George Stanhope - Church Politics

Church Politics

Stanhope, as Dean, entered the lower house of Convocation at a period of bitter conflict with the upper house under Francis Atterbury's leadership. As a man of peace, in friendship with Robert Nelson on one side, and with Edward Tenison and Gilbert Burnet on the other, Stanhope was proposed by the moderate party as prolocutor in 1705, but was defeated by the high churchman, Dr. William Binckes. In 1711, Stanhope was among the founding group that would organise the building of fifty new churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire of London, and was re-appointed in 1715 after the accession of George I. After Atterbury's elevation to the see of Rochester in 1713 he succeeded him as prolocutor, and was twice re-elected.

The most prominent incident of his presidency was the censure of the Arian doctrine of Samuel Clarke in 1714. Early in 1717 the lower house of Convocation also censured a sermon by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly which had been preached before the king and published by royal command. To stop the matter from going to the upper house, convocation was hastily prorogued (May 1717). It was thenceforth formally summoned from time to time, only to be instantly prorogued. On the occasion of one of these prorogations Stanhope broke up the meeting (14 February 1718) in order to prevent Tenison from reading a protestation in favour of Hoadly. It was probably in consequence of this action that he lost the royal chaplaincy, which he had held in the first year of George I. From this date the Convocation of the English Clergy remained in abeyance until its revival in the province of Canterbury in 1852, and in that of York in 1861.

Stanhope was one of the great preachers of his time, and preached before Queen Anne in St Paul's Cathedral in 1706 and 1710 on two of the great services of national thanksgiving for the Earl of Marlborough's victories. In 1719 he had a correspondence with Atterbury, which dealt partly with the appointment of Thomas Sherlock, afterwards Bishop of London, to one of his curacies.

Stanhope founded the Charity School in High Street, Deptford, known as Dean Stanhope's School. Dean Stanhope's school eventually merged and became part of the Addey and Stanhope School. Following the merger, the building was demolished to make way for shops in 1899.

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He died at Bath on 18 March 1728, and was buried in St. Mary's church, Lewisham, where a monument with a long inscription was erected to his memory. According to Daniel Lysons (1796):

His monument, the inscription on which has been already given, deserved a better fate than to be thrown aside in the vault, where it now lies, when the church was rebuilt. A place should have been found within the new walls for the memorial of a man who was for thirty-eight years so distinguished an ornament of the parish.

There were two portraits of him in the Deanery at Canterbury.