Stafford Harry Northcote, Viscount Saint Cyres KStJ (29 August 1869 – 2 February 1926) was an English diplomat and historian.
The only son of Walter Stafford Northcote, 2nd Earl of Iddesleigh and Elizabeth Lucy Meysey-Thompson, he was styled as Viscount Saint Cyres from 1887 until his death. He was educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, where he graduated BA with a First in modern history and later MA. He was Secretary and Counsellor in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service and was also active as a historian. In 1914 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. He was appointed a Knight of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and was a Justice of the Peace. In 1922 he was living at 84, Eaton Square, Belgravia.
On 9 July 1912, Northcote married Dorothy Morrison (born c. 1872), a daughter of Alfred Morrison. They had no children and he died on 2 February 1926 aged 56. His widow survived until 1936.
Selected publications
- François de Fénelon (London: Methuen, 1901)
- The Gallican Church, The Cambridge Modern History Vol. V (Cambridge University Press, 1908)
- Pascal (London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1909; New York: E. P. Dutton)
- "The Sorrows of Mrs. Charlotte Smith", Cornhill Magazine, vol. 15 (1903), pp. 686–96
In popular culture
Northcote is quoted in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale, 2012): “We do not care for things once they are ours; what we enjoy is running after them.”
Notes
- ^ Burke’s Peerage volume 2 (2003), p. 2024
- Pierre Coustillas, The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part I: 1857–1888 (2015), p. 218
- “STAFFORD HARRY NORTHCOTE, J.P., M.A., D.Lit., VISCOUNT ST. CYRES” (obituary) in Report and Transactions - The Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art (1926), p. 41
- Frederick George Aflalo, Joseph Jacobs, Herbert Arthur Morrah, The Literary Year-book, Vol. 23 (1922), p. 1109
- Viscountess Dorothy St Cyres” in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007, ancestry.co.uk, accessed 21 July 2021: Name: Viscountess Dorothy St Cyres / Death Age: 64 / Birth Date: abt 1872 / Registration Quarter: Jul-Aug-Sep 1936 / Registration District: Westminster / Volume: 1a / Page: 414” (subscription required)
- Stafford Harry Northcote (Viscount St Cyres), The Gallican Church, in The Cambridge Modern History Vol. V (1908)
- ”Stafford Harry Northcote (Viscount St. Cyres)”, in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale University Press, 2012), p. 57