William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, PC (Ire), FRS (3 April 1745 – 28 May 1814) was a British diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1793.[1]
In 1771, Auckland published Principles of Penal Law, and soon became a recognized authority on commercial and economic questions. In 1772 he took up an appointment as Under-Secretary of State for the North, a post he held until 1778. He was Member of Parliament for Woodstock from 1774 to 1784 and served as a Lord of Trade from 1776 to 1782.
During the War, he was head of the British spies in Europe, his budget reaching £200,000 by 1778. He probably oversaw a small group of intelligence collectors for Lord Suffolk. On his return in 1779 he published his widely-read Four Letters to the Earl of Carlisle.
In 1789, he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Auckland and in 1793 he retired from public service, receiving a pension of £2300, and was further honoured when he was made Baron Auckland, of West Auckland in the County of Durham, in the Peerage of Great Britain.
During his retirement in the country at Beckenham, he continued his friendship with William Pitt the Younger, his nearest neighbour at Holwood House, who at one time had thoughts of marrying his daughter (see below). With Pitt's sanction he published his Remarks on the Apparent Circumstances of the War in 1795, to prepare public opinion for a peace.[3]
He was later included in Pitt's government as Joint Postmaster General in 1798. He severely criticized Pitt's resignation in 1801, from which he had endeavoured to dissuade him, and retained office under Henry Addington. This terminated his friendship with Pitt, who excluded him from his administration in 1804 though he increased his pension. Auckland later served under Lord Grenville as President of the Board of Trade in the Ministry of All the Talents between 1806 and 1807.[3]
His Journal and Correspondence, published in 1861–1862, throws much light on the political history of the time.[3] The subantarcticAuckland Islands group to the south of New Zealand, discovered in 1806, were named after him, as was Eden Quay in Dublin.[4]
Eleanor Agnes Eden (1777–1851), who became the subject of intense public interest in 1797 when it was rumoured that she was about to marry the Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger; when the matter became public, however, Pitt denied that he had proposed to Eleanor, much to her father's fury.[6] Instead, she married Robert Hobart, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1799,[7] and Pitt never married.
Mary Dulcibella Eden (1793–1862), who married Charles Drummond (1790–1858), eldest son and heir of banker Charles Drummond (and grandson of William Drummond, 4th Viscount Strathallan) and Frances Dorothy Lockwood (a daughter of Rev. Edward Lockwood of Dews Hall).[5]
Emily Eden (1797–1869), was a poet and novelist. Her letters were edited by Violet Dickinson and published in 1919.[5]
Lord Auckland died in May 1814 and was succeeded by his second but eldest surviving son, George, who was created Earl of Auckland in 1839. Lady Auckland died in May 1818.[11]
References
Notes
^A description of the Godolphin life at their family seat, Gog Magog House (now destroyed), was captured in a letter by one of her younger sisters: "I invited myself of course, but [Lady] Charlotte bore it very well. I was there fifteen years ago in the capacity of a child: I therefore did not see much of her, or know anything of her and except that, have not seen her but for two or three morning visits per annum; so it was a voyage of discovery, in the style of a North Pole expedition. The Frost intense--and a good deal of hummocky ice to sail through. However, I really liked it better than expected. Lord Francis [Osborne] is particularly pleasant in his own house, and young Charlotte [the youngest child and only daughter] very civil and good-natured."[8] Sons of the house included George, the eldest, who became 8th Duke of Leeds in 1859, and Sydney, later known for his letters to The Times on various political and social causes. He wrote about the workhouses in Ireland during the Great Famine and was with Florence Nightingale in Scutari during the Crimean War.
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