John Spencer Stanhope

John Spencer Stanhope (1787–1873) was an English landowner and antiquarian.

Life

The son of Walter Spencer-Stanhope, he was born 27 May 1787.^[1] He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1804.^[2] Around 1807 he was in Edinburgh, and joined the Speculative Society.^[3]

Spencer Stanhope, after travel, spent the years 1810 to 1813 as a French prisoner of war of the French, taken captive by bad faith. He was detained for two years in Verdun, allowed to visit Paris, and then set free.^[4] He travelled with Thomas Allason in Greece. Based on researches carried out there, he published Topography illustrative of the Battle of Plataea in 1817.^[5] In 1816 he had added to the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum a piece of Parthenon frieze he had purchased in Greece.^[6]

With an estate also at Horsforth, Spencer Stanhope resided at Cannon Hall, in Yorkshire.^[7] He died on 8 November 1873.^[8] He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and Society of Antiquaries of London.^[9]

Family

Stanhope married in 1822 Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke, daughter of Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester.^[10] Walter Spencer-Stanhope (1827–1911) and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope were their sons. Of four daughters,^[11]

• Anna Wilhelmina married the lawyer Percival Pickering, and was mother of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan,^[12] chemist and horticulturist Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering, FRS;^[13] Rowland Neville Umfreville (1861–1931) and writer A. M. W. Stirling.^[12]
• Eliza Anne married Richard St John Tyrwhitt.

Anne Alicia and Louisa Elizabeth were unmarried.^[11]