within the county of Essex. From Sudbury school he was sent to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, whence he migrated to Trinity Hall, of which house he was admitted a scholar 31 Dec. 1596. He was elected to a fellowship 10 July 1599, and afterwards he held for many years the office of reader of the civil law in his college. On 10 Nov. 1613, being then LL.B., he was chosen to succeed Dr. Clement Corbet as professor of law in Gresham College, London (Ward, Gresham Professors, p. 240). In March 1614-15 he held a disputation for the degree of LL.D. with great applause before James I at Cambridge, and he was created doctor in the following year. On 4 Nov. 1615 he was admitted a member of the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons (Coote, English Civilians, p. 73).
He was returned as one of the burgesses for the university of Cambridge to the parliament of 6 Feb. 1625-6, and subsequently re-elected to the parliaments of 17 March 1627-8, 13 April 1640, and 3 Nov. 1640 (the Long parliament). On 4 Sept. 1626 he was chosen master of Trinity Hall on the resignation of Dr. Corbet. He was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Ely in 1630, and he was also commissary of Westminster, Bury St. Edmunds, and Sudbury, and one of the masters in chancery. He resigned his professorship at Gresham College 27 July 1640. On 3 May 1641 he joined with those members of the House of Commons who took the protestation. The speaker informed the house on 7 Sept. 1642 that he had received commission from Dr. Eden, who had been long sick of an ague, to acquaint the house that as formerly he had lent the house 1,000l 'in time of streight,' and had adventured 500l. for Ireland, so he was also willing now to lend 200l. for the service of the king and parliament according to the propositions (Commons' Journals, ii. 76). On 28 Feb. 1643-4 he took the solemn national league and covenant (ib. iii. 410). In April 1645 he was one of the committee of parliament, consisting of six peers and twelve commoners, which was appointed by the two houses to manage the affairs of the admiralty. He died in London on 18 July 1645, and was buried on 2 Aug. in the chapel of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where a mural monument with a Latin inscription was erected to his memory. The Latin oration delivered at his funeral by Thomas Exton, afterwards a knight, is printed in Ward's 'Gresham Professors,' appendix, p. 69, and two English elegies on his death are preserved in the British Museum (Lansd. MS. 98, ff. 195, 196).
Eden, who is highly commended as an advocate by Fuller, was a munificent benefactor to Trinity Hall. He left in manuscript:
- ‘Notæ in regulas juris.’
- ‘Liber observationum.’
- ‘Liber articulorum.’
- ‘Loci communes.’
[Cole's Athenæ Cantabr. E. 7; Cole's Manuscripts, vi. 88, 93, 94, 108, 109; List of Members of Parliament (official return), i. 468, 474, 480, 485; Willis's Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 230, 241; Carter's Cambridge, pp. 101, 106, 109; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. (1635-6) index, (1636-7) p. 432, (1637) pp. 188(2), 423, (1637-8) p. 316, (1638-9) p. 590, (1639) p. 367, (1639-40) pp. 270, 272-4, 277, 278, 281, 285, 287, 562, (1641-3) pp. 4, 34, 529; Lloyd's Memoires (1677), p. 593; Fuller's Worthies (Nichols), i. 357; Hearne's Textus Roffensis, append, p. 403; Harl. MSS. 376 art. 30, 378 art. 36, 589 art. 18; Kennett's MS. 51, f. 44; Hervey's Visitation of Suffolke (Howard), pp. 13-16. 19.]
EDEN, WILLAM, first Lord Auckland (1744–1814), statesman and diplomatist, third son of Sir Robert Eden, third baronet, of Windlestone Hall, Durham, by Mary, sister and coheiress of Morton Davison of Beamish, Durham, was born on 3 April 1744. He was educated at Eton, where he became an intimate friend of the Earl of Carlisle, and proceeded to Oxford in 1763 as a student of Christ Church. His university career was full of brilliant promise, and he proceeded B.A. in 1765, and M.A. in 1768. He then read law in London and was eventually called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1769. He studied his profession diligently, and soon became known as one of the most promising young men in London; and in 1772, in which year he published his ‘Principles of Penal Law,’ he was selected to fill the office of under secretary of state. After his acceptance of this appointment he gave up his legal for a political career, and in 1774 he entered the House of Commons as M.P. for Woodstock. He devoted himself from the first to legal and economical questions, and soon became an acknowledged authority on these subjects, on which he spoke frequently, and he was therefore selected as one of the first lords of the board of trade and plantations when that board was instituted in 1776 to regulate British trade. In that year} he strengthened his political position by marrying Eleanor Elliot, the only sister of Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Earl of Minto, and by his famous speech on punishments in the House of Commons, in which he proposed the substitution of hard labour for transportation to America. In 1778 he was re-elected for Woodstock, and in that year was appointed one of the five
