Stanhope, Philip Henry, 5th Earl Stanhope (1805 -1875)

Born at Walmer, Kent, Philip Henry Stanhope was the son of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope, and the Hon. Catherine Stanhope, daughter of Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1827. He married Emily Harriet, daughter of General Sir Edward Kerrison, 1st Baronet, in 1834. He entered Parliament in 1830, representing the rotten borough of Wootton Basset until the seat was disenfranchised in 1832. He was then re-elected to Parliament representing Hertford. He served under Sir Robert Peel as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs between December 1834 and April 1835, and Secretary to the Board of Control in 1845, but though he remained in the House of Commons till 1852, he made no special mark in politics. His chief achievements were in the fields of literature and antiquities. In 1842 took a prominent part in passing the Literary Copyright Act 1842. He was instrumental in the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1856. It was mainly due to him that in 1869 the Historical Manuscripts Commission was launched. As president of the Society of Antiquaries (from 1846 onwards), he called attention in England to the need of supporting the excavations at Troy. He was also president of the Royal Literary Fund from 1863 until his death, a trustee of the British Museum and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He founded the Stanhope Essay Prize at Oxford in 1855, the same year he succeeded to the earldom. He was also an accomplished historian, and author of a number of historical studies, notable on William Pitt, and the Duke of Wellington, drawn from archival materials to which he had access. He died at Merivale, Bournemouth. He was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest son, Arthur.