Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/362

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Eden
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Eden

of Rájsháhí. In 1855 he was appointed assistant to the special commissioner for suppressing the Santál insurrection, and in this capacity showed both tact and courage. In 1856 he was promoted to be magistrate at Moorshedábád, and during the Indian mutiny he did much to check sympathy with the revolt in that city. In 1860 Eden was appointed secretary to the government of Bengal and an ex-officio member of the Bengal legislative council. This post he held for eleven years, during the last part of Sir John Peter Grant's lieutenant-governorship, and throughout Sir Cecil Beadon's and Sir William Grey's terms of office. In 1860 Eden accompanied a force ordered to invade the hill state of Sikkim in the Himalayas, as political agent, and in March 1861 he signed a treaty with the rájá, which secured protection to travellers and free trade. This success caused Eden to be appointed special envoy to the hill state of Bhután in 1863. He was accompanied by no armed force; his demands were rejected; and he was grossly insulted and forced to sign a treaty highly favourable to the Bhutiás. This treaty was not ratified by the supreme government, and the Bhután war was the result. In 1871 Eden was appointed chief commissioner of British Burma, being the first civilian ever sent to govern that province. His term of office was signalised by many administrative reforms. In 1874 he was made a C.S.I., and in April 1877 he returned to Calcutta as lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in succession to Sir Richard Temple. His government was prosperous and successful, and he was made a K.C.S.I. in 1878. His retirement from India on being appointed a member of the secretary of state's council in 1882 caused genuine regret among both the European and native communities of Calcutta, and his admirers founded in his honour the Eden Hospital for Women and Children in Calcutta. A more solid testimony to his memory is the Eden canal, which joins the Ganges and the Tistá, and will effectually save the greater portion of Behar from famine. Eden was an assiduous attendant at the council of India for the remainder of his life. He died suddenly of paralysis on 9 July 1887.

[East India Directories and India Lists; Hunter's Imperial Gazetteer; Colonel Gawler's Mountain Warfare in Sikkim; Rennie's Bhután War; obituary notices in the Times and Allen's Indian Mail.]

H. M. S.

EDEN, CHARLES PAGE (1807–1885), clerical author and editor, born in or near Bristol in 1807, was third son of Thomas Eden, curate of St. George's, Bristol, who died when Charles was an infant, leaving a widow and young family in poverty. Charles was educated at a day school at Bristol, and at the Royal Institution School at Liverpool. Afterwards he was teacher for a time in a private school, conducted by his cousin, the Rev. J. Prince, and at Michaelmas 1825 went to Oxford as a Bible clerk at Oriel College. He was appointed to this office by the provost, Dr. Copleston [q. v.], and afterwards spoke of it as ‘a position calculated to guard him from idleness and expense.’ He proceeded B.A. with a first class in classics in 1829; in the two following years gained the prizes for the Ellerton theological essay and the chancellor's English essay; and in 1832, after two failures, was elected a fellow of his college, which was still one of the highest honours in the university. After his ordination (deacon 1833 and priest 1834), he held several university and college offices, and in 1843 succeeded Mr. (afterwards Cardinal) Newman as vicar of St. Mary's. In 1850 he was presented by his college to the vicarage of Aberford, near Leeds, where in 1852 he married Miss Landon, a daughter of his predecessor, and where he continued to discharge his duties as a parish priest with admirable zeal and activity till the close of his life in 1885. He was elected proctor three times in the convocation of the province of York (1869–74–80), and in 1870 was preferred by the archbishop to the prebendal stall of Riccall, whence he was popularly called Canon Eden. His name is favourably known in the theological and literary world for his editions (for the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology) of Gunning on the ‘Paschal or Lent Fast,’ 1845, and of Andrewes's ‘Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine,’ 1846; and also especially in connection with the trade edition of Jeremy Taylor's Works, in 10 vols. 8vo. This Canon Eden began while he was residing at Oxford, and he finished vols. ii–viii. before he left the university in 1850; vols. ix. and x. were then published under the superintendence of the Rev. Alexander Taylor, who had previously assisted him; and Eden finished the work by the publication in 1854 of the first volume, containing Heber's ‘Life of Jeremy Taylor,’ indexes, &c. The text of this edition is the most critically correct; a great number of references unnoticed by Bishop Heber have been added and verified; it also includes two short pieces not found in Heber's edition, and omits three which have been pronounced to be spurious. In 1855 Eden published a volume of sixteen ‘Sermons preached at St. Mary's in Oxford,’ the first of which had been privately printed in 1840 under the title of ‘Early Prayer,’ and had excited much attention in the university from its tone of earnest and practical piety. He contributed to the ‘Tracts