Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/364

 on the title-page of John Seally's ‘Complete Geographical Dictionary,’ 2 vols. London, 1787, 4to, the astronomical portion of which was taken from his papers. He left many valuable notes and observations for an edition of the ‘Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Edmund Halley, Astronomer Royal,’ which he had prepared for the press with the sanction of the Philosophical Society. 

LYONS, JOHN CHARLES (1792–1874), antiquary and writer on gardening, born on 22 Aug. 1792, was only child of Charles John Lyons (1766–1796), captain of the 12th light dragoons, by his wife Mary Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Levinge, fourth baronet. His grandfather, who survived his father, was John Lyons (d. 1803), a landed proprietor, of Ledestown or Ladistown, co. Westmeath, who was sheriff of his county in 1778. The family descended from an English settler in King's County in the reign of James I, but traces its sources to the Huguenots. From a branch of the same family, settled in Antigua, West Indies, Richard B. P. Lyons [q. v.], Earl Lyons, was descended. John Charles succeeded his grandfather in his estate in 1803, and matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 21 May 1810, but took no degree. He served as sheriff for Westmeath in 1816, and during his long life performed with credit and honesty the various duties of a country gentleman. He died, aged 82, on 3 Sept. 1874, and was interred in the churchyard of Mullingar, co. Westmeath. He was twice married, and left issue by both wives.

Lyons was a practical working gardener, and his knowledge of the subject is proved by his ‘Treatise on the Management of Orchidaceous Plants, with a Catalogue of more than One Thousand Species,’ 2nd ed., Dublin, 1845. He also interested himself in local antiquities and literature, and being of a mechanical turn set up a press at his house, where he printed with his own hands the results of his antiquarian researches. The chief of his publications are: 1. ‘A Book of Surveys and Distribution of the Estates forfeited in the County of Westmeath in the year 1641,’ Ledestown, 1852. 2. ‘The Grand Juries of Westmeath from 1727 to 1853, with an Historical Appendix,’ Ledestown, 1853. The latter records many passages both of county and family history inaccessible elsewhere.

 LYONS, RICHARD BICKERTON PEMELL, second and first  (1817–1887), diplomatist, elder son of Edmund Lyons, first baron Lyons [q. v.], by his wife Augusta Louisa, daughter of Captain Josias Rogers, R.N., was born at Lymington, Hampshire, on 26 April 1817. In 1829 he was serving as a midshipman on board his father's ship, H.M.S. Blonde (see, Fifty Years of my Life, ed. 1877, p. 343). He was then sent first to Winchester, afterwards to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1838, and M.A. in 1843. He entered the diplomatic service in February 1839 as unpaid attaché at Athens, where his father was minister, became paid attaché in October 1844, and in April 1852 was transferred to Dresden. In 1853 he was appointed to Florence, became secretary of that legation in 1856 with orders to reside at Rome, and envoy in 1858, and having recently, on 23 Nov. 1858, succeeded his father in the peerage, he was appointed British minister at Washington in December of the same year. His post, by no means an easy one on the eve of the civil war, when he was obliged to maintain a neutral attitude while indirectly he endeavoured to encourage a peaceful settlement of the questions between the north and south, became almost untenable in November 1861, when the seizure of Messrs. Slidell and Mason by the federal cruiser San Jacinto, on board the British mail steamer Trent, all but led to a declaration of war. Lyons took upon himself to avoid making a peremptory demand for redress, and awaited direct instructions from the foreign office. These instructions were explicit, that unless the United States government released the prisoners and tendered an apology within seven days, he was forthwith to leave Washington; but they were couched in moderate language, and were communicated with such tact by Lyons, that the American secretary of state, Mr. Seward, as he himself acknowledged, was most materially assisted in the difficult task of inducing his government to accede to the British demands (see, Life of the Prince Consort, v. 425).

During the three following years Lyons was the medium of communication between the British and the American governments on the subjects of the declaration of Paris, the blockade of the confederate ports, the treaty of 7 April 1862 for the suppression of the