THE GREAT FAMILIES OF CORNWALL: The Eliots
The Eliot family were based in Cornwall from the 15th century.
Edward was the only son of William Eliot, 2nd Earl of St Germans, of Port Eliot, Cornwall.
Link to the photo HERE
He was styled Lord Eliot from 1823. The following year he was elected as the Tory M.P. for Liskeard, retaining this seat until the changes following the Reform Act in 1832.
In 1834 he was sent to Spain as envoy-extraordinary, and drew up the 'Eliot Convention' between the two sides in the Carlist War. He returned to Britain in 1837 and was elected as M.P. for East Cornwall.
In 1841 Lord Eliot was appointed by Sir Robert Peel as Chief Secretary to Ireland.
In 1843 he introduced a bill limiting the carrying of arms in Ireland, and in 1845 he was the main proponent of the Maynooth Grant.
He resigned in 1845 when he succeeded his father as Earl of St Germans. Instead, he was appointed as Postmaster General, holding this position until 1852, when he returned to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant.
Lord St Germans retired from politics in 1855 and served in the Royal Household.
Lord Eliot, heir to the 10th Earl of St Germans and the Port Eliot estate in Cornwall, who died suddenly aged 40 on April 15 2006, was, variously, a Covent Garden busker, Brighton night club impresario and, latterly, an enthusiastic exponent of digital technology.
He had recently graduated with a masters degree from the University of Plymouth in that subject, making a special study of its relevance to art, history and philosophical practice.
But it is for his gift for friendship and magic tricks that he will chiefly be remembered. He once defused an angry scene abroad by prodding a man with a cigarette and making it reappear from out of his ear.
Jago Nicholas Aldo Eliot was born on March 24 1966; Jago is the Cornish word for king. His father Peregrine became the 10th Earl in 1988 on the death in Tangiers of his father (who was known as "The Tangerine Earl"), and from that time Jago bore the courtesy title of Lord Eliot.
The family have held estates at Port Eliot, near Saltash, for more than four centuries, complete with parkland designed by Repton and a 124-room Gothic castle, and until recently it owned one of the last Rembrandts remaining in private hands.
Eliot had an unconventional upbringing between the family estates in Cornwall, where his father ran hippy "Elephant Fayres", and a town house in Notting Hill, where his parents had an artistic and musical salon.
His mother, Peregrine's first wife, was the noted beauty Jacquetta Lampson, daughter of Sir Miles Lampson, later the first Baron Killearn, the ambassador to Egypt who oversaw the abdication of King Farouk.
The eldest of three sons, Eliot was the only one to be christened, his godfather being the poet Heathcote Williams. By the age of five, young Eliot was a regular with his mother at the Colony Room Club in Soho, whose owner, the famously irascible Muriel Belcher, took pity on him and gave him a set of toy soldiers to play with. He also went often to the ballet.
Eliot was sent to Millfield on account of his sporting and surfing prowess but his studies were interrupted when he had a trampolining accident at the age of 14 which required major surgery on a hip and leg.
While convalescing in hospital in Braintree, Essex, he taught himself magic tricks to entertain his fellow patients. He also became an accomplished wind musician, later performing in recordings with Stevie Winwood.
Eliot did not return to Millfield. Instead, after completing his education with private tutors in London, he took up bodyboarding. He became bodyboarding champion of Spain in 1987 and finished 17th in the World Championships in Hawaii in 1991.
Eliot kept up his sporting interests as a member of the St German's Quay Club, where he would row a 30-foot skiff down river to Plymouth, a distance of around ten nautical miles, often camping overnight, even in winter. "You haven't lived until you have broken the frost on your sleeping bag," he once said.
Moving to Brighton in the 1990s, he ran and organised shows for the avant-garde Zap Club. Audiences were treated to his own feats of escapology, during which he would emerge naked from a chained sleeping bag within three minutes.
Eliot returned to his native Cornwall in the late 1990s, involving himself in two major events at Port Eliot, marking the solar eclipse and the Millennium.
In 2003, he married Bianca Ciambrello, step-daughter of the Plymouth artist Robert Lenkiewicz, who had painted the murals in the Round Room at Port Eliot.
The couple were first "married" in the "Lost Vagueness" garden at the Glastonbury Festival before a more formal ceremony at Port Eliot. The alternative wedding is featured in Julian Temple's recently-released film Glastonbury.
Marriage suited Eliot, and he set about his digital and creative projects, either with the Arts Council or the Port Eliot Literary Festival, with beguiling enthusiasm.
It is a testimony to the high regard in which he was held that, when news broke of his death, all flags in Tideford and St Germans were flown at half mast.
Shortly before his death, Eliot had been awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Technology by Hewlett-Packard and was exploring invisible sculpture and 3D soundscapes.
His masters degree was a source of great pride to his parents, both of whom he predeceases. He is survived by his wife, Bianca, and their three children.
Their son, Albert, succeeds to the courtesy title.
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