Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of 1784-1860
Scottish statesman and Prime Minister

Born in Edinburgh and educated at Harrow, he inherited a peerage at the age of seven. His joint guardians were William Pitt, the Younger and Henry Dundas. He succeeded his grandfather as earl in 1801, was elected a Scottish representative peer in 1806, and in 1813 was sent as special ambassador to Vienna to negotiate the Treaty of T�plitz that created the alliance of Great Powers against Napoleon I. He was Foreign Secretary twice, under the Duke of Wellington (1828-30) and under Sir Robert Peel (1841-46), and brought to an end the Chinese War, established an entente cordiale with France, and cemented relations with the USA. A confirmed free-trader, he resigned with Peel over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1852, on the resignation of Lord Derby, he was made Prime Minister of a coalition government that was immensely popular until he committed Great Britain to an alliance with France and Turkey in the Crimean War in 1854. The gross mismanagement of the war aroused popular discontent, and he was forced to resign in 1855.

Bibliography: Muriel E Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen: A Political Biography (1983)