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Julian Pauncefote, 1st Baron Pauncefote

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JULIAN PAUNCEFOTE PAUNCEFOTE, 1ST Baron (1828-1902), English diplomatist, third son of Robert Pauncefote of Preston Court, Gloucestershire, was born on the 13th of September 1828. He was educated at Marlborough, Paris and Geneva, and called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1852. He was for a. short time secretary to Sir William Molesworth, secretary for the colonies, and in 1862 went out to Hong-Kong, where he was made attorney-general (1865) and then chief justice of the supreme court. He was appointed chief justice of the Leeward Islands in 1873, and, returning to England in the next year,. became one of the legal advisers to the colonial office. Two years later he received a similar appointment in the foreign office, and in 1882 was made permanent under-secretary of state for foreign affairs. In 1885 he was one of the delegates to the Suez Canal international commission, and received the G.C.M.G. and the K.C.B. Lord Salisbury departed from precedent in choosing him to succeed Sir Lionel Sackville-West as British minister at Washington in 1889, but the event showed that his knowledge of international law made up for any lack of the ordinary diplomatic training. He did much during his term of office to maintain friendly relations between the two countries, especially during the Venezuelan crisis. The Bering Sea fishery dispute (1890-1892) was successfully negotiated by him; he arranged a draft treaty for Anglo-American arbitration, which was, however, quashed by the Senate; and carried through the revision of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty on the subject of the Panama Canal. In 1893 the British minister at Washington was raised to the rank of ambassador, and Sir Julian Pauncefote became the doyen of the diplomatic corps. He died on the 26th of May 1902 at Washington. He had been made Baron Pauncefote of Preston in 1899 in recognition of his services at the Peace Conference at the Hague, and he was a member of the Court of Arbitration which resulted from the conference.