Richard Charles Francis Christian Meade, 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam GCH (15 August 1795 – 7 October 1879),[1] styled Lord Gillford between 1800 and 1805, was a British diplomat and politician of Anglo-Irish background.

A protégée of the British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh he played an active role in the Concert of Europe in the post-Napoleonic era.

[1] His early years were spent in Vienna, where his father had moved after a series of bitter quarrels with his own parents about his marriage and about their enormous debts, which deprived him of what should have been a great inheritance.

[5] His second youngest son Sidney Meade (1839-1917) was Perpetual Curate of Christ Church in Bradford on Avon from 1882, Canon of Salisbury Cathedral and Justice of the Peace for Wiltshire.

His sister, Lady Selina Meade (later Countess of Clam-Martinic) was also famously painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

In a letter to Lawrence in 1824 by Lord Leveson-Gower, Selina’s previous suitor, mentioned Clanwilliam’s reluctance to part with the picture for this purpose, and remarks of him needed to be ‘tranquilized’ over the prospect of his sister appearing on the print market.

The print was published in 1828, entitled ‘Selina’ and showing the sitter without the spire of the Stefansdom in the distance, when it appeared as the frontispiece of the first edition of the journal, The Keepsake.