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Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP)

British Member of Parliament (1790-1858)

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History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ24568616 ↗
Source-derived summary

Henry Frederick Stephenson (18 September 1790 – 30 July 1858) was a British Whig politician and officer of arms. He was the illegitimate son of Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk.

He was appointed Falcon Herald Extraordinary and in 1815 was part of the mission to give the Garter to the Tsar Alexander I of Russia. On that occasion the emperor gave a gem ring to Stephenson, who was so pleased with this mark of favour that he was granted a supposed 'augmentation of honour' to his arms of a canton charged with the letter A within a gem ring.

He served as Member of Parliament for Westbury from 1831 to 1832. After leaving Parliament, he held a variety of minor offices.

He was the father of Sir Augustus Keppel Stephenson and of Admiral Sir Henry Frederick Stephenson.

Arms

References

Stephenson, Henry Frederick (1790-1858), of 5 Arlington Street, Mdx.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP)” is british Member of Parliament (1790-1858). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Henry, Frederick and Stephenson, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1790, 1858, 1815, 1831—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1790-09-18. For this dossier, Henry, Frederick and Stephenson is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british Member of Parliament (1790-1858)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24568616. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1790, 1858, 1815 and 1831.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP) primary sources, Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP) archive and Henry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP)”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Henry Frederick Stephenson (MP)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.