Stafford Harry Northcote, Viscount Saint Cyres Explained

Stafford Harry Northcote, Viscount Saint Cyres KStJ (29 August 1869 – 2 February 1926) was an English diplomat and historian.

The only son of Walter Stafford Northcote, 2nd Earl of Iddesleigh and Elizabeth Lucy Meysey-Thompson, he was styled as Viscount Saint Cyres from 1887 until his death. He was educated at Eton^[1] and Merton College, Oxford, where he graduated BA with a First in modern history and later MA. He was Secretary and Counsellor in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service and was also active as a historian. In 1914 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. He was appointed a Knight of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and was a Justice of the Peace.^{[2] [3]} In 1922 he was living at 84, Eaton Square, Belgravia.^[4]

On 9 July 1912, Northcote married Dorothy Morrison (born c. 1872), a daughter of Alfred Morrison. They had no children and he died on 2 February 1926 aged 56.^[2] His widow survived until 1936.^[5]

Selected publications

• François de Fénelon (London: Methuen, 1901)
• The Gallican Church, The Cambridge Modern History Vol. V (Cambridge University Press, 1908)^[6]
• Pascal (London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1909; New York: E. P. Dutton)
• "The Sorrows of Mrs. Charlotte Smith", Cornhill Magazine, vol. 15 (1903), pp. 686–96

In popular culture

Northcote is quoted in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale, 2012): “We do not care for things once they are ours; what we enjoy is running after them.”^[7]

Notes and References

1. Pierre Coustillas, The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part I: 1857–1888 (2015), p. 218
2. Burke’s Peerage volume 2 (2003), p. 2024
3. “STAFFORD HARRY NORTHCOTE, J.P., M.A., D.Lit., VISCOUNT ST. CYRES” (obituary) in Report and Transactions - The Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art (1926), p. 41
4. Frederick George Aflalo, Joseph Jacobs, Herbert Arthur Morrah, The Literary Year-book, Vol. 23 (1922), p. 1109
5. https://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7579&h=32592982&tid=&pid=&queryId=85374a4c90691c0bcaf08da06733728e&usePUB=true&_phsrc=mrF2&_phstart=successSource Viscountess Dorothy St Cyres”
6. Stafford Harry Northcote (Viscount St Cyres), The Gallican Church, in The Cambridge Modern History Vol. V (1908)
7. ”Stafford Harry Northcote (Viscount St. Cyres)”, in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (Yale University Press, 2012), p. 57