Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons

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Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., P.C., D.C.L.

• Born Lymington, Hampshire, 26 April 1817
• Died Norfolk House, St James's Square, London, 5 December 1887

Lyons, an eminent British diplomat, was the elder son of Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons (1790-1858), naval officer and diplomat, and his wife, Augusta Louisa, née Rogers (1791-1852). After attending Winchester College, he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated BA in 1838 and MA in 1843. He entered the diplomatic service in 1839 as an unpaid attaché at his father's legation in Athens. In 1844 he was made a paid attaché and transferred to Dresden and then Florence. His first major appointment came in December 1858 when he succeeded Lord Napier as British envoy in Washington.

Lyons reached Washington two years before the American Civil War and, like many observers, believed that the dissolution of the United States was a strong possibility. He feared that American politicians might try to divert public opinion from domestic problems by increasing their attacks against foreign powers, especially Britain, and was particularly suspicious of William Henry Seward, the secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. As the war unfolded, Lyons had to deal with numerous problems. Among them were the defence of Canada, which he believed would be the first target of a possible attack from the northern states, and the question of cotton supply to Britain from the southern states after Lincoln's decision to order the blockade of the southern coast. In 1861 Lyons had declared to Lord John Russell that "the taint of slavery will render the cause of the South laothsome to the civilized world." It was, however, the Trent affair that established Lyons's lasting reputation. In the autumn of 1861 the southern states had sent two of their leading politicians to Europe to try to secure formal recognition for the Confederacy. They embarked on the (neutral) British mail steamer, the Trent, which was later intercepted by a vessel of the northern states. Public excitement over the affair grew so intense that war between Britain and America seemed for a time unavoidable. Through tact and firmness Lyons was largely responsible for the avoidance of confrontation between the two countries.

In the spring of 1865 poor health brought about by physical exhaustion forced Lyons to resign his post in Washington; a few months later he went to Constantinople to replace Sir Henry Bulwer. He stayed there less than two years and in October 1867, after the resignation of Lord Cowley, was moved to Paris, where he represented Britain for a continuous period of twenty years, which made him one of the longest-serving British ambassadors in Paris in modern times. The presence of such a reliable and conciliatory man in the most sensitive and important post in Europe gave both Liberal and Conservative British governments an essential guarantee that their instructions would always be carried out according to the terms determined in London. His efforts on behalf of various governments were rewarded with a viscountcy (1881) and an earldom (1887), though he died before the patent had been sealed on the latter.

The twenty years Lyons spent in Paris were of momentous importance in French history: the last years of the Second French Empire, its fall and the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, the establishment of the third republic, and the start of the Boulanger crisis, which threatened to engulf the basis of the new republican settlement. Lord Lyons had decided views on the evolving situation in France. Because he did not consider a working and orderly parliamentary democracy possible in France, he constantly favoured strong men, such as Napoleon III and later the republican leader Léon Gambetta, to lead the country. He believed that only they could pacify France, heal the political and social divisions within French society, and, no less importantly, maintain a strong attachment to the entente with Britain and a commitment to free-trade policy.

These two decades were no less fraught with major international problems: the rise of and the consequences for the European order arising out of the Franco-Prussian War; the Eastern question; the French invasion of Tunisia and the start of French colonial expansion; and the Egyptian question. On all these issues Lyons favoured a close understanding between France and Britain in order to avoid a new confrontation between France and Germany which would, he believed, destroy the entire European system. Following British action in Egypt in the summer of 1882 and the formal end of dual control of that country, Lyons found himself at the receiving end of a bitter confrontation between Britain and France which lasted until 1904: the last five years of his embassy must rank as the worst time he spent in Paris. Unlike some in London he accepted the responsibilities facing Britain in Egypt and believed that, having decisively established its authority over Egypt, Britain should not withdraw from the task it had entered upon. He therefore advocated the best possible arrangements both for securing Egypt's finances and for respecting French financial rights there. During this difficult period Lyons contributed greatly, by his conciliatory manner, in preventing the lack of cordiality between France and Britain from producing any irremediable estrangement.

By the time Lyons relinquished his post at the end of October 1887 he was an exhausted man who, after nearly fifty years of official duties, longed for some rest. On the formation of the second Salisbury administration in 1886, the new prime minister had offered him the Foreign Office, but he declined on the grounds of ill health and age. His last days at the embassy were very trying, but in accordance with Salisbury's wish he stayed on a few more months, though not without considerable misgivings. Lord Lytton, who had served under Lyons as chargé d'affaires, succeeded him.

Although it was believed that Lyons had converted to Roman Catholicism, in fact he never had. In 1886, soon after the death of his beloved sister Duchess Minna, he received permission from Lord Salisbury to begin to study Catholicism and to attend Mass. While Lyons was on the path to conversion, a serious stroke, in November 1887, rendered Lord Lyons both paralysed and incapacitated. At the time, Lyons while staying at Norfolk House, St James's Square, London, with his nephew the duke of Norfolk. Lyons died there on 5 December and was buried beneath the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel Castle on the 10th. Sadly, Lyons was never able to enjoy the well deserved rest and the well deserved retirement he had longed for.

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by The Lord Napier	British Minister to the United States 1858–1865	Succeeded by Sir Frederick Bruce
Preceded by The Earl Cowley	British Ambassador to France 1867–1887	Succeeded by The Earl of Lytton
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Viscount Lyons 1881–1887	Succeeded by Extinct
Preceded by Edmund Lyons	Baron Lyons 1858–1887