Earl of Courtown
(1823-1914)
30 April 1861
Volume 3, page 167, sitting number 3359.
John George Henry Stopford was born on 24 April 1823 at Courtown House, County Wexford, Ireland, the son of James Thomas Stopford, 4th Earl of Courtown and Lady Charlotte Albina Montagu-Scott. He was educated at Eton between 1834 and 1839. In 1845 he gained the rank of Captain in the service of the Grenadier Guards. On 3 September 1846 at St James’s, Westminster, he married the Honourable Elizabeth Frances Milles, daughter of George John Milles, 4th Baron Sondes of Lees Court.
His father died on 20 November 1858 and Stopford succeeded to the titles of 5th Earl of Courtown in the County of Wexford, 5th Viscount Stopford and 4th Baron Saltersford of Saltersford in the County of Chester.
He died, aged 91, on 28 November 1914 at his residence, Courtown House, Gorey, County Wexford.
An obituary appeared in the Wicklow People (5 December 1914). 'The death of the Earl of Courtown occurred on Saturday at his residence, Courtown House, Gorey. The deceased nobleman was born in Courtown House as far back as 1823. He received his early education at Eton, and did not proceed to either Oxford or Cambridge, but before entering the Grenadier Guards resided in Geneva for a short time with the Rev. Dr. Merle D'Aubigne [sic], whose History of the Reformation is regarded as a classic in Protestant families, and has gone through almost innumerable editions. The young Lord Stopford, as he was then, served in the Guards for five years, leaving the regiment in 1847. He returned to Ireland in the same year, and, with his father, took an active part in the Famine Relief work. From that time he resided constantly at Courtown, and held the office of Chairman of the Gorey Board of Guardians for upwards of forty years, resigning his position when the new Local Government Act come into force in 1899. On the death of his father in 1838, Lord Stopford became the fifth Earl of Courtown, and came into the possession of the family property in the Co. Wexford, which comprises some twenty-three thousand acres, also of estates in Carlow and elsewhere. The late Earl lived on the most amicable terms with his tenantry by whom he was held in the greatest respect and veneration.'