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The Right HonourableThe Earl StanhopeKG DSO MC PC
Leader of the House of Lords
In office 21 February 1938 – 14 May 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	The Viscount Halifax
Succeeded by	The Viscount Caldecote
Lord President of the Council
In office 3 September 1939 – 10 May 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	The Viscount Runciman of Doxford
Succeeded by	Neville Chamberlain
First Lord of the Admiralty
In office 27 October 1938 – 3 September 1939
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Duff Cooper
Succeeded by	Winston Churchill
President of the Board of Education
In office 28 May 1937 – 27 October 1938
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Hon. Oliver Stanley
Succeeded by	The Earl De La Warr
First Commissioner of Works
In office 16 June 1936 – 27 May 1937
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Hon. William Ormsby-Gore
Succeeded by	Sir Philip Sassoon, Bt
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office 18 January 1934 – 16 June 1936
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Anthony Eden
Succeeded by	Viscount Cranborne
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for War
In office 10 November 1931 – 18 January 1934
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	The Lord Marley
Succeeded by	The Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal
Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty
In office 24 August 1931 – 10 November 1931
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Charles Ammon
Succeeded by	Lord Stanley
Civil Lord of the Admiralty
In office 11 November 1924 – 7 June 1929
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Frank Hodges
Succeeded by	George Hall
Parliamentary Secretary to the War Office
In office 14 December 1916 – 10 January 1919
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
In office 20 April 1905 – 15 August 1967
Preceded by	The 6th Earl Stanhope
Succeeded by	The 11th Earl of Harrington (as viscount Stanhope of Mahon)
Personal details
Born	James Richard Stanhope (1880-11-11)11 November 1880
Died	15 August 1967(1967-08-15) (aged 86)
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Lady Eileen Browne (1889–1940)
Parent(s)	Arthur Stanhope, 6th Earl Stanhope Evelyn Pennefather

James Richard Stanhope, 7th Earl Stanhope, KG, DSO, MC, PC (11 November 1880 – 15 August 1967), styled Viscount Mahon until 1905, was a British Conservative politician.

Background

Stanhope was the eldest son of Arthur Stanhope, 6th Earl Stanhope, and Evelyn Henrietta (née Pennefather), daughter of Richard Pennefather of Knockeevan, County Tipperary and Lady Emily Butler. The Hon. Edward Stanhope and Philip Stanhope, 1st Baron Weardale, were his uncles.

Lord Mahon was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 5 January 1901, and went with his battalion to serve in South Africa during the Second Boer War. Following the end of this war in June 1902, he returned with a large contingent of men from the guards regiments on board the SS Lake Michigan, which arrived in Southampton in October 1902.

Political career

Stanhope entered the House of Lords on the death of his father in 1905, and made his maiden speech in November 1909. He held his first office as Parliamentary Secretary to the War Office under David Lloyd George between 1918 and 1919. In 1924 he was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty under Stanley Baldwin, a post he held until the Conservatives lost power in 1929. The latter year he was also sworn of the Privy Council. After the formation of the National Government in 1931 he served under Ramsay MacDonald as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty in 1931, as Under-Secretary of State for War between 1931 and 1934 and as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the last year under the premiership of Stanley Baldwin. In 1934 he was made a Knight Companion of the Garter.

He entered the cabinet in June 1936 when Baldwin appointed him First Commissioner of Works. When Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in May 1937 Stanhope was made President of the Board of Education, and in February 1938 he also succeeded Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax, as Leader of the House of Lords. In October 1938 he became First Lord of the Admiralty while continuing as Leader of the House of Lords. After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, he was succeeded as First Lord of the Admiralty by Winston Churchill and appointed Lord President of the Council. He remained as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President until Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940. However, he did not serve in the Churchill coalition government and never returned to ministerial office. He made his last speech in the House of Lords in December 1960.

In July 1940, Stanhope and several other national politicians—including Baldwin and Chamberlain—were targeted in the polemic Guilty Men. This publication accused these men of failing to prepare Britain for the looming war, and of appeasing Nazi Germany during the 1930s. The accusations made in Guilty Men have subsequently been questioned by some critics.

Family

Lord Stanhope married Lady Eileen Browne (1889–1940), the eldest daughter of George Browne, 6th Marquess of Sligo, and Agatha Stewart Hodgson, granddaughter of William Forsyth. They had no children. She died in September 1940, aged 51. With the death of Edward Scudamore-Stanhope, 12th Earl of Chesterfield, in 1952, Lord Stanhope inherited the peerage titles Earl of Chesterfield and Baron Stanhope, but did not apply for a writ of summons for the more senior Earldom of Chesterfield, and continued to be known as The Earl Stanhope. Stanhope died in August 1967, aged 86. On his death both earldoms and the barony of Stanhope became extinct, whereas the viscountcy of Stanhope of Mahon and the barony of Stanhope of Elvaston passed to his nearest heir, William Stanhope, 11th Earl of Harrington. Lord Stanhope left his country seat Chevening to the nation.

Arms

Coat of arms of James Stanhope, 7th Earl Stanhope

Coronet A Coronet of an Earl Crest A Tower Azure issuant from the battlements a Demi Lion Or ducally crowned Gules holding between the paws a Grenade fired proper Escutcheon Quarterly Ermine and Gules Supporters Dexter: a Wolf Or ducally crowned Gules; Sinister: a Talbot Ermine Motto A Deo et rege (Latin for 'From God and the King') Orders Order of the Garter

References

1. "Death notice". The Times, London, Sept. 23. 1940.
2. Hart′s Army list, 1903
3. "The Army in South Africa – Troops returning home". The Times. No. 36876. London. 18 September 1902. p. 5.
4. ^ hansard-millbanksystem.com James Stanhope, 7th Earl Stanhope.
5. "No. 33492". The London Gazette. 7 August 1929. p. 3003.
6. Cato (1940). Guilty Men. London: Victor Gollancz. OCLC 301463537.
7. Dutton, D. J. (2006). "Guilty men (act. 1940)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70401. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 5 October 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
8. Scott Kelly, "The Ghost of Neville Chamberlain: Guilty Men and the 1945 Election" Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine, Conservative History Journal, Autumn 2005
9. Geoffrey Mander, We were not all wrong – How the Labour and Liberal Parties (& also the anti-Munich Tories) strove, pre-war, for the policy of collective security against aggression – with adequate armaments to make that policy effective: the truth about the peace ballot: etc, etc. (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944)

External links

• Newspaper clippings about James Stanhope, 7th Earl Stanhope in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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of England	The Earl of Portland The Earl of Lindsey William Juxon, Bishop of Lincoln The Earl of Northumberland The Lord Cottington Sir Henry Capell The Earl of Nottingham The Earl of Torrington The Earl of Pembroke The Lord Cornwallis The Viscount Falkland The Earl of Orford The Earl of Bridgewater The Earl of Pembroke
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Presidents of the Board of Education	Devonshire Londonderry Birrell McKenna Runciman Pease Henderson Crewe Fisher Wood Trevelyan Percy Trevelyan Lees-Smith Maclean Irwin Stanley Stanhope De La Warr Soulbury Butler
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• 1880 births
• 1967 deaths
• British Secretaries of State for Education
• Earls Stanhope
• Knights of the Garter
• First Lords of the Admiralty
• Lord Presidents of the Council
• Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
• Members of London County Council
• Leaders of the House of Lords
• Stanhope family
• Admiralty personnel of World War II
• Earls of Chesterfield
• Ministers in the Chamberlain wartime government, 1939–1940
• Ministers in the Chamberlain peacetime government, 1937–1939
• People from Chevening, Kent
• 20th-century English nobility
• Lords of the Admiralty