Derby, EARL OF, a title conferred in 1485 on Thomas, second Lord Stanley, two months after Bosworth Field, where he and his family had greatly contributed to Richmond's victory. The Stanleys were descended from Adam de Aldithléy, who attended Duke William to England, and whose grandson, having married the heiress of Thomas Stanley, of Stafford, exchanged the manor of Thalk in that county, which he had received as his wife's marriage-portion, for that of Stoneley, in the county of Derby, and afterwards assumed the surname of Stanley. In 1405 Sir John Stanley, who had married the heiress of Lathom, got a grant of the Isle of Man (q.v.), which he and his descendants ruled till 1736. James, seventh Earl of Derby (1606-51), fought on the royalist side throughout the Great Rebellion, and, taken prisoner after Worcester, was beheaded at Bolton; his countess, Charlotte de la Trémouille, is famous for her heroic defence of Lathom House (1644) and of the Isle of Man (1651).
EDWARD GEOFFREY SMITH STANLEY, fourteenth EARL OF DERBY, was born in 1799, at Knowsley Park, Lancashire. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where, in 1819, he gained the Latin Verse prize (subject, Syracuse). He was elected member of parliament for Stockbridge in 1820; in 1825 he married the second daughter of the first Lord Skelmersdale; and in 1826 he represented Preston, but lost his seat in 1830, on becoming Chief-secretary for Ireland under the administration of Earl Grey. A seat was soon found for him at Windsor. He took a distinguished part in the debates in favour of the Reform Bill, and signalised his Irish administration by two bold measures—one for National Education in Ireland, and another relative to the Irish Church Temporalities, which resulted in ten Irish bishoprics being abolished. The grievance of church-rates and first-fruits was also removed, and a graduated tax upon benefices and bishoprics substituted. In 1833 he became Secretary of State for the Colonies, and in the same year carried the bill for emancipating slaves in the West Indies. In 1834, being alarmed by the success of Mr Ward's motion for appropriating the surplus of the Irish Church temporalities to secular purposes, Mr Stanley seceded from the Whigs, carrying with him Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Ripon. In November, upon the dismissal of the Melbourne ministry, he declined to join the Peel administration, and the Stanleyites maintained an independent position for several years. He accepted, however, the colonial seals in 1841, and held them for four years. In 1844 he resigned his seat for North Lancashire, for which he had sat since 1832, and was called to the Upper House in his father's barony of Stanley of Bickerstaffe, having for ten years before borne the courtesy title of Lord Stanley, through his father's succession to the earldom of Derby. In December 1845, when Sir Robert Peel determined to repeal the corn laws, he retired from the cabinet. In 1846 he put himself at the head of the Protectionists, who, headed in the Commons by Lord George Bentinck and Mr Disraeli, waged a stout but ineffectual opposition to the free-trade measures of Sir Robert Peel. He was now regarded as the leader of the great Conservative party.
In 1851, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the earldom. In February 1852, on the resignation of Lord John Russell, he was intrusted with the formation of an administration, which was, however, displaced in December following by a hostile vote of the House of Commons condemnatory of Disraeli's budget. On Wellington's death (1852) he was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. In Feb- ruary 1858, when the Palmerston government resigned on the rejection of the Conspiracy Bill, he again became First Lord of the Treasury. At the meeting of parliament in the following year, his government brought forward a measure of parliamentary reform. A hostile amendment having been moved by Lord John Russell, and carried, he dissolved parliament, and appealed to the country. When the new House of Commons reassembled in June 1859, a vote of want of confidence was carried against his government, and he resigned. He returned to power in 1866, and, in conjunction with Disraeli, passed the Reform measure of 1867. In 1868 he resigned the premiership in favour of Disraeli. His last speech in parliament was made (1869) in opposition to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. He died at Knowsley Park, Lancashire, October 23, 1869. Lord Derby was styled in his day 'the Rupert of debate,' and stood in the very first rank of parliamentary speakers. His power of invective was almost unequalled, and his vehement contentions with O'Connell on the Repeal of the Union did much to diminish the influence of the Irish agitator. Besides being an accomplished scholar, he was a keen sportsman and a popular landlord. But he cared little for office, and more than once injured the fortunes of his party by declining to form a ministry, notably on the fall of Lord Aberdeen in 1855. Lord Derby (who was offered the crown of Greece in 1862-63) published in 1864 a blank-verse translation of Homer's Iliad. See Lives by Kebbel (1890), and Saintsbury (1892).
EDWARD HENRY SMITH STANLEY, fifteenth EARL OF DERBY, K.G., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., eldest son of the above, was born in 1826, and educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took firsts in classics and mathematics. In 1848 he was elected member of parliament for King's Lynn, and in 1852 was appointed Under-secretary for Foreign Affairs in his father's first ministry. After declining to join Lord Palmerston's ministry in 1855, Lord Stanley became Secretary for India in his father's second administration (1858-59), and carried the important measure which transferred the government of India from the Company to the crown. He was Foreign Secretary in the third Derby and first Disraeli ministries (1866-68). He succeeded his father in the earldom in 1869. In 1874 he again became Foreign Secretary under Disraeli; but resigned in March 1878, when the majority of the cabinet determined to support the tottering cause of Turkey by calling out the reserves and occupying Cyprus. After holding aloof from politics for several months, he definitely joined the Liberal party in 1880, and was Secretary for the Colonies from 1882 to 1885. In 1886 he declined to follow Mr Gladstone on the question of Home Rule for Ireland, allying himself with the Unionist party. Lord Derby, who was Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1868-71, and of Edinburgh University in 1875-80, died at Knowsley, 21st April 1893. His Speeches and Addresses, privately printed in 1893, were published with a Memoir by Mr Lecky in 1894. His speeches on economical subjects are profound and convincing.