Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield - Later Years in The House of Lords

Later Years in The House of Lords

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War

The dukedom offered him by George II, whose ill-will his fine tact had overcome, was refused. He continued for some years to attend the Upper House, and to take part in its proceedings. In 1751, seconded by Lord Macclesfield, president of the Royal Society, and James Bradley, the eminent mathematician, he distinguished himself greatly in the debates on the calendar, and succeeded in making the new style a fact: the Act of Parliament is sometimes known as Chesterfield's Act. Deafness, however, was gradually affecting him, and he withdrew little by little from society and the practice of politics.

In 1755 occurred the famous dispute with Johnson over the dedication to the English Dictionary. Some 8 years previously (1747) Johnson sent Chesterfield, who was then Secretary of State, a prospectus of his Dictionary, which was acknowledged by a subscription of 10 pounds. Chesterfield apparently took no further interest in the enterprise, and the book was about to appear, when he wrote two papers in the World in praise of it. It was said that Johnson was kept waiting in the anteroom when he called while the actor Colley Cibber was admitted. In any case the doctor had expected more help from a professed patron of literature, and wrote the earl the famous letter in defence of men of letters. Chesterfield's "respectable Hottentot," now identified with George, Lord Lyttelton, was long supposed, though on slender grounds, to be a portrait of Johnson.

In the 1760s Chesterfield offered a cogent critique of the Stamp Act passed by Grenville's parliament. He wrote (in a letter to his friend Lord Newcastle) about the "absurdity" of the act. It could not be properly enforced, and even if it was effective, the tax would bring in no more than 80,000 pounds per year while the cost in reduced trade from the American colonies would be at least a million pounds a year (as it happened the loss was nearly two million a year).

He lived for some years at the Ranger's House, Chesterfield Walk, Greenwich, London.