selection of Versions in various Languages, chiefly from the Greek Anthology,’ London, 1849, 4to; and published ‘Canzone in lode di Bella Donna aggiuntovi un sonetto “fatto per uno ch' era in gran fortuna.” Componimenti Toscani del secolo xiv. dati in luce dal Dottore E. Wellesley,’ Oxford, 1851, 8vo. He also contributed three papers on local antiquities to the ‘Collections’ of the Sussex Archæological Society (iii. 232, v. 277, ix. 107).
[Gent. Mag. 1866, i. 440; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Foster's Index Eccles.; Lincoln's Inn Records, 1896, ii. 68; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Men of the Time, 1865.]
WELLESLEY, HENRY RICHARD CHARLES, first Earl Cowley (1804–1884), born in Hertford Street, Mayfair, on 17 June 1804, was eldest son of Henry Wellesley, first baron Cowley [q. v.] He was educated at Oxford, matriculating from Brasenose College on 14 Jan. 1822, and, like his father, adopted a diplomatic career. Natural abilities, combined with family and social advantages of a marked order, made easy the early stages of his progress. He first became an attaché at Vienna in October 1824, and passed through various subordinate grades at The Hague, Stuttgart, and Constantinople. On 29 Feb. 1848 he was appointed minister-plenipotentiary to the confederated Swiss cantons, and in July he was sent on a special mission to Frankfurt, in order to watch the proceeding of the German parliament, which was then sitting at the Paulskirche, and was engaged in the attempt to draw up a permanent constitution. On 1 March 1851 he was made a K.C.B. and on 7 June appointed envoy extraordinary and minister to the Germanic confederation at Frankfurt. The Earl of Normanby, who had succeeded the first Lord Cowley as ambassador in Paris, retired from the embassy in 1852. Lord Granville had just succeeded to the foreign office, on the retirement of Lord Palmerston, after his quarrel with Lord Russell in 1851 [see arts. Temple, Henry John, third Viscount Palmerston; Russell, Lord John, first Earl], and on 5 Feb. 1852 he rather unexpectedly appointed Cowley to the vacant embassy at Paris. Three days previously Cowley had been made a privy councillor.
The appointment at the time excited some astonishment, as the world had yet to discover the sterling abilities which lay concealed under the quiet manner and unostentatious character of the new ambassador. Cowley arrived in Paris just two months after the coup d'état of 2 Dec. 1851, which turned the republic into the empire, and he remained there till 1867. His term of office coincided, therefore, with the greater part of the reign of Napoleon III. He had the difficult task, immediately after his arrival, of representing Great Britain during the excitement in both countries which followed the coup d'état; and soon afterwards had to bear a prominent part in the complicated negotiations connected with the eastern question, which preceded the Crimean war. Together with the Earl of Clarendon, then minister of foreign affairs, he represented Great Britain at the Paris congress, which terminated the war in 1856. He also took the leading part in the subsequent negotiations caused by difficulties of detail in regard to the settlement of the new Bessarabian frontier, by the union of Wallachia and Moldavia into one state; the question of the navigation of the Danube; and other collateral points connected with the politics of the east of Europe which arose out of the treaty of Paris.
Cowley was one of the negotiators of the famous ‘declaration of Paris,’ signed in March 1856, by which the European powers agreed that privateering should be abolished; that the neutral flag should in future exempt goods, except contraband, from capture; and that blockades must be effectual in order to be recognised. In 1857 he was sole British plenipotentiary for the conclusion of the peace with Persia, which was signed at Paris on 4 March of that year. He was created Earl Cowley and Viscount Dangan on 4 April 1857, after declining the offer of a peerage in the previous year. It was immediately after these events, however, that his mettle as a diplomatist was put to the severest test. On 14 Jan. Orsini made his attempt to murder the emperor of the French. Cowley's conduct at the critical moment which followed in the relations of Great Britain and France afforded a conspicuous proof of the influence which he had acquired at the Tuileries.
On 20 Jan. 1858 Count Walewski wrote a despatch to M. de Persigny, the French ambassador in London, reflecting upon the conduct of England in affording deliberate countenance and shelter to men by whose writings ‘“assassination was elevated into a doctrine openly preached and carried into practice by reiterated attacks” upon the person of the French sovereign’ (Martin, iv. 186). Palmerston and Clarendon thought it wise to make no written reply to this communication; and contented themselves with instructing the ambassador in the first instance to make a verbal reply. Unfortunately, Walewski's despatch had been accompanied by the publication in the ‘Moniteur’ of addresses to the emperor from officers of
