Earl of St Germans

A carte-de-visite portrait of the Earl of St Germans (1798-1877).

Edward Granville Eliot was born at Plymouth in Devon on 29 August 1798, the son of William Eliot, 2nd Earl of St Germans and his first wife, Lady Georgiana Augusta Levenson-Gower, daughter of the 1st Marquess of Stafford. He was educated at Westminster from 1809 to 1811 and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford on 13 December 1815.

He became the Secretary of the Legation at Madrid on 21 November 1821. From 1826 he was styled Lord Eliot, the same year that he was elected Member of Parliament for Liskeard. Beginning his career as a Tory, he remained loyal to Robert Peel, and served as Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1827 until 1830.

Out of Parliament between 1832 and 1837, he served in Peel’s second government first as Chief Secretary for Ireland and later as Postmaster General. In 1835 he brokered the so-called Lord Eliot Convention in Spain, which aimed to end the indiscriminate executions by firing squads of prisoners on both sides of the First Carlist War.

He succeeded his father on 18 January 1845, becoming the 3rd Earl of St Germans.

When the debate over the Corn Laws broke the Conservative Party he followed Peel, and served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Lord Aberdeen's coalition government. He was twice Lord Steward under Lord Palmerston.

In 1860, he accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of Canada and the USA.

On 2 September 1824 he married Lady Jemima Cornwallis, a daughter of the 2nd Marquess Cornwallis. They had six sons and two daughters.

He died on 7 October 1877, at the age of 79.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London in 1860.