William Stanley

“ That an Englishman of such noble birth and of such undoubted military genius as Sir William Stanley should have fallen so low as to become a mere pensioner of Spain, and the enemy of his fatherland, is sad in the extreme. Devotion to his religion utterly blinded him, and prevented him from discerning how fatal and how foolish was the course he was pursuing. Had he held instead of surrendering Deventer, he would undoubtedly have obtained high honours in England ”

“ These things appear incomprehensible to me; but I suppose use will reconcile me to them, as it does others, by whom they must once have been thought strange.
I think I can discover Sir William Stanley has great pride, that is, he is a slave to fashion. He is ambitious of being a leading man. His house, his equipage, and wife—in short, every thing which belongs to him must be admired; and I can see, he is not a little flattered when they meet with approbation, although from persons of whose taste and knowledge of life he has not the most exalted idea. ”

“ This William seems to have conceived a liking for the stony lea before referred to, and exchanged his lordship of Talk with his cousin for it. Thenceforward he made Stanley his seat, and, as the old chronicles tell us, in honour of his wife and of the great antiquity of her family, assumed her maiden name and became immediate founder of the Stanleys, a race the most illustrious in the country's annals, and associated with the most stirring events of history. ”

“ It is material to bear in mind, that Thomas Lord Stanley (afterwards first Earl of Derby, of that surname) , married Eleanor Neville, daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and sister of Richard Earl of Warwick (the King Maker) ; which circumstance, in addition to the violence of party, may easily account for the conduct of Lord Stanley, and of his brother William Stanley, on the occasion of that battle. ”

“ Alban’s Court, Nonington, near Canterbury. Following the almost unbroken law of the heredity of genius, Stanley derived his chief mental qualities from his mother; and through her he was nearly related to the poets George Sandys, William Hammond, Sir John Marsham the chronologer, Richard Lovelace and his less famous brother; as, through his father, to a fellow-poet perhaps dearer to him than any of these, Sir Edward Sherburne.
His tutor, at home, not at College, was William Fairfax, son of the translator of Tasso. ”

“ The name of the other signature was entirely unknown to Harry and his friends; this second letter bore a date only seven years previous to the interview, and was addressed to William Stanley, at a sailor's boarding-house in Baltimore. It was short, and the contents were unimportant; chiefly referring to a debt of fifteen dollars, and purporting to be written by a shipmate named Noah Johnson: the name of William Stanley, in conjunction with the date, was the only remarkable point about this paper. Both letters had an appearance corresponding with their dates; they looked old and soiled ”

“ At the battle of Blore Heath in August 1459 Stanley, though close at hand with a large force, did not join the royal army, whilst his brother William fought openly for York. In 1461 Stanley was made chief justice of Cheshire by Edward IV., but ten years later he sided with his brother-in-law Warwick in the Lancastrian restoration. Nevertheless, after Warwick’s fall, Edward made Stanley steward of his household. Stanley served with the king in the French expedition of 1475, and with Richard of Gloucester in Scotland in 1482. ”

“ Stanley’s exemption did not pass unnoticed; and William Fairfax (‘no man fitter!’) is careful to instruct us that Doris, Celinda, and Chariessa were ‘various rays’ of ‘one orient sun,’ and further, that ‘no coy ambitious names may here imagine earthly flames,’ because the poet’s professional and deliberate [xviii] homage was really paid to inward beauty, and never to ‘roses of the cheek’ alone. Here we run up against a sweet and famous moral of Carew’s, which not Carew, but Stanley, bears out as the better symbolist of the two. ”

“ MONTAGUE.
I acquainted you, some time since, of Stanley's affairs being quite derangé, and that he had practised an unsuccessful manœuvre on Brudenel. A pretty piece of business he has made of it, and his worship stands a fair chance of swinging for forgery, unless I contribute my assistance to extricate him, by enabling him to replace the money. As to raising any in the ordinary way, it is not in his power, as all his estates are settled on old Stanley, he (Sir William) having no children; and he is inexorable. There may be something to be said in the old fellow's favour too ”

“ Choosing the contemplative life, Stanley, [xiii] like William Habington and Drummond of Hawthornden, was shut in with his mental activities, while many others whom they knew and whom we know, poor gay sparks of Parnassus, were dimming and blunting themselves on bloody fields. Like Habington and Drummond also in this, he was, though a passive Royalist, Royalist to the core. ”

“ Stanley quitted the Spanish service about 1570, and joined Elizabeth's forces in Ireland, where he served for fifteen years (cf. Cal. Hatfield MSS. i. 567) . In 1579, as one of Sir William Drury's captains in the campaign against the followers of the Earl of Desmond, he assisted in an inroad into Limerick, and for his gallantry was knighted by Drury at Waterford. He took part in the battle of Monasternenagh, and distinguished himself in the defence of Adare. In 1580 he was sent to England to enlist troops, which he led to Munster ”

“ Furthermore, Stanley had, in richest abundance, the great natural gift of oratory, with an audacity in debate which won him the nickname of "Rupert," and a voice which would have stirred his hearers if he had only been reciting Bradshaw. For a brilliant sketch of his social aspect we may consult Lord Beaumaris in Lord Beaconsfield's Endymion; and of what he was in Parliament we have the same great man's account, reported by Matthew Arnold: "Full of nerve, dash, fire, and resource, he carried the House irresistibly along with him." ”

“ A further benefaction was a technical school, which was opened in 1907, for the education of boys as skilled scientific mechanics. The school met with instant success, and Stanley subsequently presented the buildings to the public with an endowment valued at 50,000Z. In 1907 Stanley was made an honorary freeman of Croydon, and a clock tower was unveiled in South Norwood to commemorate his golden wedding. ”

“ Richard could not well afford to quarrel with so powerful a noble, but early in 1485 Stanley asked leave to retire to his estates in Lancashire. In the summer Richard, suspicious of his continued absence, required him to send his eldest son, Lord Strange, to court as a hostage. After Henry of Richmond had landed, Stanley made excuses for not joining the king; for his son’s sake he was obliged to temporize, even when his brother William had been publicly proclaimed a traitor. Both the Stanleys took the field; but whilst William was in treaty with Richmond, Thomas professedly supported Richard. ”

“ But the 1647 copy of Stanley in the Bodleian Library, which belonged to William Fairfax, has ‘name’ erased, and ‘fall’ written, in a seventeenth-century hand, above it.
TRANSLATIONS. Claim to Love. Guarini. [1651, 1657] (p. 72) .
60:1. P. 72, line 5. ‘To’: 1651.
60:2. P. ” line 7. ‘Thy’: 1651.
The Sick Lover. Guarini. [1647, 1651, 1657] (p. 72) .
61:1. P. 72, line 6. ‘It’ in all texts, possibly a misprint for ‘is.’
Apollo and Daphne. Marino. [1651] (p. 74) .
62:1. P. 74, line 6. ‘Tears,’ manifestly wrong, in the text ”

“ He was secretary of state for war and for the colonies and president of the board of trade; and was governor-general of Canada from 1888 to 1893. He died on the 14th of June 1908, when his eldest son, Edward George Villiers Stanley, became earl of Derby. As Lord Stanley the latter had been member of parliament for the West Houghton division of Lancashire from 1892 to 1906; he was financial secretary to the War Office from 1900 to 1903, and postmaster-general from 1903 to 1905. ”

“ Thy growing worth know age, though not decay,
Till thou pay back thy theft, and live to climb
As many years as thou hast snatch’d from Time.
On Sir J [ohn] S [uckling] his Picture and Poems [1646] . [14:1] [22]
Suckling, whose numbers could invite
Alike to wonder and delight,
And with new spirit did inspire
The Thespian scene, and Delphic lyre,
Is thus express’d in either part,5
Above the humble reach of Art.
Drawn by the pencil, here you find
His form; by his own pen, his mind.
Answer [to “The Union,” Poem addressed to Stanley by his Friend and Tutor, William Fairfax] . ”

“ But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition, or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained Whigs, very sore. Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said that Stanley was "a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth, but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged help." Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any party would have been thankful to claim. ”

“ But if he is not a professional artist he is a connoisseur, a dilettante in the right sense, a lover of the arts, an art-loving prince. The painter Salzmann tells us how he used to go to the Villa Liegnitz in Potsdam to give Prince William lessons, and how the Empress, then Princess William, used to sit with the pupil and his teacher, discussing technical and art questions. A result of the teaching, in addition to the pictures mentioned elsewhere, was an oil-painting, a sea-fight, which still hangs in the Ravene Gallery in Berlin. ”

“ Everything all right. Will sail per Eider 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. If good weather and barring accidents arrive 22nd December, Southampton. It is only one month's delay after all. Tell the authorities to prepare Holmwood (Consul General) Zanzibar, and Seyyid Barghash (Prince of Zanzibar) . Best compliments to you.
"Stanley."
My agent was in despair—the audiences were so kind—the receptions were ovations, but arguments and entreaties were of no avail.
I arrived in England the day preceding Christmas, and within a few hours Sir William Mackinnon and myself were discussing the Expedition. ”

“ A scarcely less prominent figure in society than Bishop Wilberforce, and to many people a much more attractive one, was Dean Stanley. A clergyman to whom the Queen signed herself "Ever yours affectionately" must certainly be regarded as the social head of his profession, and every circumstance of Stanley's nature and antecedents exactly fitted him for the part. He was in truth a spoiled child of fortune, in a sense more refined and spiritual than the phrase generally conveys. He was born of famous ancestry, in a bright and unworldly home ”

“ Arnold was so generally abused, and even branded as an infidel. Dr. Arnold was indeed a noble teacher, and the very man to develop the best faculties in young Arthur Stanley; for one of the doctor's own strongest traits was this same open-mindedness. The frankness and candor, the directness and fearlessness with which Stanley ever gave expression to his views; the purity and "whiteness" of his mind, and the sweetness and tenderness of his disposition,—all these had a part in the building of his fame. ”

“ Edward Henry Stanley, 15th earl of Derby (1826–1893) , eldest son of the 14th earl, was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a high degree and became a member of the society known as the Apostles. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested the borough of Lancaster, and then made a long tour in the West Indies, Canada and the United States. ”

“ Stanley furnished him with money and men, and he started again for the great interior region to discover the source of the Nile, and then to return home and die. He was now sixty years old, his health had given way, but he persisted in the effort to finish his work. ”

“ He (Emperor William) left Coblenz to ascend the throne as the selected instrument of the Lord he always regarded himself to be. For us all, and above all for us princes, he raised once more aloft and lent lustrous beams to a jewel which we should hold high and holy—that is the kingship von Gottes Gnaden, the kingship with its onerous duties, its never-ending, ever-continuing trouble and labour, with its fearful responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no human being, no minister, no parliament, no people can release the prince. ”

“ Meteor. Soc. ix. 208 seq.) , a machine for measuring the height of human beings automatically — one of the first modern 'penny in the slot' machines (1886; cf. caricatures in Moonshine, 6 Oct. 1888, and Scraps, 8 Dec. 1888) , and spirometers, a machine for testing lung capacity (1887; cf. caricature by H. Furniss in Yorkshire Evening Post, 6 Sept. 1890) .
Stanley's versatile interests embraced geology, astronomy, anthropology, phrenology, painting, music, the drama, photography, and wood-carving. In the intervals of business he lectured and wrote on scientific subjects for learned societies. ”

“ The term “catskin” is possibly a corruption of quatre-skin, derived from the fact that in ancient times the robes of an earl (as depicted in some early representations) were decorated with four rows of ermine, as in the robes of a modern duke, instead of the three rows to which they were restricted in later centuries. The three “catskin” earldoms are the only earldoms now in existence which date from creations prior to the 17th century. (A. W. H.*)
Thomas Stanley, 1st earl of Derby (c. 1435–1504) , was the son of Thomas Stanley, who was created Baron Stanley in 1456 and died in 1459. ”