Ferdinando Stanhope - Biography

Biography

Stanhope was born at Shelford Manor, Nottinghamshire. He was the ninth, (but fourth surviving) son of Philip Stanhope, 1st Earl of Chesterfield and his wife Catherine, daughter of Francis Hastings, Lord Hastings.

In November 1640, Stanhope was an elected Member of Parliament for Tamworth in the Long Parliament. At the start of the Civil War and after the Battle of Edgehill, he attended King Charles I at Oxford in 1642, where among others of the King's supporters, he was made a doctor of laws. He was a colonel of the King's Horse, and was killed in 1643 while organising assistance to put out a fire at a house in Bridgeford that had been started accidentally by a Parliamentary soldier. He was buried at Shelford church among his ancestors.

Sir Aston Cokain wrote an epitaph for his cousin Ferdinand Stanhope:

“
Here underneath this monumental Stone
Lie Honour, Youth, and Beauty all in One:
For Ferdinando Stanhope here doth rest,
Of all those Three the most unequal'd Test.
He was too handsome and too stout to be
Met face to face by any Enemy;
Therefore his foe (full for his death inclin'd)
Stole basely near, and shot him through behind.
 ”

—Aston Cokain.

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