[3] He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, at both of which he was a contemporary and close friend of George Nathaniel Curzon, and at the latter of which he studied under the direction of Benjamin Jowett.

[8] Spring Rice was known to be a supporter of the Liberal Party and was sympathetic to the Irish Home Rule movement so he was relieved of his post when the Conservatives came to power later that year.

Spring Rice subsequently made the unusual move to the diplomatic service, where he remained for the rest of his life, starting with his first posting to the British legation in Washington, D.C. in 1887.

[10] While in Japan Spring Rice was instrumental in laying the foundations of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which he identified as vital to British interests if Russian expansionism in the region was to be challenged.

[12] In May 1899 he was given his first posting to Persia as Secretary of Legation, and he became the British chargé d'affaires in Tehran in March 1900, when the Minister, Sir Mortimer Durand, left for London due to his wife's health.

[3] He was still serving in Russia when the Russo-Japanese War began in January 1904, and he corresponded at length with his close friend and confidant President Roosevelt about the United States' mediation in the conflict and the subsequent Treaty of Portsmouth.

[3] Spring Rice was carrying out the duties of the British ambassador to Russia, who was unwell, during the 1905 Russian Revolution and was involved in the early negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907.

[19] Within the diplomatic service Spring Rice had unique entrée into Washington's corridors of power, and his work alongside President Roosevelt in 1905 led the British government to regard him as a natural choice for ambassador by 1912.

[3] Within two years of Spring Rice's posting to Washington DC, the First World War had broken out in Europe, and his principal task became that of ending American neutrality.

[2] However, in 1914 public opinion in America favoured neutrality, and Spring Rice had to grapple with the strong anti-British and non-interventionist elements in American politics at the time.

Spring Rice also had the complex task of justifying British policies that violated America's rights as a neutral state, such as the monitoring of mail and telegrams and the seizure of contraband at sea.

Of particular concern to Spring Rice was liaison between German and Irish groups in America, and his embassy was closely involved in gathering intelligence regarding the actions of anti-British spies and informants.

[20] He successfully engaged with his many Atlanticist American friends, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Stimson and Joseph Hodges Choate, who applied pressure on Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality.

[22] Spring Rice was able to keep the feeble commission alive, but voiced his concerns that British finances in the United States were reaching a critical point as chaotic credit arrangements by-passed the body set up by parliament to effectuate co-ordination.

[24] Spring Rice was also concerned by the large number of private brokers and agents, both with and without official authority, who were operating in the United States on behalf of the government and British businesses.

The American authorities had been reluctant to check the Indian seditionist movement earlier in the war, and fear about the potential political fallout had prevented Spring Rice from pressing the matter diplomatically.

Although only 58 and in reasonably good health, Spring Rice unexpectedly died at the viceregal seat, Rideau Hall in Ottawa, a mere three weeks after leaving his post.

[30] In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris described Spring Rice as "a born diplomat [who] invariably picked out and cultivated the most important person in any place".

By the end of his appointment, Spring Rice had earned the enmity of his government after becoming paranoid about the threat posed by German spies, and also because of his immense dislike of the many British delegations to Washington that were not under the control of his embassy.

[2] Spring Rice found William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State, hard to take seriously and disliked having to deal with Edward M. House, Wilson's confidential adviser, who held no official post in the US government.

[33] In a speech in the House of Commons in 1919, Lord Robert Cecil said:[34] "No ambassador has ever had to discharge duties of greater delicacy or of more far reaching importance than fell to his lot.

He was a close friend of Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol, a British journalist and later diplomat, and Ronald Munro Ferguson, 1st Viscount Novar, with whom he corresponded for many years.

[43] Shortly after his death, Spring Rice's family, friends and colleagues erected a bridge to his memory over the waterfall at Aira Force, near his childhood home on Ullswater.

The grave was cleaned up and a memorial plaque and ceremony was organised by the then British Consul, Ashley Prime, working in Toronto with support from the Freeman of the City of London (North America).