Sir Edmund Constantine Henry Phipps, (15 March 1840 – 15 March 1911) was a British diplomat.
Early life Constantine Phipps was the only son of the lawyer and author Hon. Edmund Phipps and Maria-Louisa (née Campbell) Phipps. His mother was previously married to Hon. Charles Francis Norton, an MP for Guildford.
His paternal grandparents were Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave and Martha Sophia Maling (a daughter of pottery manufacturer Christopher Thomson Maling). His maternal grandfather was Lt.-Gen. Sir Colin Campbell.
Phipps was educated at Harrow School and later entered the Diplomatic Service in 1858.PHIPPS, Sir Edmund Constantine Henry, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, accessed 2 April 2012
Career In 1873, he was Third Secretary in Rio de Janeiro and was requested by the Ambassador, George Buckley Mathew, to report on the condition of British emigrants in Brazil.The London Gazette, 24 October 1873
In 1881, Phipps was promoted from the rank of Second Secretary to be Consul-General at Budapest with the rank of Secretary of Legation,The London Gazette, 6 September 1881 and in 1885 was posted to be Secretary of the Embassy at Vienna.The London Gazette, 24 November 1885 In 1892 he was appointed Secretary of the Embassy at Paris and in the following year promoted to be Minister PlenipotentiaryThe London Gazette, 20 January 1893 under the Ambassador to France, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.
While in Paris, Phipps was a British delegate to an international conference on the prevention of cholera, in 1894.British Medical Journal, 3 February 1894, page 267 He was made a Companion of the Bath in the Queen's 1894 Birthday Honours.The Edinburgh Gazette, 29 May 1894 In the same year he was appointed British Ambassador to Brazil.The Edinburgh Gazette, 21 September 1894
In 1900 Phipps was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of His Majesty the King of the Belgians.The London Gazette, 25 September 1900 He was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1902 Coronation Honours list "for services in connection with the Sugar Conference", and invested as such by King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October 1902. This was the Brussels Sugar Convention of 5 March 1902, which was controversial in BritainThe Brussels Sugar Convention, Hansard, 10 March 1902 and was opposed by Henry Campbell-Bannerman amongst others. Phipps retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1906 and died in 1911.
Personal life In 1863, he married Maria Miller Mundy, daughter of Alfred Miller Mundy, of Shipley Hall, Derbyshire, and Maria Jane Hindmarsh (a daughter of Rear-Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh).Burke's Landed Gentry, Miller Mundy of Shipley Hall Together, they were the parents of:
Sir Eric Phipps, who became a diplomat in his turn, serving in the 1930s as Ambassador successively to Berlin and Paris.
After the death of Lady Phipps on 30 August 1902, he married Alexandra Wassilewna, widow of Gomez Brandão of Rio de Janeiro, in 1904. He died in 1911 and his widow died in 1954.Burke's Peerage, 2004 edition, p2921
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