Name Richard 3rd Died October 7, 1879 | Education Eton College | |
Richard Charles Francis Christian Meade, 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam GCH (15 August 1795 – 7 October 1879), styled Lord Gillford between 1800 and 1805, was a British diplomat and politician.
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Background and education
Meade was the only son of Richard Meade, 2nd Earl of Clanwilliam, and succeeded in the earldom at the age of ten. He was educated at Eton.
In his 1848 memoirs, Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand writes of Meade that "at the head of the younger [London dandies of the 1820s] . . . Lord Clanwilliam was prominent, the son, it was said, of the Duc de Richelieu. He did wonderful things: he rode his horse to Richmond, and returned to Almack's having fallen off twice. He had a certain trick of speaking in the manner of Alcibiades, which delighted."
Diplomatic and political career
Lord Clanwilliam afterwards joined the Diplomatic Service. He attended Lord Castlereagh's suite at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and was his private secretary from 1817–19 in the latter's capacity as Foreign Secretary. He was one of the first people to see Castlereagh's widow after his suicide: she embraced him warmly, saying that Castlereagh had loved him. It was he who was largely responsible for the decision to give Lord Castlereagh an official funeral in Westminster Abbey, for which he was criticised by those who believed that Castlereagh's own wish was for a private family funeral. He was one of many witnesses who later testified to Castlereagh's increasingly strange mental condition in the days before his suicide.
He became Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1822 and afterwards Envoy to Berlin from 1823 to 1827. In 1828, he was created Baron Clanwilliam, of Clanwilliam in the County of Tipperary, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
In 1847 he was awarded the honorary position of Captain of Deal Castle, which he held until his death.
Family
Lord Clanwilliam married Lady Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke, on 5 July 1830. He died in 1879 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard. His second son, Sir Robert Henry Meade, later achieved distinction as Permanent Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office.