Edward Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley

Edward Lyulph Stanley, 4th Baron Sheffield, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley and 3rd Baron Eddisbury (16 May 1839 – 18 March 1925) was an English peer.

Life He was the son of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and the former Hon. Henrietta Dillon-Lee. He attended Eton College between 1851 and 1857, gaining the Tomline Prize for mathematics in 1857. He read Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1861. He was elected fellow of Balliol the following year. He was called to the bar in 1865. He resigned his Oxford fellowship in July 1869 protest the required "conformity to the established church" (i.e. the Church of England) that academics had to profess; he had, by then, become an agnostic. His anti-clericalism was expressed in the pamphlet Oxford University Reform, published the same year.

Stanley was a member of the Liberation Society which campaigned for disestablishment of the Church of England.

Stanley (then known as the Honourable Edward Lyulph Stanley) contested Oldham, in the Liberal interest, at elections in 1872, 1874, 1880 and 1885. He only won the 1880 contest and served in the House of Commons during the 1880–1885 Parliament. He inherited the title of Baron Stanley of Alderley in 1904, following the death of his brother. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor (PC) in 1910.

Family Stanley married Mary Katherine Bell, daughter of Lowthian Bell, on 6 February 1873. They had eight children:

Katharine Florence Clementine Stanley (died 1884) Henrietta Margaret Stanley (1874–1956), married William Edmund Goodenough. Arthur Stanley, 5th Baron Stanley of Alderley (1875–1931) Edward John Stanley (1878–1908) Lt.-Col. Oliver Hugh Stanley (1879–1952) Sylvia Laura Stanley (1882–1980), married Anthony Morton Henley, and was mother of Rosalind Pitt-Rivers. Blanche Florence Daphne Stanley (1885–1968), married Eric Pearce-Serocold. Beatrice Venetia Stanley (1887–1948)

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