fully negotiated a treaty of peace. In 1816 he accompanied Earl Amherst in his embassy to China, in the capacity of third commissioner. A mission to China was then so rare an event in the history of Europe, that Ellis published in 1817 an authorised narrative of the journey and transactions of the embassy [see Amherst, William Pitt]. On their return from China in the Alceste, Amherst and Ellis were wrecked. They were forced to make for Java in an open boat, and reached Batavia after a perilous voyage of several hundred miles. Ellis reported that an impression could only be produced at Pekin by a knowledge of the strength of England, rather than by pompous embassies. Ellis, who was tory M.P. for Boston 1820–1, was commissioner of customs 1824–5, was clerk of the pells from 1825 until the abolition of that office in 1834, and commissioner of the board of control 1830–5. In 1830 he issued a ‘Series of Letters on the East India Question,’ addressed to the members of the two houses of parliament. In the earlier part of his career Ellis had been for six years in the civil service of the East India Company; and at the Bengal presidency he held the post of private secretary to the president of the board of control when the acts regulating the territorial government and trade of the East India Company were passed (1812–14). He had thus much experience of the subject, and recommended the abandonment of exclusive privileges by the company and a considerate treatment of the company by the English government. In July 1835 Ellis was appointed ambassador to Persia, but he relinquished that appointment in November of the following year. He was despatched on an extraordinary and special mission to the Brazils in August 1842, and at the close of 1848 he was appointed by the British government to attend the conference at Brussels on the affairs of Italy. Ellis was made a privy councillor in 1832, and in 1848 was created a K.C.B. On his retirement from the diplomatic service he was awarded a pension of 1,400l. per annum, together with a second pension for the abolished office of clerk of the pells. He died at Brighton, 28 Sept. 1855.
[Ann. Reg. 1855; Gent. Mag. 1855; Ellis's works cited above.]
ELLIS, Sir HENRY (1777–1869), principal librarian of the British Museum, born in London on 29 Nov. 1777, was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, where his brother, the Rev. John Joseph Ellis, was assistant-master for forty years. In 1796, having gained one of the Merchant Taylors' exhibitions at St. John's College, he matriculated at Oxford, and in 1798, by the interest of his friend Price, Bodleian librarian, was appointed one of the two assistants in the Bodleian Library, the other being his subsequent colleague in the museum, the Rev. H. H. Baber. In the same year he published at the age of twenty-one his ‘History of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, and Liberty of Norton Folgate,’ an earnest of the laborious industry and the zeal for antiquarian pursuits which were to distinguish him all his life. He took the degree of B.C.L. in 1802. He was a fellow of St. John's till 1805. In 1800 he was appointed a temporary assistant in the library of the British Museum, and in 1805 he became assistant-keeper of printed books under the Rev. W. Beloe. The unfortunate robbery of prints which cost Beloe his appointment in the following year [see Beloe, William; Dighton, Robert] raised Ellis most unexpectedly to the headship of the department, Baber, his former senior at the Bodleian, becoming his assistant. His promotion coincided with a period of increased activity at the museum. Already, in 1802, three attendants had been appointed to relieve the officers of the duty of conducting visitors over the establishment; and in 1807 the trustees, finding that this relief had not occasioned any remarkable increase of official labour, took serious steps to expedite the compilation of new and more accurate catalogues. The printed catalogue of the library was at that time comprised in two folio volumes, full of inaccuracies, but provided with a manuscript supplement, and to a considerable extent revised and corrected in manuscript by Beloe's predecessor, the Rev. S. Harper. Ellis and Baber commenced their work of reconstruction in March 1807, and completed it in December 1819. The length of the operation may be partly accounted for by Ellis's transfer to the department of manuscripts in 1812; he continued, however, to attend to the catalogue for some time afterwards, and completed the portion he had originally undertaken, being from A to F and from P to R inclusive, Baber doing all the rest. According to his own statement he derived great assistance from the learned Bishop Dampier; his portion of the catalogue, nevertheless, has been most severely criticised by his successor Panizzi; and it cannot be denied that errors have been pointed out damaging not only to his character for scholarship, but to his better established reputation for industry. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the standard of catalogue-making was by no means high at the period, that Ellis worked nearly single-handed, and that his catalogue is, after all, a great improvement on its predecessor, and
