Colonial Despatches

Wodehouse was born in London in 1826 and studied at Oxford. He married Lady Florence Fitzgibbon in 1847 and had three sons and two daughters.

Wodehouse served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1852-1856 and again from 1859 to 1861; during this time he wrote many letters connected with the colonial despatches, several in relation to the San Juan Island Dispute.

Wodehouse's diplomatic and hardworking nature led him to serve a wide variety of roles within the British Government, including Minister-Plenipotentiary to St Petersburg after the Crimean War and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in which he successfully suppressed a Fenian uprising in 1865. He continued to fulfill various administrative positions in the Indian and Foreign Offices until 1895 and was politically active until his death in 1902.1

• 1. Wodehouse, John, first earl of Kimberley (1826–1902), John Powell in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2010, accessed September 23, 2015.