Background
Edwardes was the eldest son of Captain William Edwardes, 3rd Baron Kensington, by his wife Laura Jane Ellison, daughter of Cuthbert Ellison, of Hebburn Hall, Hebburn, County Durham.
Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom
Edwardes was the eldest son of Captain William Edwardes, 3rd Baron Kensington, by his wife Laura Jane Ellison, daughter of Cuthbert Ellison, of Hebburn Hall, Hebburn, County Durham.
He notably served as Comptroller of the Household from 1880 to 1885 and as Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard from 1892 to 1895. Edwardes was elected to the House of Commons for Haverfordwest in 1868, a seat he held until 1885. When the Liberals came to power in 1880 under William Ewart Gladstone, Kensington was admitted to the Privy Council and appointed Comptroller of the Household (government whip in the House of Commons), a post he held until the government fell in 1885.
In 1886 he was created Baron Kensington, of Kensington in the County of Middlesex, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, which gave him a seat in the House of Lords.
The same year the Liberals returned to power under Gladstone, and Kensington served briefly as a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip in the House of Lords) from March until the fall of the government in July. The Liberals were out of office for the next six years, but returned to power in 1892, when Gladstone appointed him Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard.
He retained this office when Lord Rosebery became Prime Minister in 1894. The Liberal government fell the following year, and Kensington never returned to office.
Apart from his political career he also held the honorary post of Lord Lieutenant of Pembrokeshire between 1872 and 1896.
Lord Kensington married Grace Elizabeth Johnstone-Douglas, daughter of Robert Johnstone-Douglas, in 1867. Lady Kensington died in 1910. Their daughter, Sylvia, married Lord Edward Gleichen in the same year.
20th United Kingdom Parliament. 21st United Kingdom Parliament. 22nd United Kingdom Parliament]
In 1872 he succeeded his father as fourth Baron Kensington but as this was an Irish peerage it did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords and he was able to remain a member of the House of Commons.