n witnessed its demolition in 1683--_Diary_, May 19th, Sept.
18th; _Lives from the Clarendon Gallery_, by Lady Th. Lewis, i. 40.

[26] _Diary_, July 14th, 1664.

[27] _Lister_, ii. 528.

CLARENDON, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, 4TH EARL OF (in the
Villiers line) (1800-1870), English diplomatist and statesman, was born
in London on the 12th of January 1800. He was the eldest son of Hon.
George Villiers (1750-1827), youngest son of the 1st earl of Clarendon
(second creation), by Theresa, only daughter of the first Lord
Boringdon, and granddaughter of the first Lord Grantham. The earldom of
the lord chancellor Clarendon became extinct in the Hyde line by the
death of the 4th earl, his last male descendant. Jane Hyde, countess of
Essex, the sister of that nobleman (she died in 1724), left two
daughters; of these the eldest, Lady Charlotte, became heiress of the
Hyde family. She married Thomas Villiers (1709-1786), second son of the
2nd earl of Jersey, who served with distinction as English minister in
Germany, and in 1776 the earldom of Clarendon was revived in his favour.
The connexion with the Hyde family was therefore in the female line and
somewhat remote. But a portion of the pictures and plate of the great
chancellor was preserved to this branch of the family, and remains at
The Grove, their family seat at Hertfordshire. The 2nd and 3rd earls
were sons of the 1st, and, neither of them having sons, the title
passed, on the death of the 3rd earl (John Charles) in 1838, to their
younger brother's son.

Young George Villiers entered upon life in circumstances which gave
small promise of the brilliancy of his future career. He was well born;
he was heir presumptive to an earldom; and his mother was a woman of
great energy, admirable good sense, and high feeling. But the means of
his family were contracted; his education was desultory and incomplete;
he had not the advantages of a training either at a public school or in
the House of Commons. He went up to Cambridge at the early age of
sixteen, and entered St John's College on the 29th of June 1816. In
1820, as the eldest son of an earl's brother with royal descent, he was
enabled to take his M.A. degree under the statutes of the university
then in force. In the same year he was appointed attache to the British
embassy at St Petersburg, where he remained three years, and gained that
practical knowledge of diplomacy which was of so much use to him in
a