oth Houses of Parliament on the 5th of September 1848--this
being the first time that any _civil_ services obtained that honour; and
he was made a knight of the Garter (retaining also the grand cross of
the Bath by special order) on the 23rd of March 1849.

Upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the
Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon became foreign
minister. The country was already "drifting" into the Crimean War, an
expression of his own which was never forgotten. Clarendon was not
responsible for the policy which brought war about; but when it occurred
he employed every means in his power to stimulate and assist the war
departments, and above all he maintained the closest relations with the
French. The tsar Nicholas had speculated on the impossibility of the
sustained joint action of France and England in council and in the
field. It was mainly by Lord Clarendon at Whitehall and by Lord Raglan
before Sevastopol that such a combination was rendered practicable, and
did eventually triumph over the enemy. The diplomatic conduct of such an
alliance for three years between two great nations jealous of their
military honour and fighting for no separate political advantage, tried
by excessive hardships and at moments on the verge of defeat, was
certainly one of the most arduous duties ever performed by a minister.
The result was due in the main to the confidence with which Lord
Clarendon had inspired the emperor of the French, and to the affection
and regard of the empress, whom he had known in Spain from her
childhood.

In 1856 Lord Clarendon took his seat at the congress of Paris convoked
for the restoration of peace, as first British plenipotentiary. It was
the first time since the appearance of Lord Castlereagh at Vienna that a
secretary of state for foreign affairs had been present in person at a
congress on the continent. Lord Clarendon's first care was to obtain the
admission of Italy to the council chamber as a belligerent power, and to
raise the barrier which still excluded Prussia as a neutral one. But in
the general anxiety of all the powers to terminate the war there was no
small danger that the objects for which it had been undertaken would be
abandoned or forgotten. It is due entirely to the firmness of Lord
Clarendon that the principle of the neutralization of the Black Sea was
preserved, that the Russian attempt to trick the allies out of the
cession in Bessara