Eliza Cecilia, daughter of James Ness of Osgodby, Yorkshire. Entering the navy in November 1827, he was made lieutenant on 12 Nov. 1834. For the next three years he was in the Astræa with Lord Edward Russell [q. v.] on the South American station, and on 15 Jan. 1838 was promoted to the command of the Columbine brig, in which he served on the Cape and West Coast station, under the orders of his father, for two years, with remarkable success, capturing six slavers, two of them sixty miles up the Congo. In February 1840 he went on to China in company with his father, and on 3 June was promoted, on a death vacancy, to be captain of the Volage, in which in the following year he returned to England, his father, who was invalided, going with him as a passenger. From 1843 to 1846 he commanded the Eurydice frigate on the North American station, and after a prolonged spell of half-pay was appointed in December 1849 to the Phaeton frigate, which under his command attained a reputation as one of the smartest frigates in the service, and is even now remembered by the prints of the Channel fleet with the commodore in command making the signal 'Well done, Phaeton!' in commendation of a particularly smart piece of work in picking up a man who had fallen overboard (11 Aug. 1850). Early in 1853 the Phaeton was paid off, and in January 1854 Elliot commissioned the James Watt, one of the first of the screw line-of-battle ships, which he commanded in the Baltic during the campaigns of 1854 and 1855. On 24 Feb. 1858 he became rear-admiral, and was then captain of the fleet to Sir Charles Fremantle, commanding the Channel squadron. In 1861 he was a member of a royal commission on national defences, and from 1863 to 1865 was superintendent of Portsmouth dockyard. On 12 Sept. he became vice-admiral, and in the following year was repeatedly on royal commissions on naval questions, gunnery, tactics, boilers, ship-design, &c. In 1870 he reached the rank of admiral; and in 1874 was elected conservative M.P. for Chatham; but he resigned his seat in the following year on being appointed commander-in-chief at Portsmouth. On 2 June 1877 he was nominated a K.C.B., and the following year, 26 Sept., he was placed on the retired list. Continuing to occupy himself with the study of naval questions, he published in 1885 'A Treatise on Future Naval Battles and how to fight them.' He died in London on 13 December 1901. He married in 1842 Hersey, only daughter of Colonel Wauchope of Niddrie, Midlothian, and left issue.
[Royal Navy Lists; O'Byrne's Naval Biographical Dictionary; Who's Who; The Times, 14 Dec. 1901; information from the family.]
ELLIOT, Sir HENRY GEORGE (1817–1907), diplomatist, born at Geneva on 30 June 1817, was second son of Gilbert Elliot, second earl of Minto [q. v.], by his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Patrick Brydone of Coldstream, Berwickshire. His eldest sister, Lady Mary, married on 18 September 1838 Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was British minister at Turin and the Hague. Another sister, Lady Frances, on 20 July 1841 became the second wife of Lord John Russell [q. v.]. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took no degree, Elliot served as aide-de-camp and private secretary to Sir John Franklin [q. v.] in Tasmania from 1836 to 1839, and as precis writer to Lord Palmerston at the foreign office in 1840. Entering the diplomatic service in 1841 as attache at St. Petersburg, he was promoted to be secretary of legation at the Hague 1848, was transferred to Vienna in 1853, and in 1858 was appointed British envoy at Copenhagen. On the accession of Francis II to the throne of the Two Sicilies on 22 May 1859, the British government decided on resuming diplomatic relations with the court of Naples. These had been broken off by Lord Palmerston's government in 1856, in consequence of the arbitrary and oppressive character of the administration and the refusal of the government of King Ferdinand II to pay any attention to the joint representations of England and France. Elliot was in England on a short leave of absence early in 1859, and Lord Malmesbury, then foreign secretary, despatched him on a special mission to congratulate King Francis II on his accession, with instructions to hold out the expectation of the re-establishment of a permanent legation, if a more liberal and humane policy were pursued in the new reign, and also to dissuade the king from allying himself with Victor Emanuel in the war which had broken out between Piedmont and France on one side and Austria on the other. Elliot's brother-in-law, Lord John Russell [q. v.], who succeeded Lord Malmesbury at the foreign office in June, instructed Elliot to remain on at Naples, and eventually on 9 July appointed him permanent minister. In regard to neutrality, he was instructed not to press
