Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHR-CLI |
|
|
CLARENDON, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, 4TH EARL OF (in the Villiers line) (1800-r87o) , English diplomatist and statesman, was born in London on the 12th of January 'Soo. He was the eldest son of Hon. George Villiers (1759-1827, youngest son of the 1st earl
earl
Jersey
Young George Villiers entered upon life in circumstances which gave small promise of the brilliancy of his future career. He was well born; he was heir presumptive to an earldom; and his mother was a woman of great energy, admirable good sense, and high feeling. But the means of his family were contracted; his education was desultory and incomplete; he had not the advantages of a training either at a public school or in the House of Commons. He went up to Cambridge at the early age of sixteen, and entered St John's College on the 29th of June 1816. In 1820, as the eldest son of an earl's brother with royal descent, he was enabled to take his M.A. degree under the statutes of the university then in force. In the same year he was appointed attache to the British embassy at St Petersburg
Upon his return to England in 1823 he was appointed to a commissionership of customs, an office which he retained for about ten years. In 1831 he was despatched to France to negotiate a commercial treaty, which, however, led to no result. On the 16th of August 1833 he was appointed minister at the court of Spain. Ferdinand VII. died within a month of his arrival at Madrid, and the infant queen Isabella, then in the third year of her age, was placed by the old Spanish law of female inheritance on her contested throne. Don Carlos, the late king's brother, claimed the crown by virtue of the Salic law of the House of Bourbon which Ferdinand had renounced before the birth of his daughter. Isabella II. and her mother Christina, the queen regent, became the representatives of constitutional monarchy, Don Carlos of Catholic absolutism. The conflict which had divided the despotic and the constitutional powers of Europe since the French Revolution of 183o broke out into civil war in Spain, and by the Quadruple Treaty, signed on the 22nd of April 1834, France and England pledged themselves to the defence of the constitutional thrones of Spain and Portugal. For six years Villiers continued to give the most active and intelligent support to the Liberal government of Spain. He was accused, though unjustly, of having favoured the revolutionof La Granja, which drove Christina, the queen mother, out of the kingdom, and raised Espartero to the regency. He undoubtedly supported the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as Espartero, against the intrigues of the French court; but the object of the British government was to establish the throne of Isabella on a truly national and liberal basis and to avert those complications, dictated by foreign influence, which eventually proved so fatal to that princess. Villiers received the grand cross of the Bath in 1838 in acknowledgment of his services, and succeeded, on the death of his uncle, to the title of earl of Clarendon; in the following year, having left Madrid, he married Katharine, eldest daughter of James Walter, first earl of Verulam. In January 184o he entered Lord Melbourne's administration as lord privy seal, and from the death of Lord Holland in the autumn of that year Lord Clarendon also held the office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster
The interval of Sir Robert Peel's great administration (18411846) was to the leaders of the Whig party a period of repose; but Lord Clarendon took the warmest interest
bounty of the government and the nation. In 1848 the revolution in France let loose fresh elements of discord, which culminated in an abortive insurrection, and for a lengthened period Ireland was a prey to more than her wonted symptoms of disaffection and disorder. Lord Clarendon remained viceroy of Ireland till 1852, and left behind him permanent marks of improvement. His services were expressly acknowledged in the queen's speech to both Houses of Parliament on the 5th of September 1848this being the first time that any civil services obtained that honour; and he was made a knight of the Garter (retaining also the grand cross of the Bath by special order) on the 23rd of March 1849.Upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon became foreign minister. The country was already " drifting " into the Crimean War, an expression of his own which was never forgotten. Clarendon was not responsible for the policy which brought war about; but when it occurred he employed every means in his power to stimulate and assist the war departments, and above all he maintained the closest relations with the French. The tsar Nicholas had speculated on the impossibility of the sustained joint action of France and England in council and in the field. It was mainly by Lord Clarendon at Whitehall and by Lord Raglan before Sevastopol that such a combination was rendered practicable, and did eventually triumph over the enemy. The diplomatic conduct of such an alliance for three years between two great nations jealous of their military honour and fighting for no separate political advantage, tried by excessive hardships and at moments on the verge of defeat, was certainly one of the most arduous duties ever performed by a minister. The result was due in the main to the confidence with which Lord Clarendon had inspired the emperor of the French, and to the affection and regard of the empress, whom he had known in Spain from her childhood. In 1856 Lord Clarendon took his seat at the congress of Paris convoked for the restoration of peace, as first British plenipotentiary. It was the first time since the appearance of Lord Castlereagh at Vienna that a secretary of state for foreign affairs had been present in person at a congress on the continent. Lord Clarendon's first care was to obtain the admission of Italy to the council chamber as a belligerent power, and to raise the barrier which still excluded Prussia as a neutral one. But in the general anxiety of all the powers to terminate the war there was no small danger that the objects for which it had been undertaken would be abandoned or forgotten. It is due entirely to the firmness of Lord Clarendon that the principle of the neutralization of the Black Sea was preserved, that the Russian attempt to trick
Upon the reconstitution of the Whig administration in 1859, Lord John Russell made it a condition of his acceptance of office under Lord Palmerston that the foreign department should be placed in his own hands, which implied that Lord Clarendon should be excluded from office, as it would have been inconsistent alike with his dignity and his tastes to fill any other post in the government. The consequence was that from 1859 till 1864 Lord Clarendon remained out of office, and the critical relations arising out of the Civil War in the United States were left to the guidance of Earl Russell. But he re-entered the cabinet in May 1864 as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster
He was succeeded as 5th earl by his eldest son, EDWARD HYDE VILLIERS (b. 1846), who became lord chamberlain in 1900. See also the article (by Henry Reeve) in Fraser's Magazine, August 1876. End of Article: CLARENDON, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, 4TH EARL OF (in the Villiers line) (1800-r87o) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/CHR_CLI/CLARENDON_GEORGE_WILLIAM_FREDE.html"> CLARENDON, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, 4... </a> |
|
|
(Previous) CLARENDON, EDWARD HYDE, 1ST EARL OF (1609-1674) |
(Next) CLARENDON, HENRY HYDE |
|
Sponsored Advertisements