Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boscawen, Edward (1787-1841)
BOSCAWEN, EDWARD (1787–1841), first Earl of Falmouth, the son of George Evelyn, third Viscount Falmouth, and Elizabeth Anne, only daughter of John Crewe, of Cheshire, was born on 10 May 1787, and succeeded to his father's titles in 1808. At that time he was an ensign in the Coldstream guards, but he soon quitted the army. On the coronation of George IV he was created an earl, and throughout that reign was constant in his attendance at the House of Peers. He was often engaged in controversy with Lord Grey and the other whig leaders, and one of his speeches exposed him to the lash of Cobbett. Lord Falmouth dreaded the liberal policy of Canning, and acted as Lord Winchelsea's second in the duel with the Duke of Wellington (provoked by Winchelsea's intemperate letter on 21 March 1829). Full particulars of this event, and of the correspondence which preceded it, are in the 'Wellington Despatches,' v. 533-47, and the astonishment which it created in society is depicted in the 'Greville Memoirs,' i. 192-3. He died suddenly at Tregothnan on 29 Dec. 1841, and was buried at St. Michael Penkivel. His wife, Anne Frances, elder daughter of Henry Bankes, of Kingston Lacy, Dorset, whom he married on 27 Aug. 1810, survived until 1 May 1864. Lord Falmouth was the author of a pamphlet on the Stannary Courts, and was the last recorder of Truro. He built the present Tregothnan House. He was succeeded by his son, George Henry [see Boscawen, Family of, ad fin.]
[Bibl. Cornub. i., iii.; Gent. Mag:. (1842) (pt. i.), 208–9; Lord Colchester's Diary, iii. 467, 608–10; Smith's Cobbett, ii. 278-80; Lord Ellenborough's Diary, i. 13, 67, 255, 344, 351, 387, 403, ii. 7, 439 ; Burke's Peerage.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.31
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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