Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby

Who was Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby?

Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby KG, styled Lord Stanley from 1776 to 1832 and known as The Lord Stanley from 1832 to 1834, was an English politician, landowner, builder, farmer, art collector and naturalist. The Derbyan Parakeet, Psittacula derbiana, is named after him.

He was the 1st child and only son of Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby and Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of James Hamilton, 6th Duke of Hamilton. On 30 June 1798 he married Charlotte Margaret Hornby, daughter of Reverend Geoffrey Hornby, with whom he fathered future Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby.

After receiving his education at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, Lord Stanley was Member of Parliament for Preston and Lancashire from 1796 to 1832, when he was ennobled as Baron Stanley of Bickerstaffe, of Bickerstaffe in the County Palatine of Lancaster. In 1834 he succeeded his father as 13th Earl of Derby and withdrew from politics, instead concentrating on his natural history collection at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. He had a large collection of living animals: at his death there were 1,272 birds and 345 mammals at Knowsley, shipped to England by explorers such as Joseph Burke.