His father, Robert, and his grandfather, John, sat in Parliament for Durham. His father married Mary, daughter of William Davison, and to them were born eight sons and three daughters. Four of the sons had notable careers. Robert, the second son, was born in Durham.
Nothing is known of his school days except that he became proficient in Latin and learned to write fluently. His father died when the boy was not quite fourteen years of age and less than two years later he was commissioned as lieutenant fireworker in the Royal Regiment of Artillery.
He served two years in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, first as ensign and later as lieutenant and captain, in the Coldstream Guards.
With his wife and two infant sons, Eden arrived at Annapolis on June 5, 1769.
His first important act as governor was to prorogue the General Assembly to prevent it from voicing a protest against the passage by Parliament of the Townshend revenue acts. In his first address to the Assembly he recommended more adequate provision for education, but during his entire administration he was engaged chiefly as a diplomatist, in the dispute between the two houses of the Assembly over the right to regulate the fees of officers, and in dealing with relations between the colonies and with the mother country during the outbreak of the Revolution. For the difficult situation which confronted him he was admirably qualified by integrity, prudence, affability, and large capacity for making friends among the gentry, enhanced by his fondness for horses and racing. Fees were regulated by his proclamation until the proprietary government ceased to function. In his letters to England he was an apologist for the people of the province. He manifested sympathy with their point of view but deprecated their militant methods and intemperate zeal. “It has ever been my endeavor, ” he wrote Lord Dartmouth, “by the most soothing measures I could safely use, and yielding to storm, when I could not resist it, to preserve some hold of the helm of government, that I might steer as long as should be possible, clear of those shoals which all here must, sooner or later, I fear, get shipwrecked upon. ” In April 1776, an intercepted letter from Lord George Germain gave rise to suspicion that Eden was an enemy of the colonists. It was sent through irregular and improper channels to the Continental Congress and that body passed a resolution requesting the Maryland Council of Safety to arrest the governor. Because the suspicion was considered groundless the Council did not do so, but in the following month, on account of orders he had received requiring him to give facility and assistance to British armament, Eden was requested to quit the province. He accordingly left Annapolis, June 26, 1776, on a British warship and after a delay of some weeks in the Chesapeake Bay returned to England aboard another vessel. His conduct in Maryland and the judicious manner of his leaving were highly commended and he was created a baronet, Sept. 10, 1776, as a reward for faithful service. Immediately after the close of the war he returned to Maryland to recover some property and died at Annapolis, in 1784.
Loyalist
He deprecated militant methods but supported points of view of people of the province.
Quotations: “It has ever been my endeavor, ” he wrote Lord Dartmouth, “by the most soothing measures I could safely use, and yielding to storm, when I could not resist it, to preserve some hold of the helm of government, that I might steer as long as should be possible, clear of those shoals which all here must, sooner or later, I fear, get shipwrecked upon. ”
member of parliament
His father died when the boy was not quite fourteen years of age and less than two years later he was commissioned as lieutenant fireworker in the Royal Regiment of Artillery.
His father married Mary, daughter of William Davison, and to them were born eight sons and three daughters.
He married, in 1765, Caroline Calvert, who was a sister of Lord Baltimore, proprietor of Maryland, and in 1768 he was commissioned governor of that province.
