Sir Henry Howard (11 August 1843 – 4 May 1921) was a British diplomat who was the first formal British envoy to the Vatican for over 300 years. Biography Henry Howard was the elder son of Sir Henry Francis Howard, also a British diplomat and ambassador, through whom he was a descendant of Lord William Howard, younger son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. He was a member of the Howard family, a Roman Catholic, and was educated at Downside School. He joined the Diplomatic Service as an attaché to the Legation in Washington, D.C. in 1865. He was promoted to Third Secretary in 1869 and to Second Secretary in 1873. While in Washington he was Her Majesty's Agent for British claims under the Treaty of Washington (1871). For this service, he was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1874, after he had left Washington. He then served in The Hague, and, in early 1876, was in London as secretary to a Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves. After this he was posted back to Washington, then to Guatemala in 1883. In 1885, Howard was promoted again to be Secretary to the legation at Athens, and subsequently held the same post at the legations at Copenhagen, Peking and St Petersburg. In 1894, he was appointed Secretary to the embassy at Paris. In 1896, he was appointed minister to the Netherlands and also to Luxembourg. While at The Hague, Howard was knighted KCMG, in January 1899, and, a few months later, he was named as British co-representative (with Sir Julian Pauncefote) at the Hague Convention of 1899. Sir Henry was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the King's Birthday Honours of 1907. In October 1908 he left The Hague after presenting his letters of recall to Queen Wilhelmina, who conferred on him the Order of Orange-Nassau. Some of his furniture and effects were shipped on the Great Eastern Railway Company's ship Yarmouth which sank with all hands on its way from Hook of Holland to Harwich on 27 October 1908. In December 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, Sir Henry was appointed "His Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on a Special Mission to His Holiness the Pope" (Benedict XV, who had been elected that September). Sir Henry was accompanied by a member of Foreign Office