The Hon and Rev
If you enter St Peter's Church, Bekesbourne by the north door,
as you ordinarily do on coming up the path from the lych gate,
you will see on the wall opposite two stone tablets of white
marble on dark grey slate, one above the other. They are fine,
opulent-looking tablets which must have been expensive to put
up. The lower of the two has the following inscription:
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE HONBLE AND REVD
WILLIAM EDEN M.A.
YOUNGEST SON OF
FREDERICK MORTON
FIRST LORD HENLEY.
RECTOR OF BISHOPSBOURNE.
SENIOR SIX PREACHER
IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
25 YEARS VICAR OF THIS PARISH
AND RECTOR OF HARBLEDOWN
DIED MAY 4TH 1859
AGED 66 YEARS
ALSO OF HIS WIDOW
ANNA MARIA LADY GREY DE RUTHYN
DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM KELHAM.ESQRE
OF RYTON CUM DUNSMORE
WARWICKSHIRE WIDOW OF
EDWARD 20TH LORD GREY DE RUTHYN
BORN IOTH AUGUST 1792
DIED 23RD OCTOBER 1875
Pompous snobs this Eden family, I hear you say; and you may be
right. But wait a minute: what a lot this tablet says about
its subject, far more than the usual pious compliments of most
memorials.
The Edens were a family of considerable distinction in the
late 18th/early 19th century. In particular two sons of Sir
Robert Eden, third baronet, of West Auckland, County Durham,
made names for themselves in diplomatic and government
circles. The older, William, born in 1744, was member of
Parliament for Woodstock from 1774 to 1784 and for Heytesbury
from 1784 to 1793. He held the offices successively of Under—
secretary of State for the North, Chief Secretary for Ireland,
Envoy to France, Ambassador to Spain, Ambassador to the
Netherlands, Joint Postmaster—General and President of the
Board of Trade. He was made a peer of Ireland in 1789 and
became fist Baron Auckland of Great Britain in 1793. He died
in 1814 and was succeeded by his son George, 2nd Baron
Auckland, a staunch Whig at the centre of the political scene,
who was Governor General of India from 1835 to 1841 and was
made Earl of Auckland in 1839.
The second son of Sir Robert Eden, Bart. was the Frederick
Morton Eden of our memorial tablet. He was born in 1752 and
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