Original, vintage, c1868,
carte de visite photograph of George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of
Clarendon, (see below).
Photograph by Samuel A.
Walker, 64 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, London.
Size of the cdv is 6cm x 10cm approx. (including the border).
Condition is good and complete.
Please note, the
‘mementoes’ logo is not on the actual photo.
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George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of
Clarendon KG GCB PC (12 January 1800 – 27 June 1870), was an English diplomat and
statesman from the Villiers family.
Background and education
Villiers was born in London, the son of the Honourable George Villiers
and Theresa Parker. He went up to Cambridge at the early age of sixteen and
entered St John's College on 29 June 1816.
In 1820, as the eldest son of an earl's brother with royal descent, he
was able to take his M.A. degree under the statutes of the university then in
force.
Career
In the same year, he was appointed attaché to the British embassy at
Saint Petersburg. There he remained three years, and gained that practical
knowledge of diplomacy which was of so much use to him in later life. He had
received from nature a singularly handsome person, a polished and engaging
address, a ready command of languages, and a remarkable power of composition.
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 was fruitless. On 16 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 on her
contested throne, based on the old Spanish custom of female inheritance. 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 1830 broke out into civil war in Spain,
and by the Quadruple Treaty, signed on 22 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 revolution of 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.
Slavery was intended to be illegal in Spanish colonies from 1820, but this
was not working. Villiers worked with the help of the Times correspondent David
Turnbull to get slavery removed from Spanish colonies. In 1835 the Spanish reaffirmed
their commitments.
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 a young
widow, Lady Katharine Foster-Barham (née Grimston),
eldest daughter of James Grimston, 1st Earl of
Verulam.
In January 1840 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 until
the dissolution of the ministry in 1841. Deeply convinced that the maintenance
of a cordial understanding with France was the most essential condition of
peace and of a liberal policy in Europe, he reluctantly concurred in the
measures proposed by Lord Palmerston for the expulsion of the Mohammed Ali of
Egypt from Syria; he strenuously advocated, with Lord Holland, a more
conciliatory policy towards France; and he was only restrained from sending in
his resignation by the dislike he felt to break up a cabinet he had so recently
joined.
The interval of Sir Robert Peel's administration (1841–1846) was to the
leaders of the Whig party a period of repose; but Lord Clarendon took a strong
interest in the triumph of the principles of free trade and in the repeal of
the Corn Laws, of which his brother, Charles Pelham Villiers, had been one of
the earliest champions. For this reason, upon the formation of Lord John
Russell's first administration, Lord Clarendon accepted the office of President
of the Board of Trade. Twice in his career the governor-generalship of India
was offered him, and once the governor-generalship of Canada; these he refused
from reluctance to withdraw from the politics of Europe. But in 1847 a sense of
duty compelled him to take a far more laborious and uncongenial appointment.
The desire of the cabinet was to abolish the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, and
Lord Clarendon was prevailed upon to accept that office, with a view to
transform it ere long into an Irish secretaryship of
state. He arrived during the second year of the Great Famine, and had not been
many months in Dublin before he acknowledged that the difficulties then
existing in Ireland could only be met by the most vigilant and energetic
authority, exercised on the spot. The crisis was one of extraordinary peril.
Agrarian crimes of horrible atrocity had increased threefold. The Catholic
clergy were openly disaffected. Extraordinary measures were required to
regulate the 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 prey to more than her
wonted symptoms of disaffection and disorder. Lord Clarendon remained viceroy
of Ireland till 1852. His services were expressly acknowledged in the queen's
speech to both Houses of Parliament in September 1848—this 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 23
March 1849.
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon
became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 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 the Siege of 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 Piedmont-Sardinia 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 the allies out of the cession in Bessarabia was defeated, and that the
results of the war were for a time secured. The congress was eager to turn to
other subjects, and perhaps the most important result of its deliberations was
the celebrated Declaration of the Maritime Powers, which abolished
privateering, defined the right of blockade, and limited the right of capture
to enemy's property in enemy's ships. Lord Clarendon has been accused of an
abandonment of what are termed the belligerent rights of Great Britain, which
were undoubtedly based on the old maritime laws of Europe. But he acted in
strict conformity with the views of the British cabinet, and the British
cabinet adopted those views because it was satisfied that it was not for the
benefit of the country to adhere to practices which exposed the vast mercantile
interests of Britain to depredation, even by the cruisers of a secondary
maritime power, and which, if vigorously enforced against neutrals, could not
fail to embroil her with every maritime state in the world.
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; and
upon the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865, Lord Russell again became prime
minister, when Lord Clarendon returned to the foreign office, which was again
confided to him for the third time upon the formation of Gladstone's
administration in 1868. To the last moment of his existence, Lord Clarendon
continued to devote every faculty of his mind and every instant of his life to
the public service; and he expired surrounded by the boxes and papers of his office
on 27 June 1870.
Family
On 4 June 1839, Villiers married the widowed Lady Katherine
Foster-Barham (a daughter of James Grimston, 1st Earl
of Verulam) and they had eight children:
Lady Constance Villiers (1840–1922), married Frederick Stanley, 16th
Earl of Derby.
Lady Alice Villiers (1841–1897), married Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, 1st
Earl of Lathom.
Lady Emily Theresa (1843–1927), married Odo
Russell, 1st Baron Ampthill.
Edward Hyde, Lord Hyde (1845–1846).
Edward Villiers, 5th Earl of Clarendon (1846–1914).
Hon. George Patrick Hyde (1847–1892), married Louisa Maria Maquay, daughter of George Disney Maquay,
on 9 October 1884.
Lady Florence Margaret (1850–1851).
Hon. Francis Hyde Villiers (1852–1925), married Virginia Katharine
Smith, daughter of Eric Carrington Smith and Mary Maberly,
on 28 June 1876.
Styles of address
1800-1838: Mr George W. F. Villiers
1838: Sir George W. F. Villiers GCB
1838-1840: The Right Honourable The Fourth Earl of Clarendon GCB
1840-1849: The Right Honourable The Fourth Earl of Clarendon GCB PC
1849-1870: The Right Honourable The Fourth Earl of Clarendon KG GCB PC