1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/D'Abernon, Edgar Vincent, 1st Baron

D'ABERNON, EDGAR VINCENT, 1st Baron (1857–), English politician, was born at Slinfold, Sussex, Aug. 19 1857, the youngest son of Sir Frederick Vincent, 11th Bart., of Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey. He was educated at Eton, and was intended for the diplomatic service, being in 1877 head of the examination list for the appointment of student dragoman at Constantinople. The same year, however, he entered the army, but in 1880 was appointed private secretary to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, at that time commissioner for Eastern Rumelia. The following year he became a member of the commission for the evacuation of territory ceded to Greece by Turkey, and in 1882 was sent to Constantinople as the representative of Great Britain, Holland and Belgium on the council of the Ottoman public debt, of which in 1883 he became president. In 1883 he was sent to Cairo as financial adviser to the Egyptian Government, remaining there until 1889, when he returned to Constantinople as governor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a post which he resigned in 1897. In 1887 he received the K.C.M.G. Sir Edgar Vincent entered Parliament in 1899 as Conservative member for Exeter, but lost this seat in 1906. He unsuccessfully contested Colchester in 1910. In 1914 he was raised to the peerage as Baron D'Abernon, and became very prominent during the World War as chairman of the Central Liquor Control Board. In 1920 he was appointed ambassador to Germany. Lord D'Abernon published in 1881 a Grammar of Modern Greek, which was adopted for use by the university of Athens. He married in 1890 Lady Helen Venetia Duncombe, daughter of the 1st Earl of Feversham.