Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/406

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year,’ 1853. 9. ‘Devotional Reflections in Verse, arranged in accordance with the Church Calendar,’ 1858. 10. ‘Short Readings on the Collects,’ 1861. 11. ‘Spiritual Communings,’ 1869.

[Sir A. Edmonstone's Genealogical Account of Family of Edmonstone (1875), pp. 56–7; Illustrated London News, 1 April 1871, p. 322, and 29 April, p. 427; Times, 18 March 1871, p. 4.]

G. C. B.

EDMONSTONE, Sir GEORGE FREDERICK (1813–1864), Indian civilian, fourth son of Neil Benjamin Edmonstone [q. v.], Lord Wellesley's foreign secretary in India, was born in April 1813. His father, who was a director of the East India Company, gave him a nomination to the Indian civil service, and, after passing through Haileybury, Edmonstone proceeded to Bengal in 1831. After acting as assistant-collector at Gorakhpur and Gházipur, he became deputy-collector at Saharanpur in 1837, and at the close of the first Sikh war he was appointed to the important post of commissioner and superintendent of the Cis-Sutlej states. He gave such satisfaction in this office that he was selected in 1856 by Lord Canning to succeed Sir H. M. Elliot as secretary in the foreign, political, and secret department, the same position which his father had filled under Lord Wellesley. His tenure of office was not less important, for during it the Indian mutiny of 1857 broke out and was suppressed. How far Edmonstone influenced Canning can never be satisfactorily ascertained, but he was at least the official mouthpiece of the governor-general, and every important despatch and proclamation, including the most famous one by which the land of Oudh was confiscated, was drawn up and signed by him. In January 1859 Lord Canning appointed him lieutenant-governor of the north-western provinces, with his headquarters at Allahabad, instead of Agra as before the mutiny, and with his government shorn of the divisions of Delhi and Hissar, which were transferred to the Punjab. This was the part of India which, with the exception of Oudh, had suffered most severely during the mutiny, and Edmonstone carried out the principles of Canning in restoring order. His period of office is chiefly marked by the further curtailment of this unwieldy government by the creation of the new government of the central provinces, and by his successful efforts to restore the efficiency of the administration. In 1863 he left India, quite worn out by his exertions, and on his return to England was created a K.C.B. He died on 24 Sept. 1864, at Effingham Hill. His wife, Anne Farly Turner, by whom he had issue, died in 1859.

At the new public school at Haileybury the six houses are named after six distinguished Indian civilians, of whom Edmonstone is one.

[East India Directories; Kaye and Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny; private information.]

H. M. S.

EDMONSTONE, NEIL BENJAMIN (1765–1841), Indian civilian, born on 6 Dec. 1765, was fifth son of Sir Archibald Edmonstone of Duntreath, M.P. for Dumbartonshire 1761–80 and 1790–6, and the Ayr Burghs 1780–90, who, made a baronet in 1774, died in 1807. He obtained a writership in the East India Company's civil service, and reached India in 1783. He was soon attached to the secretariat at Calcutta, and was appointed deputy Persian translator to government by Lord Cornwallis in 1789, and Persian translator by Sir John Shore in 1794. On the arrival of Lord Mornington, better known as Lord Wellesley, in 1798, the new governor-general appointed Edmonstone to be his acting private secretary, and in that capacity he accompanied Lord Mornington to Madras in 1799. Mornington now determined to crush Tippoo Sultan, and finally annihilate the power which the French officers were building up in India by taking service with the Nizam and other native princes. Edmonstone was by his chief's side throughout this important year, and translated and published the documents found in Tippoo's palace, which formed the principal justification of the English attack upon him. That the whole policy of Lord Wellesley in making the company the paramount power in India by means of his system of subsidiary treaties was largely due to Edmonstone there can be no doubt, though he modestly kept in the background. Sir John Kaye speaks of him, in his ‘Lives of Indian Officers,’ as ‘the ubiquitous Edmonstone, one of the most valuable officials and far-seeing statesmen which the Indian civil service has ever produced.’ On 1 Jan. 1801 he was appointed secretary to the government of India in the secret, political, and foreign department, and he played as important a part in forming the plans which were to crush the Maráthás as he had done in the war against Tippoo Sultan. He continued to hold his office after the departure of Lord Wellesley, and as Lord Cornwallis did not survive long enough to counteract the policy of that statesman, Edmonstone was able to carry on the system he had done so much to initiate during the interregnum after his death. When Lord Minto arrived as governor-general in 1807, Edmonstone acted as his private secre-