Edward Pleydell Bouverie ²²

  General Notes:

From The Times, December 17, 1889

We regret to announce the death of the Right Hon. Edward
Pleydell-Bouverie, which took place at an early hour yesterday at his
London residence, 44 Wilton-crescent. Edward Pleydell-Bouverie was
born in 1818, and was the second son of the third Earl of Radnor by
his second wife, a daughter of the late Sir Henry Paulet St. John
Mildmay. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he graduated M.A. in 1838. He entered public life very soon
after leaving the University. From January to June, 1840, he was
précis writer to Lord Palmerston. In 1842 he married the youngest
daughter of the late General Balfour of Balbirnie, Fifeshire. He was
called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1843, and in the following
year he was returned to Parliament in the Liberal interest as member
for Kilmarnock, which constituency he continued to represent until
1874, when he was an unsuccessful candidate. During his 30 years of
Parliamentary life Mr. Bouverie was a prominent figure in the House of
Commons. From July, 1850, to March, 1852, he was Under-Secretary of
State for the Home Department, and from April, 1853, to March, 1855,
he was Chairman of Committees. In March, 1855, he was made
Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and in August of the same year
he vacated this office and became President of the Poor Law Board,
which position he held until 1858. In 1857 he was appointed one of
the Committee of Council on Education. He was Second Chruch Estates
Commissioner from August, 1859, until November, 1865, and from the
year 1869 he was one of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England.
In 1872, when John Evelyn Denison, who had filled the Speaker's chair
with dignity for 15 years, was about to retire to the House of Lords
as Viscount Ossington, Mr. Bouverie's name was mentioned in connexion
with the vacant office, though as is known, Mr. Brand, now Lord
Hampden, who had long served as "Whip" to the Liberal party, was
ultimately appointed. Mr. Bouverie, though a stanch Liberal, was a
Liberal of the old Whig school, and as time went on had found himself
less and less able to follow the developments of Mr. Gladstone's
policy, and as a result he found himself towards the close of his
Parliamentary career not infrequently in collision with his chief. In
1872, when a charge of evasion of statutory law was brought against
Mr. Gladstone in consequence of his appointment of Mr. Harvey to the
Rectory of Ewelme, Mr. Bouverie "regretted that the Prime Minister
should amuse his leisure hours by driving coaches and six through Acts
of Parliament, and that he alone should take such curious views of the
meaning of statutes". Would any private patron he asked, have
suggested such an evasion of the Act? But it was the Irish University
Bill that caused Mr. Bouverie's final rupture with Mr. Gladstone. On
the last night of the debate which was to overthrow the Ministry Mr.
Bouverie denounced the measure as miserably bad and scandalously
inadequate to its professed object, and declared that, therefore, in
accordance with sound Parliamentary doctrine, he should vote against
the second reading. The Bill, he argued, had completely broken down.
The Roman Catholic prelates were the exponents of the grievance-at
least Mr. Gladstone would not deny it, since he had negotiated with
them to the exclusion of the laity. In the course of his speech Mr.
Bouverie made some caustic remarks, which involved him in a running
fire with Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Chichester, Fortescue.
Subsequently in letters addressed to this journal Mr. Bouverie
continued his attack on the measure and its framers. After the defeat
of the Liberal Ministry in 1873 Mr. Bouverie did not again enter
Parliament. He contested Kilmarnock in the following year, but was
unsuccessful. In the City, where he was already well known, he soon
became as prominent as he had been in the House of Commons. In 1877
he became associated with the newly constituted Corporation of Foreign
Bondholders, of which he soon afterwards was made chairman. Under his
guidance the debts of many countries were readjusted in a more or less
satisfactory manner, the most important of these settlements being
that of the Turkish debt, which was confirmed by the Sultan's Iradé of
January, 1882, and shortly afterwards that of Spain. Mr. Bouverie was
also a director of many great companies, among them being Great
Western Railway Company, and the Peninsular and Oriental Company. It
is now some little time since Mr. Bouverie took any prominent part in
the discussion of questions of the hour, but he was at one time a
prolific contributor to the correspondence columns of The Times, and
his letters, which appeared over the signature "E.P.B.", more
especially those on the subject of the Bulgarian atrocities in the
autumn of 1876 and the following year, were widely read and widely
commented on.
Educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. MP for
Kilmarnock 1845 - 1874. Had two sons and three daughters.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Census UK 1881: 1881, 44 Wilton Crescent, London.

2. Resided: 16 December 1889, 44 Wilton Crescent, London. ¹³

3. Resided: 16 December 1889, Manor House, Market Lavington, Wiltshire. ¹³

4. He had an estate probated on 6 June 1889 in London. ¹³

Edward married Elizabeth Anne Balfour, daughter of General Robert Balfour and Eglantine Katharine Fordyce, on 1 November 1842. (Elizabeth Anne Balfour was born in 1821 in Scotland and died on 10 August 1889.)