Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was an English statesman, diplomat, and man of letters whose posthumously published Letters to His Son made him one of the eighteenth century's most quoted authorities on manners, learning, and worldly conduct. Born in London in 1694 to a noble family of ancient Derbyshire stock, he was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, before completing the Grand Tour of Europe.

He entered the House of Commons in 1715 and inherited his father's earldom in 1726, moving to the House of Lords. Chesterfield served as ambassador to The Hague, where he negotiated the Treaty of Vienna, and later as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1745 to 1746, where his even-handed administration earned rare praise from Irish Catholics. Returning to London, he served briefly as Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

His most remembered legislative act was the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750, which moved Britain and its colonies from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in September 1752, dropping eleven days at a stroke. He also patronised the arts, supporting Voltaire and corresponding with Montesquieu.

Increasing deafness drove him from public life in the 1750s, and he turned to writing the long stream of letters to his illegitimate son, also Philip, drilling him in French, Latin, dancing, and the arts of social grace. Published by his son's widow in 1774, the letters scandalised Samuel Johnson but enchanted readers across Europe. He died at Chesterfield House in Mayfair in 1773.

The given name Philip derives from the Greek Philippos, formed from philos meaning "loving" and hippos meaning "horse," thus "lover of horses." Borne by Macedonian kings and Christian apostles, it carried him through the courts of Hanoverian England.