Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby - Legacy

Legacy

At his death, Lord Stanley could look back on a career of forty-five years of remarkable political success amid the most challenging of circumstances. He had not only escaped the bloody fate of so many of his political contemporaries, including his brother, but on top of the great patrimony he inherited from his father, he acquired huge estates and national offices, the Garter and an earldom. These, and his closeness to successive royal families - whom he could count amongst his kith and kin by several different connections - made him a figure of great power and influence. Under his adroit leadership the north-west escaped the worst horrors of decades of civil war that devastated other parts of England and his family “helped bring a degree of cultivation and refinement to the north-west”. Their patronage underpinned the careers of a number of young Lancashire men, including William Smyth, Hugh Oldham, and Christopher Urswick, who went on to become pillars of the Tudor church and state.

The senior line of the descendants of Thomas Stanley and Eleanor Neville continued to hold the Earldom of Derby until the death of James Stanley, 10th Earl of Derby in 1736. The title then passed to a junior branch of the family, the Baronets Stanley of Bickerstaffe, descended from Sir James Stanley, younger brother of Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby. This branch still holds the title today. Edward Stanley, born 1962, became 19th Earl of Derby in 1994. (John Stanley a younger brother of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby was the ancestor of the Barons Stanley of Alderley.)