Edward Pleydell-Bouverie

Edward Pleydell-Bouverie PC, FRS (26 April 1818 – 16 December 1889), styled The Honourable from 1828 to 1855, then The Right Honourable, was a British Liberal politician. He was a member of Lord Palmerston's first administration as Paymaster General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade in 1855 and was President of the Poor Law Board between 1855 and 1858.

Background and education Pleydell-Bouverie was the second son of William Pleydell-Bouverie, 3rd Earl of Radnor, by his second wife, Anne Judith, third daughter of Sir Henry St John-Mildmay, 3rd Baronet. The family homes were at Longford Castle in Wiltshire and Coleshill House in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 4th Earl of Radnor, was his elder brother. He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating as a Master of Arts in 1838. Like a number of his kinsmen, he became an officer in the part-time Royal Berkshire Militia, being commissioned as a captain on 23 February 1838 and was still listed in 1852.

He was a précis writer to Lord Palmerston from January to June 1840 before he was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, on 27 January 1843.

Political career In 1844 Pleydell-Bouverie was returned to Parliament for Kilmarnock Burghs, a constituency he represented until 1874. He served as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in Lord John Russell's first administration from July 1850 to March 1852, In August of the same year he was transferred to the Presidency of the Poor Law Board, a position he held until 1858.

When the Irish University Bill was introduced in March, Pleydell-Bouverie finally broke with Gladstone. He denounced the measure as miserably bad and scandalously inadequate to its professed object. He voted against the second reading on 10 March, when the government was defeated. Subsequently, in letters addressed to The Times he continued his attacks on the measure and on its framers.

Family Pleydell-Bouverie married Elizabeth Anne, youngest daughter of General Robert Balfour of Balbirnie, Fife, on 1 November 1842. They lived at Market Lavington Manor in Wiltshire and had two sons, Walter (5 July 1848 – 20 May 1893), a captain in the 2nd Wiltshire Rifle Volunteers, and Edward Oliver (12 December 1856 – 13 May 1938), and three daughters. One, Eglantine, married Augustus Keppel Stephenson, Director of Public Prosecutions from 1884 to 1894. Elizabeth Anne died in August 1889. Pleydell-Bouverie only survived her by four months and died at 44 Wilton Crescent, London, on 16 December 1889, aged 71.