Sir Alexander Malet, 2nd Baronet

Sir Alexander Malet, 2nd Baronet, KCB (23 July 1800 – 28 November 1886) was a British diplomat.

Malet was born at Hartham Park, Wiltshire, the eldest son of Sir Charles Malet, 1st Baronet, and was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated a BA in 1822. He entered the diplomatic service in 1824 as an unpaid attaché to Saint Petersburg. Here, he was an eyewitness to the Decembrist revolt that took place on the accession of Nicholas in 1825. Malet now began his rise through the lower grades of the service, serving next as secretary of legation at Lisbon, under Lord Howden, during the Miguelite War of 1832–4.

On 22 December 1834, Malet married Mary Anne (or Marianne) Dora (1810?–1891), daughter of John Spalding and stepdaughter of Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux; the couple had two sons, Henry Charles Eden and Edward Baldwin Malet. Known as "Brougham's petticoat" at the Foreign Office, Mary was ambitious for Malet's advancement and immediately plotted to get her husband made précis writer to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. This ploy failed, although Palmerston did make Malet secretary of legation at The Hague, where he remained for almost nine years. He was eventually promoted to secretary of the embassy at Vienna and then British Minister to Württemberg in 1844. In 1849, he was appointed Minister to the German Confederation at Frankfurt. Here he formed a close friendship with Bismarck during a crucial period in German history, which ended with the eclipsing of Austrian influence within the confederation and the emergence of a pre-eminent Prussia. Malet's career failed to progress further and, after the collapse of the confederation in 1866, he retired and was appointed a KCB. He became a magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant for Wiltshire, where he lived at Wilbury House. In addition to his diplomatic career, he was author of "Some Account of the System of Fagging at Winchester School" (1828), an English translation of Wace's "Roman de Rou" (1860), and "The Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation by Prussia" (1870). He died on 28 November 1886, at his London house at Queensberry Place, Cromwell Road.

ource

*DNB