Charles Stanhope, 2nd Baron Stanhope

Sir Charles Stanhope by an artist in the circle of Robert Peake the Elder (Christie's)

Charles Stanhope, 2nd Baron Stanhope (1593–1675) was an English landowner, courtier, and writer of marginalia.

Stanhope was the son of Sir John Stanhope of Harrington, Northamptonshire and Margaret MacWilliam, daughter of Henry Macwilliam and Mary Hill. He attended Queens' College, Cambridge, and was knighted on 4 June 1610.

It was reported in June 1613 that, "My Lord Stanhope's son is lately fallen lunatic", but he seems to have made a recovery.[1] He was Master of the Posts, an office that had belonged to his father, from 1625 to 1637.[2] Margraret, Lady Stanhope died in 1640 at Stanhope House, in Charing Cross, London.[3]

In 1641 Charles Stanhope married Dorothy or Doll Livingston, a sister of James Livingston, Earl of Newburgh, and a daughter of the Scottish courtier Sir John Livingston of Kinnaird, groom of the bedchamber, and Jane Sproxton (later Lady Gorges). However, some sources state his wife was Dorothy Barret.

  1. ^ Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, vol. 1 (1849), p. 254.
  2. ^ Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 621.
  3. ^ 'Site of Stanhope House', in Survey of London: Volume 16, St Martin-in-The-Fields I: Charing Cross, ed. G H Gater and E P Wheeler (London, 1935), pp. 93-98. British History Online.