Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne KG GCSI GCMG GCIE PC (14 January 18453 June 1927), was a British statesman who served successively as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
In 1917, during the First World War, he wrote the "Lansdowne letter", advocating in vain a compromise peace. A millionaire, he had the distinction of having held senior positions in Liberal and Conservative Party governments.
Early years, 1845–1882
A great-grandson of British Prime Minister Lord Shelburne (later 1st Marquess of Lansdowne) and the eldest son of Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne, and his wife, Emily, 8th Lady Nairne (née de Flahaut), Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice was born in 1845 at Lansdowne House, their family seat in London.Geoghegan, Patrick M. (2009). Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith Petty, Dictionary of Irish Biography His maternal grandfather, Count Charles de Flahaut, was an important French general to Napoleon Bonaparte, and a member of his family. He fought along his side during many battles and later occupied the functions of Ambassador and Senator of the Empire. Through his mother Emily, Lansdowne was half-nephew of Emperor Napoleon III, a step-grandson of Queen Hortense Bonaparte, and a great-grandson of Prince Talleyrand, the Emperor's foreign minister. His maternal great-grandfather, George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith, was also the Admiral who prevented Napoleon's escape from France after the Battle of Waterloo, and who received and supervised his final exile to St. Helena in 1815.Admiral George Keith Elphinstone, 1746-1823, 1st Viscount Keith
Lord Lansdowne was a member of the Fitzmaurice/Petty-Fitzmaurice family, a cadet branch of the House of FitzGerald of Ireland.Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Canadian History Ehx.Wright, C. J. (2005), Holland House (act. 1797–1845), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography He held the courtesy title Viscount Clanmaurice from birth to 1863 and then the courtesy title Earl of Kerry until he succeeded as Marquess of Lansdowne in 1866. Upon his mother's death in 1895, he succeeded her as the 9th Lord Nairne in the Peerage of Scotland. He was estimated to be the sixteenth richest peer in the United Kingdom, and the fourth largest landowner.
After studying at Eton and Oxford, he succeeded his father as 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (in the Peerage of the United Kingdom) and 6th Earl of Kerry (in the Peerage of Ireland) at the relatively early age of 21 on 5 June 1866. He inherited a vast estate (including Bowood House, a Wiltshire estate of over 142,000 acres) and great wealth.The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland At one of his inherited properties, Derreen House (Lauragh, County Kerry, in the present-day Republic of Ireland), Lord Lansdowne started to develop a great garden from 1871 onwards. For most of the rest of his life, he spent three months of the year at Derreen.
Lord Lansdowne entered the House of Lords as a member of the Liberal Party in 1866. He served in William Ewart Gladstone's government as a Lord of the Treasury from 1869 to 1872 and as Under-Secretary of State for War from 1872 to 1874. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for India in 1880 and, having gained experience in overseas administration, was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1883, replacing John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, the son-in-law of Queen Victoria.
He was a member and trustee of Brooks's Club in London, along notable members such as Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire of Chatsworth House, Lord Rosebery of Mentmore Towers, and Baron Lionel de Rothschild of Tring Park, son of Nathan Mayer of Gunnersbury Park, and grandson of Mayer Amschel, founder of the House of Rothschild.London Metropolitan Archives, Brooks's Club His great-grandfather, Lord Shelburne, had previously founded Boodle's Club, which had as members Adam Smith, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and Ian Fleming, among others, and is now the second oldest club in the world.Society of Architectural Historians, Sahara Highlights: Clubs, Jacqueline Spafford and Mark Hinchman, SAHARA Co-Editors, 2022
In 1897, he also became a founding trustee of the National Gallery of British Art, with the Earl of Carlisle of Castle Howard, Lord Brownlow of Belton House, Alfred de Rothschild of Halton House, Sir Charles Tennant of Glen House, John Postle Heseltine of Walhampton House, and Sir John Murray Scott.Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, 1747-2001, Manchester University Press, Brandon Taylor, 1999, p. 119
Governor General of Canada, 1883–1888 Lord Lansdowne was Governor General during turbulent times in Canada. His Protestant Irish connections made him unpopular with the Catholic Irish element.Donald Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain (1955) 2: 355–56. He was appointed GCMG in January 1884.The Knights of England
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald's government was in its second term and facing allegations of scandal over the building of the railway (the Pacific Scandal), and the economy was once again sliding into recession. The North-West Rebellion of 1885 and the controversy caused by its leader, Louis Riel, posed a serious threat to the equilibrium of Canadian politics. To calm the situation, he travelled extensively throughout Western Canada in 1885 and met many of Canada's First Nations peoples. He publicly objected to the treatment of the Indigenous by Indian Agents, and supported Chiefs Crowfoot and Poundmaker.Lansdowne, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5e marquis de His experiences in Western Canada gave Lansdowne a great love of the Canadian outdoors and the physical beauty of Canada. He was an avid fisherman and was intensely interested in winter sports. His love of the wilderness and the Canadian countryside led him to purchase a second residence (first Cascapedia House, built in 1880, later renamed Lorne Cottage, and then New Dereen Camp, built in 1884) on the Cascapédia River in the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec. The same area was previously used by the past Viceroy of Canada, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, and his wife, Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria.
Lansdowne proved to be an adept statesman in helping to settle a dispute over fishing rights between Canada and the United States in 1886–1887. He successfully negotiated a new trade agreement with U.S. President Grover Cleveland (though it later failed to pass in the Senate). He was also a supporter of scientific development and presided over the inaugural session of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1884. In Quebec, he was very popular, as he spoke French fluently, which gained him the admiration of French-Canadians, and a big round of applause during his first speech. His French came from his maternal grandfather, Count Charles de Flahaut, who had been a French general to Napoleon Bonaparte. Lord Lansdowne also made multiple speeches at the Citadelle of Quebec, near Château Frontenac, and joined the Montreal Winter Carnival, making him and his wife, the first vice-royal couple to skate at that event.
Lansdowne departed Canada "with its clear skies, its exhilarating sports, and within the bright fire of Gatineau logs, with our children and friends gathered round us" to his regret. He gave his wife a great deal of the credit for his success in Canada. One of her happiest and most successful endeavours at Rideau Hall was a party that she threw for 400 Sunday school children. Lady Lansdowne was decorated with the Order of Victoria and Albert and the Imperial Order of the Crown of India. Lord Lansdowne's military secretary, Lord Melgund, later became Lord Minto and served as Governor General between 1898 and 1904. Parc Lansdowne and Lansdowne Avenue in Westmount, Montreal, next to Westmount Park, was named in his honor, as well as Lansdowne Ridge and Upper-Lansdowne, both located on Westmount's summit next to Villa Sainte-Marcelline and Saint Joseph's Oratory.Coupe Grey : la fascinante histoire du parc Lansdowne
Viceroy of India, 1888–1894 Lord Lansdowne was appointed Viceroy of India the same year that he left Canada. In December 1888 he was appointed GCSIThe Knights of England and GCIEThe Knights of England The office, which he held from 1888 to 1894, was offered to him by the Conservative prime minister, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury of Hatfield House, and marked the pinnacle of his career. He worked to reform the army, police, local government and the mint. There was an Anglo-Manipur War in 1890 in which Manipur was subjugated. Lansdowne secured the death penalty for the instigator in the face of considerable opposition from Britain. His attempt in 1893 to curtail trial by jury was, however, overruled by home government. He returned to England in 1894. His policies exacerbated tensions between Hindu and Muslims. The present day town of Lansdowne in Uttarakand state was established in 1887 and named after him.
Secretary of State for War, 1895–1900 Upon his return, as a Liberal Unionist, he aligned with the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury appointed Lansdowne to the post of Secretary of State for War in June 1895. The unpreparedness of the British Army during the Second Boer War brought calls for Lansdowne's impeachment in 1899. His biographer, P. B. Waite, considers that he was unjustly criticised for British military failures, but ever the good minister, he took full responsibility and said nothing. Simon Kerry has argued that due to the lack of Parliamentary interest and political rivalries the War Office and Army were unreformable.Lord Lansdowne at the War Office (1895-1900)
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1900–1905
After the Unionist victory in the general election of October 1900, Salisbury reorganised his cabinet, gave up the post of Foreign Secretary and appointed Lansdowne to replace him. Lansdowne remained at the Foreign Office under Salisbury's successor Arthur Balfour. As British Foreign Secretary, he approved of protectorate Commissioner Wilson's 1901 Anglo-Ankole agreement in Uganda, he also signed the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance at his London home, the back half of which still exists as the Lansdowne Club, and negotiated the 1904 Anglo-French Entente Cordiale with French Foreign Minister Theophile Delcassé.G. P. Gooch, Before the War: Studies in Diplomacy (vol 1 1936), pp. 1–86 online According to G. W. Monger's summary of the Cabinet debates in 1900 to 1902:Chamberlain advocated ending Britain's isolation by concluding an alliance with Germany; Salisbury resisted change. With the new crisis in China caused by the Boxer rising and Landsdowne's appointment to the Foreign Office in 1900, those who advocated a change won the upper hand. Landsdowne in turn attempted to reach an agreement with Germany and a settlement with Russia but failed. In the end Britain concluded an alliance with Japan. The decision of 1901 was momentous; British policy had been guided by events, but Lansdowne had no real understanding of these events. The change of policy had been forced on him and was a confession of Britain's weakness.G. W. Monger, "The End of Isolation: Britain, Germany and Japan, 1900-1902" Transactions of the Royal Historical Society vol. 13, 1963, pp. 103–21 online
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