Cowley, HENRY RICHARD CHARLES WELLESLEY, EARL, diplomatist, was born June 17, 1804. His father, the first Baron Cowley, was a younger brother of the great Duke of Wellington. He was educated at Eton, and at twenty began a long career as a diplomatist by becoming an attaché at Vienna. He was in succession secretary and ambassador at Constantinople, minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland (1848), to the Germanic Confederation (1851), and in 1852 succeeded the Marquis of Normanby as ambassador at Paris, a position which he held with rare tact and temper throughout all the difficulties that occurred until his resignation in 1867. With Clarendon he represented Great Britain at the Paris Congress of 1856, and in 1860, with Cobden, he arranged the commercial treaty between France and England. He succeeded to his father's title in 1847, was created Viscount Dangan and Earl Cowley in 1857, and made a K.G. in 1866. He died July 14, 1884.
Cowley, HENRY RICHARD CHARLES WELLESLEY, EARL
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 3: Catarrh to Dion, p. 534
Source scan(s): p. 0545