Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/324

 He lived in early life, and also during his last three years, at Bedwell Park, near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, but from 1848 to 1858 at Belvedere, in the mansion built by his great-grandfather, Sampson Gideon [q. v.], which he inherited on the death of his cousin, Lord Saye and Sele, together with its gallery of pictures by the old masters, subsequently removed to Bedwell Park. He passed several years on the continent, and was well known to many of the leading men in politics and religion, such as Bunsen, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Tholuck, Adolphe Monod, and Merle d'Aubigné. He was a man of very wide sympathies, of a liberal and conciliatory disposition, and of unbounded hopefulness. He died 21 May 1863, leaving one son, Sir Eardley Gideon Culling Eardley, bart., who died in 1875 without issue, and two daughters, Frances Selena, married in 1865 to R. Hanbury, M.P., who died in 1867, and Isabella Maria, married to the Hon. and Rev. Canon W. H. Fremantle.

 EARDWULF or EARDULF (d. 810), king of Northumbria, was son of Eardulf, an ealdorman of Northumbria of royal blood. For an offence committed against Ethelred, king of Northumbria, he is said to have been executed before Ripon Minster, but was miraculously restored to life after being left for dead. A period of exile followed, and on the death of King Ethelred in 796, Eardwulf was recalled to fill his place on the throne. He was consecrated by Archbishop Eanbald I at York Minster on 25 June. Alcuin sent him a letter on his accession, urging him to be a God-fearing king. In 797 Alcuin wrote that Eardwulf would lose his throne because he had put away his wife and taken a concubine. In 798 the party who had placed Eardwulf in power revolted against him. The rebels under Alric, son of Eadbert and Wada the duke, were defeated near Whalley, Lancashire. Eardwulf followed up his victory by executing in 799 Moll, a duke, probably a son of the former king, Ethelred, and in 800 Alchmund, son of Alcred, the legitimate heir to the Northumbrian throne. In 801 Eardwulf threatened war with Cenwulf, king of Mercia, whom he charged with harbouring conspirators against himself, but peace was satisfactorily arranged without bloodshed. Archbishop Eanbald II was blamed by Alcuin for maintaining an armed retinue with which he attacked at times Eardwulf's many enemies. In 808 Eardwulf was driven from Northumbria by a claimant to the throne named Alfwold. He visited the courts of Charles the Great and Pope Leo III, and both strongly sympathised with him. Through the interposition of Charles the Great Eardwulf was restored to his kingdom in 809. He died in 810, and was succeeded by his son Eanred. Some of his coins are extant.

 EARLE, ERASMUS (1590–1667), serjeant-at-law, only son of Thomas Earle of Sall, Norfolk, was born at Sall in 1590 and educated at Norwich grammar school. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 7 April 1612, and subsequently called to the bar there. Sir Julius Caesar [q. v.] appointed him steward of his manors of East Bradenham and Huntingfield Hall in 1626. He was a bencher of his inn between 1635 and 1641 inclusive, and was reader there in the autumn of 1639. In 1644 he was appointed with Thurloe secretary to the English (as distinguished from the Scotch) commissioners for the treaty of Uxbridge. On 4 Jan. 1646–7 he was returned to parliament for the city of Norwich. On 12 Oct. 1648 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. The same year he was appointed steward, and the following year recorder of the city of Norwich. The latter office he held until 1653. The only public act of importance which marked his tenure of this office was the trial (for which he received a special commission) of some rioters who had done much mischief in the streets of Norwich by way of showing their disgust at the suspension of the mayor by the parliament and their sympathy with the royalist cause. On Christmas day 1648 Earle passed sentence of death on several of the ringleaders. Oliver Cromwell, on assuming the protectorate (16 Dec. 1653), appointed Earle one of the counsel to the state, an office which he also held under Richard Cromwell, but he does not figure in any of the state trials of the period. On the Restoration he was again called to the degree of serjeant-at-law (22 June 1660) (Siderfin's Reports, 3). Though his name does not appear much in the reports, he amassed by his practice a considerable fortune, and having purchased the manor of Heydon, Norfolk, founded the county family of Earle of Heydon Hall. He died on 7 Sept. 1667, and was buried in the parish church of Heydon. By his wife, Frances, daughter of James Fountaine of Sall, Norfolk, he had four sons and two daughters. A collection of his papers is in the possession of the Misses Boycott at Hereford, and they are described