Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford

The 6th Viscount Strangford in a miniature by William Haines, c. 1808.

Percy Sydney Smythe Clinton, 6th Viscount Strangford GCB GCH (31 August 1780 – 29 May 1855) was an Anglo-Irish diplomat.

Personal life

He was the son of Lionel Smythe, 5th Viscount Strangford and Mary Eliza Philipse.

He was educated at Harrow and graduated from 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. In 1817, he married Ellen, daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, Bt. They had five children.

After the death of his wife in 1826 Smythe had three children by Katherine Benham, the eldest of whom was the artist Lionel Percy Smythe.

On his death 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.

Career diplomat

He was ambassador to Portugal (1806) and Sweden (1817). The Levant Company nominated Lord Strangford and the appointment was confirmed in 1820 Ottoman Turkey. 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.

In 1807, as Britain's envoy to Portugal, Lord Strangford coordinated 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 March 8, 1808. Lord Clinton and the Brazilian accountant Dom Fernando José de Portugal had a hard work to do in the Brazilian Imperial Palace. They had to raise the money moved from Portugal to Brazil under the English escort. Their work was during thirty days. The tax service of 2% was according the Prize Money (the law had been canceled in 1803 and was re-edited in 1807). 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 the Brazilian Independence. That was the money Napoleon wanted to finance his war against England. Napoleon said in his memoirs that Don Jon was the only one to trick him.

He was made Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath (GCB) in 1815 and Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order (GCH) in 1825. In February 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society^[1]He translated the Rimas of Luís de Camões in 1825.

Later he also become ambassador at St Petersburg, Russia (1825), when he^[2] was created Baron Penshurst, of Penshurst in the County of Kent, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, enabling him to sit in the House of Lords.^[3]

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.

References

1. "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
2. Burke's Peerage, s.v. "Strangford, Viscount".
3. The London Gazette: no. 18101. p. 123. 22 January 1825.

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "^{article name needed}". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.