Robert Eden (bishop)

Eden, the third son of Sir Frederick Morton Eden, was born on 2 September 1804 and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He took a third class in Classics in 1826 and proceeded B.A. in 1827. Ordained deacon in January 1828 and priest in December 1828 by Christopher Bethell, the Bishop of Gloucester, he served successively the curacies of Weston-sub-Edge in Gloucestershire, and Messing and Peldon in Essex, and became Rector of St Clement's Church, Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex in 1837. Here, on the resignation of Bishop Low, he accepted the offer of the Scottish See of Moray and Ross; he was consecrated at Old Saint Paul's, Edinburgh, 9 March 1851. On this occasion his university conferred on him the degree of D.D. In 1862 he was elected Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, in succession to Bishop Terrot. In 1827 he married Emma, daughter of Justice Allan Park, by whom he had five sons and five daughters. He died peacefully on the evening of 26 August 1886, at his official residence in Inverness.

The progress which Scottish episcopacy made in his time must be attributed largely to his influence. He had given up a comfortable English living worth £500 or £600 a year for a position of which the yearly emoluments were not more than £150 (about £15,400 today), and where there was no settled residence. His pro-cathedral was a small cottage, fitted up as a mission chapel, on the bank of the River Ness. During his tenure he quadrupled the income of the see, founded the beautiful Inverness Cathedral, and was mainly instrumental in securing a residence for his successor. Dignified and firm in character, he was a good and sound, rather than a brilliant, preacher. He was on the most intimate terms of friendship with Archbishop Longley and Bishops Blomfield, Selwyn, Hamilton, and Wilberforce, the last of whom said that his power of surmounting difficulties was just that of his ability at school to jump over anything that he could reach with his nose. Among his most noticeable public acts were his cordial recognition of M. Loyson (Père Hyacinthe); his co-operation with the Duke of Buccleuch in removing the disabilities of Scottish orders in the ministry of the Church of England; his labours to promote union with the Eastern church; and his enlisting Archbishop Longley to take part in the foundation of Inverness Cathedral. His defence, in opposition to all the other Scottish bishops, of Bishop Wilberforce, who had held an English service in the presbyterian chapel of Glengarry, Inverness-shire, was perhaps due less to the somewhat Erastian tone which uniformly pervaded Eden's political acts than to the mollifying effect produced by the personal visit of Wilberforce.