Edward Grimston

The Honourable Edward Harbottle Grimston was born on 2 April 1812 in Mayfair, London. He was the second son of James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam, and Lady Charlotte Jenkinson, daughter of Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool. Grimston had at least three brothers—James, Robert, and Francis—who played first-class cricket, as did his son Walter and his nephew Lord Hyde.

Grimston participated in cricket during the 1830s and 1840s, playing in 30 first-class matches from 1832 to 1849. His main teams were Oxford University and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). As a cricketer, he was a right-handed batsman and a medium pace underarm bowler.

In his political career, Grimston was elected in the 1835 general election as one of two Members of Parliament (MPs) representing the borough of St Albans in Hertfordshire. He was re-elected in 1837. In 1841, he resigned his parliamentary seat through the procedural device of accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds.

Following his departure from Parliament, Grimston took holy orders and served as the rector of Pebmarsh, a parish of which his father was the patron. He held this religious office from 1841 until his death in 1881.

Grimston married Frances Horatia Morier on 15 June 1842. Frances was born in 1815 and died in 1906. She was the daughter of diplomat John Philip Morier and Horatia Maria Frances Seymour, the eldest daughter of Lord Hugh Seymour, who was the youngest son of the 1st Marquess of Hertford. Frances’s sisters included Katherine Georgina Morier, who married Grimston’s brother, the Reverend Hon. Francis Sylvester Grimston, and Horatia Isabella Harriet Morier, who married Algernon St Maur, 14th Duke of Somerset.

Together, Edward and Frances Grimston had several children. Their daughter Charlotte Mary Grimston (who died in 1932) married Cecil Frederick Reid of Reid & Co. in 1869. Their daughter Eleanor Grimston (died in 1933) married Captain William John Wauchope of Niddrie Marischal, a member of the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, in 1870. After her first husband's death, Eleanor married Lieutenant-Colonel Henry C. S. Goldfrap of Farnborough, Hampshire, in 1887. Their son Walter Edward Grimston (1844–1932) married Emily Pryor in 1872; after her death in 1884, he married Ellen Jane Woodhouse in 1885.

Edward Grimston died on 4 May 1881 at Pebmarsh, Essex.