Admitted 10 March, 1564-5.
Second son of Henry Lord Stafford of Stafford Castle. His elder brother dying in 1566, he succeeded to the Barony and was summoned to Parliament in 1581. He married Mary, daughter of Edward Earl of Derby, and died in 1603. The Barony became extinct in 1640. Lord Stafford's Arms are in the Hall.
Admitted 14 May, 1680.
Second son of John Stafford of Keniton, Thornbury, Gloucestershire. Though a student at the Inn he devoted himself more to divinity than law, and in 1689 published a treatise on Happiness, in which he sets forth the advantages of a religious life. After the Revolution he became a violent Jacobite, and published a series of political tracts which brought him under the notice of the law and caused his committal finally to Bethlehem Hospital. He died 2 July, 1703.
He published a list of his writings under the title of The Printed Sayings of Richard Stafford, prisoner in Bedlam (1692).
Admitted 27 May, 1664.
Son and heir of Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow, in the parish of Clothall, Hertford, where he was born. He was connected by blood with the family of Stanley, Earls of Derby, and on his mother's side with the poets William Hammond and Richard Lovelace, and his early education was supervised by William Fairfax, son of the translator of Tasso, which circumstances gave his mind a bent towards the study of poetry. He was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1641. During his residence in the Temple he cultivated the literary society of the day, many members of which he befriended. In 1647 he published a volume of poems dedicated to Love, and in 1649 two more consisting of translations, and finally in 1651, a fourth volume, containing all his previously published verse, together with a rendering of the Odes of Anacreon and other translations, a very charming volume. Some of his lyric poems have been set to music, the best known being O Turn those Cruel Eyes Away (by Henry Lawes). His original poems and translations were collected and edited by Sir Egerton Brydges (q.v.) in 1814-5, and may be found in Bohn's Classical Library. In later life Stanley turned his thoughts to Greek philosophy, and between 1655 and 1662 published a History of Philosophy, which was for a long time regarded as a standard work on the subject. This was followed in 1663 by an edition of Åschylus, with a Latin translation and notes, the best up to date, and which still retains a great reputation. Stanley died in Suffolk Street, Strand, 12 April, 1678, and was buried in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.
His literary gifts and scholarship have been eulogized by Pope and other distinguished writers. He left many MSS. which are now in University College, Cambridge. In 1668 he presented copies of his Æschylus and his History of Philosophy to the Library of the Inn; also of his Psalterium Carolinum, or The Devotions of his Sacred Majestie {Charles I.) in his Solitudes and Sufferings, rendered in Verse.
