Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of

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Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of (1694–1773). Politician and diplomat. Chesterfield owed his entrée into politics in 1714 to his kinsman James Stanhope. He was elected an MP in 1715 and joined the household of the prince of Wales, the future George II. Inheriting his father's earldom in 1726, he served as ambassador to The Hague, 1728–32, but soon after his return joined the opposition to Walpole. After Walpole's fall he made his peace in 1745 with the ‘old corps’ Whigs, led by the Pelhams, and accepted office as lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He became one of the inner circle of ministers responsible for national policy, and in 1746 was appointed secretary of state (northern department), but his peace aims were frequently upstaged by the bellicosity of his senior colleague Newcastle, and in 1748 he resigned. Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, famously described by Johnson as exhibiting ‘the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master’, were published by his widow the year after his death.

Andrew Hanham

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