STALYBRIDGE (44), a manufacturing town of Cheshire and Lancashire, on both banks of the Tame, 71/2 m.  E. by N. of Manchester; is of modern growth, and noted for its large cotton-yarn and calico factories, iron-foundries and machine-shops.

STAMFORD (8), an interesting old town, partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Northamptonshire, on the Welland, 12 m.  WNW. of Peterborough; was one of the five Danish burghs, and is described in DOMESDAY BOOK (q. v.); a massacre of Jews occurred here in 1140, and in Plantagenet times it was a place of ecclesiastical, parliamentary, and royal importance; figures in the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War of Charles I.’s time; has three fine Early English churches, a corn exchange, two handsome schools, Browne’s Hospital, founded in Richard III.’s reign, and Burghley House, a noble specimen of Renaissance architecture; the Stamford Mercury (1695) is the earliest provincial newspaper; the district is mainly agricultural.

STAMFORD (16), a town of Connecticut, situated amid surrounding hills in Long Island Sound, 33 m.  NE. of New York; is a summer resort, and has iron and bronze foundries, etc.

STAMFORD BRIDGE, a village of Yorkshire, on the Derwent, 91/4 m.  NE. of York; the scene of Harold’s victory over the invading forces of Harold Haarfager on September 25, 1066.

STAMP ACT, a measure passed by Grenville’s Ministry in 1765 enacting that all legal documents used in the colonies should bear Government stamps.  The Americans resisted on the ground that taxation without representation in Parliament was unjust.  Riots broke out, and the stamped paper was carefully avoided.  In 1766 Pitt championed the cause of the colonists, and largely through his eloquence Government in that year was induced to repeal the Act.

STANDING STONES, rude unhewn stones standing singly or in groups in various parts of the world, and erected at remote periods, presumably in memory of some great achievement or misfortune, or as having some monumental reference.

STANDISH, MILES, one of the Puritan fathers, of Lancashire birth, and a cadet of a family of knightly rank in the county; served in the Netherlands as a soldier, and went to America in the Mayflower in 1620, and was helpful to the colony in its relations both with the Indians and the mother-country; is the hero of a poem of Longfellow’s.

STANFIELD, CLARKSON, English landscape-painter, born in Sunderland, of Irish descent; began as a scene-painter; his first picture, “Market-boats on the Scheldt,” proving a success, he devoted himself to easel-painting, and his principal works were “Wreckers off Fort Rouge,” “A Calm at Sea,” “The Abandoned,” “The Bass Rock”; his frequent visits to the Continent supplied him with fresh subjects; and Ruskin says of one of his pictures, “it shows as much concentrated knowledge of the sea and sky as, diluted, would have lasted any of the old masters for life” (1793-1866).