Edward Eliot, 3rd Earl of St Germans
Edward Granville Eliot, 3rd Earl of St Germans (1798–1877) was a British politician, peer, and diplomat. He was born in Plymouth, England, the son of William Eliot, 2nd Earl of St Germans, and Lady Georgina. He went to Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and was known as Lord Eliot from 1823 to 1845.
He began his career as Secretary of Legation in Madrid in 1823 and became Member of Parliament for Liskeard in 1824. A Tory by start, he supported Robert Peel and served as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1827 to 1830. After leaving Parliament from 1832 to 1837, he returned in Peel’s second government as Chief Secretary for Ireland and later as Postmaster General of the United Kingdom. He helped negotiate the Lord Eliot Convention in Spain to stop the firing squad executions during the First Carlist War.
When the Conservative Party split over the Corn Laws, he followed Peel and became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Lord Aberdeen’s coalition government. In that role, he hosted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert during the 1853 Great Exhibition in Dublin, and the Queen gave a gift to Lady St Germans to mark the occasion. He later served twice as Lord Steward of the Household under Lord Palmerston. In 1860, he joined the Prince of Wales on a tour of Canada and the United States.
St Germans married Lady Jemima Cornwallis in 1824. She died in 1856. They had six sons and two daughters. He died at Port Eliot in October 1877 at the age of 79. Through his youngest son, he was the great-grandfather of Margaret Eliot, the mother of Peter and Jane Asher.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 21:23 (CET).