Stonor was one of the judges who were removed from office by the king on his sudden return to England in November 1340, and was for a time imprisoned in the Tower (Murimuth, p. 117; Avesbury, p. 323). He was, however, restored to his office on 9 May 1342, and retained it till his death in 1354. In 1335 the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, had suggested that Stonor would be a suitable seneschal of the monastery, as being a prudent man, well known and popular among the nobility, and solicited the services of Archbishop Stratford to obtain his consent. Stonor declined the honour, but wrote a letter to the prior recommending John de Hildesley for the post (Litteræ Cantuarienses, ii. 84–8, 98, 108). Stonor held lands in nine counties, in which he was succeeded by his son John.
[Authorities quoted; Foss's Judges of England.]
STOPES, LEONARD (1540?–1587?), priest, born about 1540, probably belonged to the branch of the family of Stopes settled at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, and may have been brother of James Stopes, whose son James, brother of St. Catharine's by the Tower, was rector of St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, London, from 1577 till his death in 1624 (cf. his will—a very detailed document—110 Byrde at Somerset House). In 1555 Leonard was chosen one of the four original scholars on the foundation of St. John's College, Oxford, by Sir Thomas White (1492–1566) [q. v.], and afterwards became one of the first four fellows. He graduated B.A. on 23 Oct. 1558, and M.A. on 21 March 1558–9. In 1559, refusing to conform, he was ejected from his fellowship, and went abroad, as Wood conjectures, to Douai. Returning to England as a seminary priest, he was imprisoned for some years in Wisbeach Castle. He subsequently was released and exiled. He died before 1588 (Bridgewater, Concertatio Eccl. Catholicæ in Anglia).
Stopes was the author of twenty-four verses in praise of Queen Mary, entitled ‘Haile Mary, full of grace,’ which were printed as a broadside by Richard Lant. The Society of Antiquaries possesses a copy. It is possible that Stopes was also the author of ‘An Epitaph on the Death of Queen Mary,’ another broadside belonging to the Society of Antiquaries, for printing which without a license Lant was imprisoned in 1559 (Ames, Typogr. Antiq. ed. Dibdin, 1814, p. 583; Arber, Transcript of the Stationers' Reg. iv. 237).
[Boase's Reg. Univ. Oxon. i. 234; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford Colleges, p. 538; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Univ. Oxon. ii. 133, Annals, ii. 145; Wood's Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 154; Dodd's Lives of Elizabethan Clergymen, ii. 87; Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesiæ, 1592, vii. 674; Much Hadham Registers; Stonyhurst MSS.; Addit. MS. 29489; Chester's Marriage Licences; Antiquary, p. 198, November 1890.]
STOPES, RICHARD (fl. 1521–1544), last abbot of Meaux, studied at St. Bernard's College, Oxford, and graduated B.D. on 7 Dec. 1521. He was appointed abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Meaux or Melsa in Yorkshire before 1526, and drew up an account of the value of the abbey in 1534–5. At the dissolution in 1539–40 he received a pension of 40l. As he is not mentioned in the lists of expelled or pensioned priests who were alive in 1555–6, he was probably by that time either dead or abroad.
[Boase's Reg. Univ. Oxon. i. 119; Wood's Fasti Oxon. i. 56; Dugdale's Monast. ed. Caley, v. 397 (where his name appears by error as Draper); Patents 17 Hen. VIII, pt. 2, mems. 2 and 3; Misc. Doc. Aug. Office, vol. 234, f. 362; Uncal. Papers, Hen. VIII, 1537–8; Harl. MS. 600, f 37 b.]
STOPFORD, JAMES (d. 1759), bishop of Cloyne, born in London, was the son of Joseph Stopford, a captain in the English army. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1710, became a scholar in 1713, graduated B.A. in 1715, was elected a fellow on 25 March 1717, and proceeded M.A. in the following year. He was an intimate friend of Swift, who materially aided his promotion in the church, appointed him one of his executors, and bequeathed him a portrait of Charles I by Vandyck, which Stopford had formerly given him.
In 1727 Stopford resigned his fellowship on being appointed vicar of Finglas, near Dublin, by Lord Carteret, the lord-lieutenant. On 11 July 1730 he was installed provost of Tuam, on 10 July 1736 he was collated archdeacon of Killaloe, and on 8 Jan. 1748 he was instituted dean of Kilmacduagh. He held these preferments until 1753, when, in pursuance of letters patent dated 28 Feb., he was appointed bishop of Cloyne. He died on 23 Aug. 1759, and was buried at St. Anne's, Dublin, where a tablet was erected to his memory on the outside of the south wall of the church. He married, on 16 Dec. 1727, Anne, second daughter of James Stopford of Tara Hill in Meath, and sister of James Stopford, first earl of Courtown. By her he had three sons—William, James, and Joseph—besides other children.
[Brady's Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, 1864, iii. 119–20; Lodge's Irish Peerage, ed.
