fter-life. He had received from nature a singularly handsome person, a
polished and engaging address, a ready command of languages, and a
remarkable power of composition.

Upon his return to England in 1823 he was appointed to a
commissionership of customs, an office which he retained for about ten
years. In 1831 he was despatched to France to negotiate a commercial
treaty, which, however, led to no result. On the 16th of August 1833 he
was appointed minister at the court of Spain. Ferdinand VII. died within
a month of his arrival at Madrid, and the infant queen Isabella, then in
the third year of her age, was placed by the old Spanish law of female
inheritance on her contested throne. Don Carlos, the late king's
brother, claimed the crown by virtue of the Salic law of the House of
Bourbon which Ferdinand had renounced before the birth of his daughter.
Isabella II. and her mother Christina, the queen regent, became the
representatives of constitutional monarchy, Don Carlos of Catholic
absolutism. The conflict which had divided the despotic and the
constitutional powers of Europe since the French Revolution of 1830
broke out into civil war in Spain, and by the Quadruple Treaty, signed
on the 22nd of April 1834, France and England pledged themselves to the
defence of the constitutional thrones of Spain and Portugal. For six
years Villiers continued to give the most active and intelligent support
to the Liberal government of Spain. He was accused, though unjustly, of
having favoured the revolution of La Granja, which drove Christina, the
queen mother, out of the kingdom, and raised Espartero to the regency.
He undoubtedly supported the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as
Espartero, against the intrigues of the French court; but the object of
the British government was to establish the throne of Isabella on a
truly national and liberal basis and to avert those complications,
dictated by foreign influence, which eventually proved so fatal to that
princess. Villiers received the grand cross of the Bath in 1838 in
acknowledgment of his services, and succeeded, on the death of his
uncle, to the title of earl of Clarendon; in the following year, having
left Madrid, he married Katharine, eldest daughter of James Walter,
first earl of Verulam.

In January 1840 he entered Lord Melbourne's administration as lord privy
seal, and from the death of Lord Holland in the autumn of that year Lord
Clarendon also held the office of chancel