The Right Honourable The Earl of Malmesbury GCB PC |
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Portrait of James Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury by James Godsell Middleton (1852)
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Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs | |
In office 27 February 1852 – 28 December 1852 |
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Monarch | Victoria |
Prime Minister | The Earl of Derby |
Preceded by | The Earl Granville |
Succeeded by | Lord John Russell |
In office 26 February 1858 – 18 June 1859 |
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Monarch | Victoria |
Prime Minister | The Earl of Derby |
Preceded by | The Earl of Clarendon |
Succeeded by | Lord John Russell |
Personal details | |
Born | 25 March 1807 |
Died | 17 May 1889 (aged 82) |
Nationality | British |
Political party | Conservative |
Spouse(s) | (1) Lady Corisande Emma Bennet (d. 1876) (2) Susan Hamilton (d. 1935) |
Alma mater | Oriel College, Oxford |
James Howard Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury GCB, PC (25 March 1807 – 17 May 1889), styled Viscount FitzHarris from 1820 to 1841, was a British statesman of the Victorian era.
James Howard Harris was born on 25 March 1807 in London, the eldest son and heir of James Harris, 2nd Earl of Malmesbury, and his wife, Harriet Susan Dashwood, daughter of Francis Bateman Dashwood, of Well Vale, Lincolnshire, and his wife, Teresa March, daughter of John March, of Willeslet Park, Cambridgeshire. Having been educated privately, he went to Eton College, a Public school, and Oriel College, Oxford, graduating from the latter in 1828 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In the years that followed his graduation, he went travelling around Europe and making acquaintance with aristocratic circles, becoming familiar with Prince Louis Napoleon, who would later become Napoleon III of France.
Harris married, firstly, on 13 May 1876, Lady Corisande Emma Bennet, daughter of Charles Augustus Bennet, 5th Earl of Tankerville, and his wife Corisanda, daughter of Antoine, duc de Gramont and sister of Agenor, duc de Gramont, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs for France in 1870. She died in 1876. After the death of his first wife, Malmesbury married a second time, on 1 November 1880, to Susan Hamilton, daughter of John Hamilton of Fyne Court, Somerset.
In 1841 he had only just been elected to the House of Commons for Wilton as a Conservative, when his father died and he succeeded to the peerage. Malmesbury served as Foreign Secretary under the Earl of Derby in 1852 and again from 1858 to 1859 and was also Lord Privy Seal under Derby and Benjamin Disraeli between 1866 and 1868 and under Disraeli between 1874 and 1876. In 1852 he was admitted to the Privy Council. He was regarded as an influential Tory of the old school in the House of Lords at a time when Lord Derby and Disraeli were, in their different ways, moulding the Conservatism of the period.