Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 11 - Section X
X. Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie.
The most eminent living scion of the Radnor stock is the Right Honourable Edward Pleydell Bouverie, now of East Lavington Manor, near Devizes. He was born on 26th April 1818, and was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1838. He adopted the profession of a barrister, and in 1844 he entered the House of Commons as M.P. for the Kilmarnock district of boroughs; he represented that variegated constituency for thirty years, a period of distinguished public service, of which he possesses a grateful memento in a splendid shield having the Bouverie coat-of-arms as a conspicuous centre-piece, surrounded by the armorial bearings of the boroughs of Kilmarnock, Dumbarton, Renfrew, Rutherglen, and Port-Glasgow. He married, on 1st November 1842, Elizabeth Anne, youngest daughter of General Robert Balfour of Balbirnie, and has a family. He was Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1850 to 1852. “His high talents and business habits recommended him for the appointment of Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons, the duties of which he discharged with great efficiency from April 1853 to March 1855.” In August 1855 he became President of the Poor-Law Board, and so continued till the resignation of Viscount Palmerston’s ministry in 1858. Since that date he has not held any political office, though he continued to be an M.P. until 1874. In 1862 he introduced a Bill proposing to relieve from the traditional indelibility of Holy Orders any clergymen desiring to withdraw from the Church of England on account of a change in their opinions. His Bill did not pass into an Act of Parliament, but the desideratum was afterwards granted. He was appointed the Second Church Estates’ Commissioner in 1859. As a Privy Councillor, which he has been since 1855, he has the style of “Right Honourable;” by birth he is “The Honourable,” being the younger son of the third Earl of Radnor. Lady Jane Harriet Ellice, and Mary, Baroness Penzance, are the sisters of Mr Bouverie.