Author: Eden, Frederick Morton
Biography:
EDEN, Frederick Morton (1766-1809: ODNB)
The eldest son of Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland in America and his wife Caroline Calvert, sister and coheir of Lord Baltimore, he was born on 18 June 1766 at Ashtead in the Mole valley, Surrey. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 19 Apr. 1783 (BA 1787, MA 1789) and entered the Middle Temple where he was called to the bar in 1791. He inherited the baronetcy on his father’s death in 1784. On 10 Jan. 1792 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, he married Ann Smyth, daughter of James Paul Smyth of New Bond Street; they had at least five sons and two daughters. Eden was one of the founders of the Globe Insurance Company and he died suddenly at the company’s offices in London on 14 Nov. 1809, predeceased by his wife on 14 July 1808. They were both buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, the parish church in Ealing. Eden had written a will leaving his estate to his children on the day after Ann’s death. The Vision, listed here, is a satire on the lexicographical history of the Rev. Jonathan Boucher (1738-1804: ODNB). Eden may have first met Boucher through their shared connection to Maryland. The preface, written from Dryebridge House, near Monmouth, is probably by the Rev. Charles-John Bird (1777-1854) whose family occupied Dryebridge. It states that the poem had long been known to exist and the editor issued it after the deaths of both the author and the subject to satisfy the curiosity of “epicures”; it seems unlikely that Eden had intended it for publication. Eden also wrote a Latin poem, Brontes; a Cento to the Memory of the Late Admiral Viscount Nelson (1806), but his main claim to fame is his three-volume The State of the Poor, or, An History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797). In 1800—a year before the first general census—he published Estimate of the Number of Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland which was followed by other works of social and economic inquiry. (ODNB 10 May 2024; ancestry.co.uk 10 May 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; Burke) SR
Other Names:
- Sir Fred. Morton Eden