PRIME MINISTER HENRY JOHN TEMPLE (GREAT BRITAIN) - AUTOGRAPH ENVELOPE SIGNED - HFSID 224722

PRIME MINISTER HENRY JOHN TEMPLE (GREAT BRITAIN)
As Foreign Secretary, he signed and addressed an envelope to be carried to Sir Edmund Lyons in Athens by Reverend Charles Vaughan, another personal friend
Autograph Envelope signed: "Palmerston", 5x3¼, slightly smaller paper affixed to gray card stock. Addressed in his hand to "Sir Edmund Lyons/Baronet/By the Rev. Dr. Vaughan". Prime Minister Henry John Temple of Great Britain (1784-1865), popularly known as Lord Palmerston due to his Irish Peerage title as the 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was Britain's Secretary of State for War (1809-1828), Foreign Secretary (1830-1834, 1835-1841, 1846-1851) and Prime Minister (1855-1858, 1859-1865). He held office almost continuously for nearly half a century from 1807 until his death. Because he held an Irish peerage rather than an English one, he was able to sit in the House of Commons. Disliked by Queen Victoria and often abrasive in dealing with foreign governments - he held a lifelong antipathy to the United States - Palmerston was nevertheless effective in promoting British interests. Although he opposed slavery, Palmerston sympathized with the Confederacy on the grounds that a breakup of the United States would benefit Britain. Sir Edmund Lyons (1780-1858), who left the Royal Navy when he saw no prospect for promotion in peacetime became British Minister in Athens in 1835, holding that post until 1849. (After further diplomatic postings, he would return to the Navy as Commander of the Black Sea Fleet during the Crimean War.) Lord Palmerston, who had been instrumental in the appointment of Lyons, was Foreign Secretary during this period. Carrying Palmerston's letter to Athens was Reverend Charles John Vaughan, Headmaster of the elite Harrow School (1844-1859), and an another friend of Palmerston (a Harrow graduate.) Only in the 1970s was it publicly revealed that Vaughan had been forced to resign from Harrow on threat of exposure of his amorous relationship with a schoolboy. The affair was kept quiet on the condition that Vaughan never accept a church appointment. Edges worn and torn. Soiled.