1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Methuen, Barony of

METHUEN, BARONY OF. The English title of Baron Methuen of Corsham (Wilts) was created in 1838 for Paul Methuen (1779–1849), who had been a Tory member of parliament for Wilts from 1812 to 1819, and then sat as a Whig for North Wilts from 1833 to 1838. His father, Paul Methuen, was the cousin and heir of the wealthy Sir Paul Methuen (1672–1757), a well-known politician, courtier, diplomatist and patron of art and literature, who was the son of John Methuen (c. 1650–1706), Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1697–1703) and ambassador to Portugal. It was the last-named who in 1703 negotiated the famous “Methuen Treaty,” which, in return for the admission of English woollens into Portugal, granted differential duties favouring the importation of Portuguese wines into England to the disadvantage of French, and thus displaced the drinking of Burgundy by that of port. He and his son were both buried in Westminster Abbey. The 1st baron was succeeded in the title by his son Frederick Henry Paul Methuen (1818–1891), and the latter by his son Paul, 3rd baron (b. 1845), a distinguished soldier, who became a major-general in 1890, and general commanding-in-chief in South Africa in 1907. The 3rd baron joined the Scots Guards in 1864, served in the Ashanti War of 1874 and the Egyptian War of 1882, and commanded Methuen’s Horse in Bechuanaland in 1884–85, and the first division of the 1st Army Corps in the South African War of 1899–1902. (See Transvaal.)