Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 26 - Layard

by David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

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Layard. G.C.B., and Privy Councillor. — Henry Austen Layard,^[1] eldest son of Henry Peter John Layard, Esq., and Marianne Austen, was born in Paris on 5th March 1817, during a temporary stay of his parents in that capital. He spent much of his youth in Florence, and came to England to study law, a study which presented no attractions to one who was so accomplished both with the pen and the pencil. He began his historic career as a traveller in 1839. In his great energy and ready adaptation to the habits of life in foreign countries he reminds us of his expatriated forefathers. His wonderful researches resulted in his celebrated volumes with their accompanying engravings from his own drawings, “Nineveh and its Remains” (London, 1849), and “Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert” (London in 1853). He is also the author of condensed narratives of these discoveries, with the elucidations of Holy Scripture which they so abundantly furnished. He has obtained the honours of D.C.L. of Oxford, the Lord Rectorship of Aberdeen University, and the Royal Gold Medal of the British Institute of Architects. He has also laboured well in the field of politics, and has represented Aylesbury and Southwark in the House of Commons. He has been in office as Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and First Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings, and is a Privy Councillor. He has been our Ambassador at Madrid and at Constantinople, and for his eminent services he was made K.C.B. and G.C.B. By his marriage in 1869 he renewed the alliance between the Layards and the Berties. Charlotte Susannah Elizabeth Layard (daughter of Dean Layard) was married to the ninth Earl of Lindsey, whose daughter, Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie, was the wife of Sir Josiah John Guest, Bart., whose daughter, Mary Enid Evelyn Guest, is the wife of Right Hon. Sir Henry Austen Layard, G.C.B.

1. As an author Sir Henry called himself Austen Henry Layard, but the true Christian name is as I have given it.