John Spencer Stanhope

John Spencer Stanhope (1787–1873) was an English landowner and antiquarian.

Life

The son of Walter Spencer-Stanhope, he was born 27 May 1787.^[1] He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1804.^[2] Around 1807 he was in Edinburgh, and joined the Speculative Society.^[3]

Spencer Stanhope, after travel, spent the years 1810 to 1813 as a French prisoner of war of the French, taken captive by bad faith. He was detained for two years in Verdun, allowed to visit Paris, and then set free.^[4] He travelled with Thomas Allason in Greece. Based on researches carried out there, he published Topography illustrative of the Battle of Plataea in 1817.^[5] In 1816 he had added to the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum a piece of Parthenon frieze he had purchased in Greece.^[6]

With an estate also at Horsforth, Spencer Stanhope resided at Cannon Hall, in Yorkshire.^[7] He died on 8 November 1873.^[8] He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and Society of Antiquaries of London.^[9]

Family

Stanhope married in 1822 Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke, daughter of Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester.^[10] Walter Spencer-Stanhope (1827–1911) and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope were their sons. Of four daughters,^[11]

• Anna Wilhelmina married the lawyer Percival Pickering, and was mother of A. M. W. Stirling and Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering FRS.
• Eliza Anne married Richard St John Tyrwhitt.

Anne Alicia and Louisa Elizabeth were unmarried.^[11]

Notes

1. Sir Bernard Burke (1852). A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland for 1852. Colburn and Company. p. 1281.
2. Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Stanhope, John Spencer" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
3. Speculative Society of Edinburgh (1905). The History of the Speculative Society, 1764–1904. Printed for the Society by T. and A. Constable. p. 16. Retrieved 10 September 2015 – via Internet Archive.
4. John Douglas Cook; Philip Harwood; Walter Herries Pollock; Frank Harris; Harold Hodge (1867). The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. J. W. Parker and Son. p. 85.
5. John Spencer-Stanhope (1817). Topography illustrative of the battle of Platæa. J. Murray. p. 11.
6. Holger Hoock (2010). Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850. Profile Books. pp. 228–9. ISBN 978-1-86197-859-2.
7. John Burke (1833). A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain and Ireland. p. 468.
8. Northumberland county history committee (1930). A History of Northumberland. Issued Under the Direction of the Northumberland County History Committee. A. Reid, sons & Company; London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Company, limited. p. 176.
9. Charles T. Pratt (1882). "Chapter IV: Cannon Hall". History of Cawthorne. p. 25.
10. Charles Roger Dod (1855). Dod's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, of Great Britain and Ireland. S. Low, Marston & Company. p. 668.
11. Stirling, A. M. W. (1908). "Coke of Norfolk and His Friends; the life of Thomas William Coke, first earl of Leicester of Holkham, containing an account of his ancestry, surroundings, public services & private friendships & including many unpublished letters from noted men of his day, English & American". Internet Archive. New York: John Lane company. pp. 530–1. Retrieved 10 September 2015.