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==