Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/279

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Ellis
273
Ellis

Bombay. His first appointment in India was as third assistant-collector and magistrate of Ratnagiri; he was promoted to the post of second assistant in 1847, and in 1848 was made commissioner for investigating certain claims upon the Nizam's government. In 1851 he arrived in Sindh as assistant-commissioner, and from 1855 to 1857 was in charge of the offices of chief commissioner during the absence in England of Sir Bartle Frere. He was made special commissioner for jagirs or alienated lands in the province before leaving Sindh in 1858. In 1859 he was collector and magistrate at Broach, and, after serving as chief secretary of the Bombay government, was nominated an additional member in 1862 and an ordinary member in 1865 of the Bombay council. Five years later he was promoted to the viceroy's council. In 1875 he returned to England, and was made not only K.C.S.I. but a member of the Indian council in London. He retired in due course from the council, on whose deliberations he exerted much influence, in 1885. Ellis died at Evian-les-Bains, Savoy, on 20 June 1887, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden, Middlesex, on 28 June following. He was an excellent revenue and settlement officer — 'one of the ablest revenue officers of the Bombay Presidency,' in the words of Sir George Birdwood. While at Bombay Ellis was exceptionally popular with all classes of native Indians. He was at all times accessible to them, both in India and England, and the native newspapers eulogised him unstintedly at the time of his death. He left a sum of 2,500l. in trust for the poor of Ratnajiri, his first official charge. He was not married. On his retirement from India he took a prominent part in the affairs of the Jewish community of London, being vice-president of the Anglo-Jewish Association and of the Jews' College, where a portrait has been placed. Ellis published a report on education in Sindh (Bombay, 1856), and edited George Stack's `Dictionary of Sindhi and English' (Bombay, 1855). He was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society, which he joined in 1876. He founded a prize in Bombay University, and a scholarship there was established in his honour in 1875.

[Memoir by Sir George Birdwood in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, new ser. xix. 688; Times, 24 June 1887; Allen's Indian Mail, 28 June 1887; Jewish Chronicle (London), 24 June and 1 July 1887; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Times of India, 27 June 1887.]


ELLIS, CHARLES AUGUSTUS, Lord Howard de Walden and Seaford (1799–1868), diplomatist, elder son of Charles Rose Ellis, M.P. [q. v.], afterwards Lord Seaford, by Elizabeth Catherine Hervey, only daughter of John Augustus, eldest son of Frederick Augustus Hervey, earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, was born on 5 June 1799. On 8 July 1803 he succeeded his great grand-father, the Bishop of Derry, as Lord Howard de Walden. This title represented an ancient barony by writ, created by Queen Elizabeth in 1597, which had passed to the Bishop of Derry as representative through females of the younger daughter of the third Earl of Suffolk, and it now again passed by the female line to Charles Augustus Ellis, while the earldom of Bristol was inherited by the next male heir in the usual course. Lord Howard de Walden was educated at Eton, and on 4 April 1817 he entered the army as an ensign and lieutenant in the Grenadier guards. During the reductions in the strength of the army, made after the evacuation of France, Lord Howard de Walden was placed on half-pay on 25 Dec. 1818. He again entered the Grenadier guards on 6 Jan. 1820, but on 3 Oct. 1822 he was promoted captain in the 8th regiment and placed on half-pay. He took his seat in the House of Lords in 1820, and Canning, when he came into power on the death of the Marquis of Londonderry, showed every disposition to assist the relation of his dearest friend, George Ellis, and the son of one of his most trusted supporters, Charles Rose Ellis. In July 1824 Canning appointed Lord Howard de Walden under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and in January 1826 sent him as attaché to Lord Stuart de Rothesay in his famous special mission to Rio de Janeiro. After his return from Brazil Lord Howard de Walden married, on 8 Nov. 1828, Lady Lucy Cavendish-Bentinck, fourth daughter of William Henry, fourth duke of Portland. On 2 Oct. 1832 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to the court of Stockholm. On 22 Nov. 1833 he was transferred in the same capacity to Lisbon. During the thirteen years in which he held this appointment Lord Howard de Walden made his reputation as a diplomatist. He took up his duties while the civil war between the Miguelites and the Pedroites was still raging, and he remained to see more than one pronunciamiento in the streets of Lisbon and Oporto. The queen of Portugal and her advisers were greatly inclined to trust to the English minister, and his influence upon the Portuguese policy and the development of parliamentary government in that country is of the greatest importance in the internal history of Portugal during the present century. For his services to English diplomacy he was made a G.C.B. on 22 July 1838, and for his services to Portugal he was permitted