Clarendon, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, EARL OF

Clarendon, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, EARL OF, a great English diplomatist, was born in London, 12th January 1800. He was a descendant of that Thomas Villiers, second son of the Earl of Jersey, who married the heiress of the last Lord Clarendon of the Hyde family (1752), and was made Baron Hyde (1756) and Earl of Clarendon (1776). Having studied at Cambridge, he early entered the diplomatic service, and in 1833 was appointed ambassador at Madrid, where he acquired great influence, which he employed in helping Espartero to establish the government of Spain on a constitutional basis. On the death of his uncle, the third earl of the second creation, without issue, in 1838, he succeeded to the title, and in 1840 was made Lord Privy Seal under Melbourne. When the Whig ministry was broken up in 1841 he became an active member of the opposition; but warmly supported Sir Robert Peel and his own brother, Charles Pelham Villiers, in the agitation for the abolition of the corn laws. Under Lord John Russell's premiership he became President of the Board of Trade in 1846, and the following year was appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He entered upon his duties in troubled times. The insurrectionary follies of Smith O'Brien and his coadjutors might have set the whole country in a blaze but for the prompt and decisive measures which the new viceroy adopted, and which soon restored general tranquillity. At the same time, his tact and impartiality contributed to allay and reconcile the exasperations of party, though it did not avert the bitter hatred of the Orangemen. He was thanked in the speech from the throne in 1848, and next year received the coveted honour of the garter. When the Russell cabinet resigned in 1852, Clarendon was replaced by the Earl of Eglington, but on the formation of the Aberdeen ministry next year was intrusted with the portfolio of the Foreign Office. It was thus upon his shoulders that the responsibility for the Crimean war actually fell. Mr Roebuck's resolution in 1855 cost him his office, which, however, he soon resumed at Palmerston's desire, and he sat at the Congress of Paris. Lord John Russell was Foreign Secretary from 1859 to 1865, but became Premier on Palmerston's death, when Clarendon returned to the Foreign Office. Next year he retired with his colleagues, to resume the same office in Gladstone's government in 1868, which he retained till his death, 27th June 1870. Lord Clarendon was a man of singularly genial and charming manners, who added by his rare tact and perfect temper an unwonted grace to the difficulty and invidiousness of diplomacy.