* LYONS, EDMUND, LORD, better known as ADMIRAL SIR EDMUND LYONS, G.C.B., is the second son of the late John Lyons, Esq., of Burton House, near Christchurch, Haute, where he was born on the 21st of November 1790. At an early age he was sent to Hyde Abbey School, near Winchester, then under Dr. Richards, who num bered among his pupils George Canning, Dean Gaisford, and Wolfe, the author of the celebrated ' Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore.' In June 1801 he entered the service of the navy under the late Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale, on board H.M.S. the Royal Charlotte, whence, in the following year, he was transferred to the Maidstone, Captain R. Moubray. In 1807 he served under the late Sir J. T. Duckworth in the Dardanelles, on board the Active, and was engaged in the successful attack on the redoubt of Point Pesquiea, on the Adriatic shore. In November 1809 he became lieutenant of the Barracouta brig; and in the following year he formed one of the storming party who attacked by night the castle of Belgica, in the island of Banda Neira, and by a gallant exploit added another Dutch to the British possessions in the Indian Seas. In 1811 he stormed and captured the strong fortress of Marrack, on the coast of Java, but was forced to return home to England to recruit his health. In 1813 he was appointed to the Rinaldo, in which vessel he conveyed Louis XVIII. to France, and brought the allied sovereigns back to England. Ho obtained post rank in 1814, but was not actively employed between that date and 1828, when, in command of the Blonde, he took part in blockading Navarino, and superintended the naval expedition sent to aid the French in their investment of the castle of Morea, the last hold of the sultan in the Peloponnesua. On this occasion he is reported to have served in the trenches without intermission for twelve days and nights ; and ou the cessation of hostilities, his courteous bearing, professional skill, and uoflinching bravery wero rewarded by the orders of St. Louis of France and the Redeemer of Greece. In 1829 he was employed to convey Sir R. Gordon, the British ambassador to Constantinople, in the Blondo ; and in the year 1831 he took the late Sir John Malcolm as far as Alexandria on his route to Persia. It is not a little singular that Captain Lyons's ship, the Blonde, should have been the first British vessel of war that ever entered the Black Sea, and that in her he should have visited both Odessa and Sebastopol upwards of twenty years before the breaking out of the recent war against Russia. In 1832, while commanding the Mada gascar, he was an eye-witness of the bombardment of Acre by Ibrahim Pasha ; in the following year he escorted King Otho and the Bavarian embassy from Trieste to Athena, in order to assume the kingdom of Greece.
HaVing paid off the Madagascar in the early part of 1835, he received the honour of knighthood from King William IV., and soon afterwards was appointed minister plenipotentiary and ambassador extraordinary at the court of Athens. The duties of this post he continued to discharge with great ability and discretion for upwards of fourteen years, but resigned it in February 1849 on becoming ambassador to the Swiss cantons, whence he was transferred in 1851 in order to fill the same high post at the court of Stockholm. The latter appointment he resigned towards the close of 1853, when a rupture with Russia had become imminent. On the breaking out of the Russian war, Sir E. Lyons took the post of second in command in the Black Sea, under Admiral Sir J. W. Deana-Dundas, on whose resignation in June 1855 he became commander-in-chief of the Black Sea fleet. The transport of the English troops from Varna to the Crimea, in September 1854, was executed under the direction of Sir E. Lyons without the loss of a single man. At the battle of the Alma (September 20th) he supported the French army ashore by bringing the guns of his ship, the Agamemnon, to bear upon the left flank of the Russians ; and he was an eye-witness of the engagements at Bala klava and Inkermann (October and November), though, as a naval officer, he could take no part in them. He planned the expedition against the Russian forts along the Sea of Azoff (May and June 1855), which was gallantly executed by his son, Captain Moubray Lyons, o the Miranda, who died soon afterwards at Therepia from tho effects o wound received off Sebastopol In the last and successful assauli on that city (September 18551, Sir E. Lyons was prevented by a stronE gale of wind from bringing his fleet into aotion and taking a part it the success of the day. On his return to England he was met with the warmest welcome : he was presented with the freedom of the city of London, and received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for his services in the Black Sea ; and in Juno 1856 was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lyons of Christchurch, co. Hants. By his wife Augusta, daughter of the late Captain Josias Rogers, R.N., and who died at Stockholm in 1852, Lord Lyons has an only surviving eon, attach6 to the embassy at Florence, and now British Resident at Rome.