Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/257

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Sackville-West
247
Sackville-West

foreign visitors, with a valuable introduction, and etchings by himself. He contributed to the early volumes of 'Notes and Queries,' and papers on 'A Memorial of the Priory of St. Andrew at Rochester' and 'Visits to Rochester and Chatham of Royal, Noble, and Distinguished Personages, English and Foreign, 1300–1783,' to the 'Archæologia Cantiana,' as well as others to the 'Antiquary,' in which that on 'Breuning's Mission to England, 1595,' appeared in 1903. The etchings which he contributed to the 'Publications of the Antiquarian Etching Club' (1849–1854) were brought together in a privately issued volume in 1859. His collections for a 'History of Rochester,' in three quarto volumes, are in the British Museum.

Rye, who in his last years was totally blind, died at West Norwood, from an attack of bronchitis, on 21 Dec. 1901, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. He married twice; secondly, on 13 Dec. 1866, Frances Wilhelmina, youngest daughter of William Barker of Camberwell, by whom he left two sons and one daughter. The elder son, Wilham Brenchley Rye (1873–1906), became an assistant librarian in the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the younger, Reginald Arthur Rye, is Goldsmiths' librarian of the University of London, and author of 'The Libraries of London' (2nd edit. 1910).

[Library Association Record, Jan. and Feb. 1902, by Dr. Richard Garnett, reprinted privately with corrections; Athenæum, 4 Jan. 1902; information from Mr. Reginald A. Rye.]

R. E. G.


S

SACKVILLE-WEST, Sir LIONEL SACKVILLE, second Baron Sackville of Knole (1827–1908), diplomatist, born at Bourn Hall, Cambridgeshire, on 19 July 1827, was fifth son of George John West, fifth Earl de la Warr, by his marriage with Lady Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of John Frederick Sackville, third duke of Dorset, and Baroness Buckhurst by creation in 1864. His elder brother Mortimer (1820–1888) was created Baron Sackville in 1876. Privately educated at home, Lionel served as assistant precis writer to the fourth earl of Aberdeen when secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1845, and after further employment in the foreign office was appointed attache to the British legation at Lisbon in July 1847. He was transferred successively to Naples (1848), Stuttgart (1852), Berlin (1853), was promoted to be secretary of legation at Turin 1858, and was transferred to Madrid in 1864. In November 1867 he became secretary of embassy at Berlin, and in June 1868 was transferred to Paris in the same capacity with the titular rank of minister plenipotentiary. He served under Lord Lyons [q. v.] throughout the exciting incidents of the Franco-German war, following him to Tours when the capital was invested by the German forces, and returning with him to Paris on the conclusion of peace. He was left in charge of the British embassy during the first weeks of the Commune, when the ambassador had accompanied the French ministry to Versailles. In September 1872 he was promoted to be British envoy at Buenos Ayres, but remained in charge of the embassy at Paris until 7 November and did not arrive at his new post until September 1873. In January 1878 he was transferred to Madrid, where he served for over three years, acting as the plenipotentiary of Great Britain and also of Denmark in the conference which was held in 1880 to define the rights of protection exercised by foreign legations and consulates in Morocco. In June 1881, shortly after the assassination of President Garfield, he was appointed to succeed Sir Edward Thornton [q. v. Suppl. II] as British envoy at Washington, and then entered upon the most eventful and, as it turned out, the final stage of his diplomatic career. The feeling in the United States towards Great Britain had improved since the settlement of outstanding questions provided for by the Treaty of Washington, in 1871, and the reception given to West was cordial. But he soon found that the influence in congress and in the press of the Irish Fenian party formed a serious bar to the satisfactory settlement of important questions. The measures taken by the British government for the protection of life and property in Ireland after the 'Phoenix Park murders' of 1882 caused intense excitement among sympathisers with the Fenian movement in the United States. The publication in the American press of incitements to murder and violence, and the arrests in the United Kingdom