law to Somerset. His widow is described by Collins as having "kept continually a worshipful house, relieved the poor daily, gave good countenance and comfort to the preachers of God's word, spent the most of her latter days in prayer, and using the church where God's word was preached." Her son, Sir Thomas, dates his letter from Shelford¹ in Nottinghamshire, a dissolved monastery, which with the manor had been granted by Henry VIII. to his father. Sir Thomas was ancestor of several noble families, and his letter shows the magnificence of his ideas, but the dole to the poor at his gate was probably only a continuance or revival of the old custom in the time of his predecessors the monks.

Believe me to be

Very faithfully yours,

RICHD. ALMACK.

ALBERT WAY, Esq., M.A., Director S.A.

Note 1. Shelford House was a garrison for King Charles the First, under the care of [his great grandson] Philip Stanhope, son of the [his grandson] first Earl of Chesterfield, the grandson of this Sir Thomas Stanhope. In Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of Col. John Hutchinson is a very interesting and minute account of the storming of this house, the miserable death of Philip Stanhope, and the destruction of the house by fire.