Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

George III
Preceded byEarl of Rosslyn and Earl of St Vincent
Succeeded byEarl of Clarendon
Personal details
Born31 August 1780
Died29 May 1855 (1855-05-30) (aged 74)
NationalityBritish
Spouse
Ellen Burke
​
​
(m. 1817; died 1826)​
Children8, including
Trinity College, Dublin

Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford

Anglo-Irish
diplomat.

Early life

He was the son of Lionel Smythe, 5th Viscount Strangford (1753–1801) and Maria Eliza Philipse. In 1769, his sixteen-year-old future father left Ireland, joined the army and served during the

New York Legislature confiscated his estate, one of the largest in the province, and Philipse changed his mind. They married in September 1779 at Trinity Church in Manhattan and they returned to the United Kingdom.[1] Upon the withdrawal of the British troops from New York in 1783, Philipse also went to England, where he later died.[2]

Smythe was educated at

Trinity College, Dublin in 1800, entered the diplomatic service, and in the following year succeeded to the title of Viscount Strangford in the Peerage of Ireland.[1]

He had literary tastes, and in 1803 published Poems from the Portuguese of Camoēns, with Remarks and Notes, Byron at this time describing him as "Hibernian Strangford".[3]

Diplomatic career

Ambassador to Portugal

In 1806, he served as chargé d'affaires under the

Portuguese royal family's flight from Portugal to Brazil. Lord Clinton, as he was known in Brazil, he arrived with the Royal Family in Salvador in January 1808 and soon they moved to Rio de Janeiro where they arrived on 8 March 1808.[5][6] Lord Clinton and the Brazilian accountant Dom Fernando José de Portugal had hard work to do in the Brazilian Imperial Palace. They had to raise the money moved from Portugal to Brazil under English escort. Their work was for thirty days. The tax service of 2% was according to the Prize Money (the law had been cancelled in 1803 and was re-edited in 1807).[7] They counted one hundred million Pounds and two million pounds in taxes. (In that year, with that money would be possible to buy two hundred million bags of coffee, nowadays it is U$20 billion). After that, the payment delayed fourteen years to be paid after the English recognizance of Brazilian Independence. That was the money Napoleon wanted to finance his war against England.[8] Napoleon said in his memoirs that Don John was the only one to trick him.[9][7]

Ambassador to Sweden

He was

Charles XIV John of Sweden.[10]

Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey

The

British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.[11] He was successful in his efforts to secure the consolidation of the new constitutional settlement between the Ottoman Empire and the Danubian Principalities which followed the revolution in Wallachia in 1821, to persuade the Ottomans to withdraw their troops from the Principalities, and to dissuade the Russian Empire from military intervention.[12]

As ambassador to the Sublime Porte, he had opportunities to assemble fragments of Greek sculpture. Among his collection of antiquities was the "Strangford Shield", a 3rd-century CE Roman marble that reproduces the shield of Athena Parthenos, Phidias' sculpture formerly in the Parthenon. The "Strangford Shield" is conserved in the British Museum. He left Turkey in 1824.

Ambassador to Russia

From 1825 to 1826, he served as

St Petersburg.[5]

Personal life

In 1817, he married Ellen Burke Browne (1788–1826), daughter of

Sir Thomas Burke, 1st Baronet (d. 1813) and sister of Sir John Burke, 2nd Baronet.[16] Ellen had previously been married to Nicholas Browne, Esq., of Mount Hazel, in Galway, with whom she had Katherine Eleanor Browne (d. 1843) who married High-Sheriff Robert French (b. 1799) of Monivea Castle.[17]
Together, Percy and Ellen had five children.

After the death of his wife in 1826, Smythe had three children by Katherine Benham (1813–1872), the eldest of whom was the artist.

  • Lionel Percy Smythe
    (1839–1918), the artist

On his death on 29 May 1855, he was succeeded by his eldest son George Smythe, 7th Viscount Strangford, who was an active figure in the Young England movement of the early 1840s. After his death, Benham married William Morrison Wyllie, the artist with whom she had William Lionel Wyllie and Charles William Wyllie, also artists.[19]

Honours

He was appointed

Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order (GCH) in 1825. In February 1825, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He translated the Rimas of Luís de Camões
in 1825.

A window in his family chapel in St. Mary's Church, Ashford, Kent, commemorates him, mentioning the monarchs whom he served and the countries to which he was dispatched.

Descendants

Through his eldest son with Benham, he was the grandfather of Minnie Smythe (1872–1955), also a painter.[20]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 9780802090928
    . Retrieved 13 December 2016. Lady Dorothy and george smythe.
  2. ^ a b Purple, Edwin R., "Contributions to the History of the Ancient Families of New York: Varleth-Varlet-Varleet-Verlet-Verleth," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 9 (1878), pp. 120–121 [1]
  3. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Strangford, Viscount s.v. Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 983.
  4. ^ "No. 16102". The London Gazette. 26 December 1807. p. 1748.
  5. ^ a b "Person – National Portrait Gallery". npg.org.uk. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  6. ISBN 9780806138107
    . Retrieved 13 December 2016. Percy Smythe ambassador to portugal.
  7. ^
    ISBN 9780762796663
    . Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  8. ISBN 9780838633267
    . Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  9. ISBN 9781317241461
    . Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  10. ^ J. Haydn, Book of Dignities (1851), 83–4
  11. ^ Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1935, pp. 183–184.
  12. ISBN 9781592110261
  13. ^ S. T. Bindoff, E. F. Malcolm Smith and C. K. Webster, British Diplomatic Representatives 1789–1852 (Camden 3rd Series, 50, 1934).
  14. ^ Burke's Peerage, s.v. "Strangford, Viscount".
  15. ^ "No. 18101". The London Gazette. 22 January 1825. p. 123.
  16. ^ Burke, James (2005). A History of Burke in Ireland. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  17. ^ "List of Charts from Ireland for the French family Association". frenchfamilyassoc.com. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  18. ISBN 0-900178-26-4
    .
  19. ^ "Paintings by William Lionel Wyllie – Hole Haven and the Estuary". Canvey Island Archive. Retrieved 14 June 2014.
  20. ^ Women Painters of the World on Project Gutenberg
Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by Viscount Strangford
1801–1855 		Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Penshurst
1825–1855 		Succeeded by
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