MARK OF PAUL STORR, LONDON, 1819

The arms are those of Canning quarterly with those of Salmon, Marshall and Newburgh, presumably as borne by Stratford Canning, the celebrated diplomatist. He was ambassador to Constantinople 1809-1812, to Switzerland 1814-1819 and to Washington 1820-1823. He returned to Constantinople 1825-1829 and again in 1831-1832 and 1841-1858. While en poste he exercized great influence over the Sultan, Abdul Medjiid who, under his guidance, rejected the Russian demand for Suzerainty over his thirty million Christian subjects, a refusal which indirectly led to the Crimean War. In 1852 he was created Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe and he died in 1880. It was said of him some years later that "with him there past [sic] away... the last of the English statesmen of the pre-Reform era, raised high above the waves of demagogy, not yet intimidated by the cautious specialism of an expert civil service, unused to the curb-bit of telephone and telegraph when in foreign posts they carried out in aristocratic self reliance the policies that seemed good in their own eyes and had been tested by the age-long experience of their class." [Complete Peerage]