Sir Colville Adrian de Rune Barclay (17 September 1869 – 2 June 1929) was a British diplomat who served as chargé d'affaires in Washington D.C., minister to Sweden and Hungary and ambassador to Portugal.

Career

Barclay entered the

Diplomatic Service Diplomatic service is the body of diplomats and foreign policy officers maintained by the government of a country to communicate with the governments of other countries. Diplomatic personnel obtains diplomatic immunity when they are accredited to ...

as an

attaché In diplomacy, an attaché is a person who is assigned ("to be attached") to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency. Although a loanword from French, in English the word is not modified accor ...

in 1894 and was posted to

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. In 1897 he was transferred to the embassy in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

where for five years he was private secretary to the ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson. He also acted as secretary to the international commission of inquiry into the

Dogger Bank incident The Dogger Bank incident (also known as the North Sea Incident, the Russian Outrage or the Incident of Hull) occurred on the night of 21/22 October 1904, when the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy mistook a British trawler fleet fro ...

which met in 1905. From Paris, Barclay was posted to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...

and

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

before being promoted in 1913 to be Counsellor at the embassy at

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

where he remained throughout the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

; towards the end of the war he was

chargé d'affaires A ''chargé d'affaires'' (), plural ''chargés d'affaires'', often shortened to ''chargé'' (French) and sometimes in colloquial English to ''charge-D'', is a diplomat who serves as an embassy's chief of mission in the absence of the ambassador ...

in the absence of the ambassador,

Lord Reading Marquess of Reading is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1926 for Rufus Isaacs, who had been Member of Parliament for Reading between 1904 and 1913, before serving as Viceroy of India and Lord Chief Justice of Eng ...

. After the war he was appointed Minister to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

1919–24, and to

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

1924–28. Finally he was appointed ambassador to

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

in June 1928 but died after an operation in London a year later.

Honours

Colville Barclay was appointed MVO while serving in the British Embassy in Paris in 1903 when

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria a ...

visited that city. While Barclay was in Washington he was appointed CBE in 1917 and CB in the

1919 Birthday Honours The 1919 Birthday Honours were appointments by King George V to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the British Empire. The appointments were made to celebrate the official birthday of The King, and were ...

. He was knighted KCMG in the

1922 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1922 were appointments by King George V to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by members of the British Empire. They were published on 30 December 1921. The recipients of honours are displayed here ...

and was made a Privy Counsellor in June 1928 on his appointment to Portugal.

Family

Colville Barclay was the third son of Sir Colville Arthur Durell Barclay, 11th Baronet, whose mother came from the French family de Rune. In 1912 he married Sarita Enriqueta Ward, daughter of the sculptor and explorer

Herbert Ward Herbert may refer to: People Individuals * Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert Name * Herbert (given name) * Herbert (surname) Places Antarctica * Herbert Mountains, Coats Land * Herbert Sound, Graham Land Australia * Herbert, ...

; they had three sons, the eldest of whom, Colville Herbert Sanford Barclay, became the 14th baronet in succession to his father's two brothers. Two years after Sir Colville died, Lady Barclay married Sir Robert Vansittart, whose first wife had died in 1928.

Offices held

References

BARCLAY, Rt. Hon. Sir Colville (Adrian de Rune)
Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, retrieved 29 May 2012 *Obituary, ''The Times'', London, 4 June 1929

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barclay, Colville Adrian de Rune 1869 births 1929 deaths Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Sweden Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Hungary Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Portugal Younger sons of baronets Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George Companions of the Order of the Bath Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Members of the Royal Victorian Order Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom