Footnote 21: Mr William Cowper, at this time First Commissioner of Works.
Footnote 22: Mr (afterwards Sir) William Tite, was now Member for Bath; he had been the architect entrusted with the task of rebuilding the Royal Exchange.
Footnote 23: Mr Gilbert Scott had made his first designs for the new Foreign Office in the Gothic style; his appointment as architect for the building was made by the Derby Government, but the scheme which they favoured, for a Gothic building, was opposed by Lord Palmerston, and Scott adopted the Italian style in deference to his views.
Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
Osborne, 24th July 1861.
The Queen is sorry that she cannot alter her determination about Mr Layard.24 She fully recognises the importance of the Parliamentary exigencies; but the Queen cannot sacrifice to them the higher interests of the country. Neither Mr Layard nor Mr Osborne ought to be proposed as representatives of the Foreign Office in the House of Commons, and therefore of the Crown to foreign countries. If Lord Palmerston can bring Mr Layard into office in some other place, to get his assistance in the House of Commons, she will not object.
Footnote 24: In the course of July, Lord John Russell, who had entered Parliament for the first time in 1813, was raised to the Peerage as Earl Russell and Viscount Amberley. To supply the loss to the Government of two such powerful debaters as Lord Russell and Lord Herbert, Lord Palmerston had suggested Mr Layard as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, mentioning also the claims of Mr Bernal Osborne.
Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.
MR LAYARD
94 Piccadilly, 24th July 1861.