MALMESTURY, JAMES HARRIS, first earl of, 1746-1820; b. England; son of James Harris, the author of Hermes. He was educated at Winchester, Oxford, and Leyden, and, after traveling on the continent, was appointed, at the age of twenty-one, secretary of the Spanish embassy through the influence of lord Shelburne. He was acting as charge d'aff'aires at Madrid, at the time of the dispute between England and Spain in regard to the Falkland islands, and he displayed such skill in the negotiations in this affair, that, in 1771, he WM appointed minister-resident at Berlin, where he remained for four years. In 1777 he was made ambassador to Russia, and in 1780 he received the order of the bath. The state of his health compelled him to leave St. Petersburg in 1784, and he soon accepted from the Pitt ministry the post of minister to the Hague, to which it had been the intention of Fox, to whose party he belonged, to send him. There, in 1788, he succeeded in negotiating a treaty of alliance between Holland and Prussia; and in acknowledgment of his services was made baron Malmesbury the same year. Returning to En-gland he entered parliament, of which. in spite of his long
absences, he had been a member since 1770. He was a whig till 1793, when he became a supporter of the administration, and Pitt sent him once more to negotiate a treaty between England, Prussia, and Holland, a mission which he successfully discharged. In 1794 he negotiated the marriage between the prince of Wales and Caroline, daughter of the duke of Brunswick. In 1796 lie went to Paris and in 1797 to Lisle on fruitless negotiations for peace with the French republic; and these were his last missions, as he deemed himself incapacitated by a growing deafness from taking further part in public affairs. In 1800 he was made earl of Malmesbury and viscount Fitzliarris.