Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Petre, George Glynn
PETRE, Sir GEORGE GLYNN (1822–1905), diplomatist, born on 4 Sept. 1822 at Twickenham, was great-grandson of Robert Edward Petre, ninth Baron Petre, and was second son of Henry William Petre of Dunkenhalgh, Clayton-le-Moors, by his first wife Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Edmund John Glynn, of Glynn, Cornwall. Educated at Stonyhurst College and Prior Park, Bath, he entered the diplomatic service in 1846 as attache to the British legation at Frankfort, then the seat of the diet of the German confederation, and was there during the revolutionary movements which convulsed Germany in 1848. He was transferred to Hanover in 1852 and to Paris in 1853, and was appointed paid attaché at the Hague in 1855 and at Naples in March 1856. Owing to the neglect by the tyrannical government of the Two Sicilies of the joint remonstrance of the British and French governments in May, diplomatic relations were broken off in the summer. Sir William Temple, the British minister, was compelled by ill-health to leave Naples in July, and Petre assumed charge of the legation until it was withdrawn at the end of October. Petre performed his duties with judgment and ability; his reports laid before parliament give an interesting narrative of the course of events. In 1857 he was temporarily attached to the embassy at Paris, and in June 1859 he accompanied Sir Henry Elliot [q. v. Suppl. II] on his special mission to Naples, diplomatic relations having been resumed on the accession of Francis II to the throne. He then proceeded as secretary of legation to Hanover, and acted as chargé d'affaires there from December 1859 until February I860; he was transferred in 1864 to Copenhagen (where, in the following year, he assisted at the investiture of King Christian IX with the order of the Garter), to Brussels in 1866, and was promoted to be secretary of embassy at Berlin in 1868. After four years of service at Berlin, covering the period of the Franco-German war, he became chargé d'affaires at Stuttgart in 1872, and in April 1881 he was appointed British envoy at Buenos Ayres. In 1882 he was also accredited to the republic of Paraguay as minister plenipotentiary. In January 1884 he was appointed British envoy at Lisbon, where he remained until his retirement on a pension (1 Jan. 1893).
During the latter years of his service in Portugal the obstacles offered by the Portuguese authorities to free communication with the British missions and settlements established on the Shire river and the shores of Lake Nyassa, and the seizure of British vessels while passing through Portuguese waters on their way to the lake, led to a state of acute tension between the two governments. A convention for the settlement of these and cognate questions was signed by Lord Salisbury and the Portuguese minister in London on 20 Aug. 1890, but in consequence of popular and parliamentary opposition the Portuguese government resigned office without obtaining the authority of the Cortes to ratify it, and their successors found themselves equally unable to carry it through. The negotiations had therefore to be resumed de novo. A modus vivendi was agreed upon and signed by Lord Salisbury and the new Portuguese minister, Senhor Luiz de Soveral, on 14 Nov. 1890, by which Portugal granted free transit over the waterways of the Zambesi, Shire and Pungwe rivers and a satisfactory settlement was finally placed on record in the convention signed by Petre and the Portuguese minister for foreign affairs on 11 June 1891. Petre's naturally calm and conciliatory disposition and the excellent personal relations which he succeeded in maintaining with the Portuguese ministers did much to keep the discussions on a friendly basis and to procure acceptance of the British demands. He was made C.B. in 1886 and K.C.M.G. in 1890. He died at Brighton on 17 May 1905, and was buried at Odiham, Hampshire.
A portrait in water-colours is in the possession of his widow at Hatchwoods, Winchfield, Hampshire. Another, in oils, painted when he was at Berlin, is at Dunkenhalgh. Petre married on 10 April 1858 Emma Katharine Julia, fifth daughter of Major Ralph Henry Sneyd, and left six sons. One son and an only daughter predeceased him.
[The Times, 23 May 1905; Lord Augustus Loftus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, 2nd ser. i. 374; Foreign Office List, 1906, p. 399; Papers laid before Parliament; Burke's Peerage, s. v. Petre.]