HENRY CHARLES KEITH PETTY FITZMAURICE, 5th marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), was educated at Balliol, Oxford, where he became one of Jowett's favourite pupils. In 1869 he married the daughter of the 1st duke of Abercorn. He joined the Liberal Party, and was a lord of the Treasury (1869-72), under-secretary of war (1872-74), and under-secretary of India (188o). He resigned from the India Office within a few months, because he disapproved of the Irish Compensation for Disturbance bill. From 1883 to 1888 he was governor-general of Canada, where he suppressed the Indian rising under Riel. From 1888 to 1893 he was viceroy of India. He had joined the Liberal Unionist Party when Gladstone proposed Home Rule for Ireland, and on return ing to England from India became one of its most influential leaders. He was secretary of State for war from 1895 to 1900, and foreign secretary from 1900 to 1906. Lord Lansdowne's tenure of the Foreign Office covered an extremely important period in the history of British foreign relations, for it covered the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance (1902), and the beginning of the entente cordiale with France. (See EUROPE : History.) When the duke of Devonshire resigned from Bal four's Government in 1903 Lord Lansdowne became leader of the Unionist Party in the House of Lords, and when the question of the powers of the House of Lords became urgent after 1906 he put forward a reform scheme of his own. In 1915 he joined the
Asquith coalition Government without portfolio; at the close of that ministry he retired. In Nov. 1917, he published the famous letter in the Daily Telegraph, asking for a precise statement of the Allied peace terms with a view to the early termination of the World War. The letter aroused a storm of protest, though even those who deprecated it were compelled to admire Lansdowne's courage and sincerity. Lansdowne died on June 13, 1927. See Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne (1929).
Lord Lansdowne was succeeded as 6th marquess by his son HENRY WILLIAM EDMUND (1872-1936). The 6th marquess commanded the 3rd (reserve) Irish Guards (1914-16), and sat in the House of Commons for West Derbyshire from 1908 to 1918; and was a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922. He was the author of various works, among them being The First Napoleon (1925), based on unpublished papers at Bowood.