Stanhope, George

Stanhope, George an English prelate, was born at Hertishorn (Hertishoon), Derbyshire, March 5, 1660, and received his rudimentary education at Uppingham, Rutland. He removed to Leicester, then to Eton, from which he went to King's College. He took the degree of A.B. in 1681, and that of A.M. in 1685. He officiated first at the Church of Quoi, near Cambridge, and in 1688 was vice-proctor of the university. The same year he was preferred to the rectory of Tewing, Herts, and in 1689 to the vicarage of Lewisham, Kent, by lord Dartmouth, to whom he had been chaplain. He was soon after appointed chaplain in ordinary to king William and queen Mary, and filled the same post under queen Anne. In July 1697, he took the degree of D.D., and in 1701 preached the Boyle Lectures, which he published. He was presented in 1703 to the vicarage of Deptford, Kent, relinquishing the rectory of Tewing and holding Lewisham and Deptford by dispensation." In this year he was promoted to the deanery of Canterbury, in which he was installed March 23, 1704. He was also Tuesday lecturer at the Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry. At the convocation of the clergy in February 1714, he was elected prolocutor, to which position he was twice reelected. He died at Bath, March 18, 1728. In his will he left two hundred and fifty pounds to found an exhibition for a king's scholar of Canterbury school.

He published a translation of Thomas Kempis's De Imitatione Christi (1696, 8vo): a translation of Charron's Treatise on Wisdom (1697, 3 vols. 8vo): — Meditations of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus (1699, 4to.): — Truth and Excellence of the Christian Religion Asserted, etc. (Boyle Lectures, 1706, 4to): — a fourth edition of Parsons's Christian Directory (1716, 8vo): — a free version of St. Augustine's Meditations (1720, 8vo): — Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion: — Sermons, etc. See Chalmers, Biog. Dict. s.v.; Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, s.v.