Background
He was the son of Lionel Smythe, 5th Viscount Strangford and Mary Eliza Philipse. In 1817, he married Ellen, daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, Baronet
He was the son of Lionel Smythe, 5th Viscount Strangford and Mary Eliza Philipse. In 1817, he married Ellen, daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, Baronet
He was educated at Harrow and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1800, entered the diplomatic service, and in the following year succeeded to the title of Viscount Strangford in the Peerage of Ireland.
He was ambassador to Portugal (1806) and Sweden (1817). The Levant Company nominated Lord Strangford and the appointment was confirmed in 1820 Ottoman Turkey. As ambassador to the Sublime Porte, he had opportunities to assemble fragments of Greek sculpture.
Among his collection of antiquities was the "Strangford Shield", a 3rd-century Civil Engineering Roman marble that reproduces the shield of Athena Parthenos, Phidias" sculpture formerly in the Parthenon.
The "Strangford Shield" is conserved in the British Museum. He left Turkey in 1824.
In 1807, as Britain"s envoy to Portugal, Lord Strangford coordinated the Portuguese royal family"s flight from Portugal to Brazil. Lord Clinton, as he was known in Brazil, he arrived with the Royal Family in Salvador in January 1808 and soon they moved to Rio de Janeiro where they arrived on March 8, 1808.
Lord Clinton and the Brazilian accountant Dom Fernando José de Portugal had a hard work to do in the Brazilian Imperial Palace.
They had to raise the money moved from Portugal to Brazil under the English escort. Their work was during thirty days. The tax service of 2% was according the Prize Money (the law had been canceled in 1803 and was re-edited in 1807).
They counted one hundred million Pounds and two million pounds in taxes.
(In that year, with that money would be possible to buy two hundred million bags of coffee, nowadays it is U$20 billion). After that, the payment delayed fourteen years to be paid after the English recognizance of the Brazilian Independence.
That was the money Napoleon wanted to finance his war against England. Napoleon said in his memoirs that Don Jon was the only one to trick him.
In February 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal SocietyHe translated the Rimas of Luís de Camões in 1825.
Later he also become ambassador at Street St. Petersburg, Russia (1825), when he was created Baron Penshurst, of Penshurst in the County of Kent, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, enabling him to sit in the House of Lords. A window in his family chapel in Saint Mary"s Church, Ashford, Kent, commemorates him, mentioning the monarchs whom he served and the countries to which he was dispatched.
Royal Society.