Head, SIR EDMUND WALKER, Bart.

Head, SIR EDMUND WALKER, Bart., governor-general of Canada, was the son of the Rev. Sir John Head, and was born in 1805, near Maidstone, Kent. From Winchester he passed to Oriel College, Oxford, where he took a first in classics in 1827, and became a Fellow of Merton; in 1838 he succeeded his father, the seventh baronet. After serving as poor-law commissioner, he became in 1847 lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, and held this post until September 1854, when he succeeded the Earl of Elgin as governor-general of Canada. He retired in 1861, was made a civil-service commissioner in 1863, and privy-councillor in 1867. He wrote a Handbook of Spanish Painting, and other popular books on art, and published Ballads and other Poems, original and translated (1868). He died 28th January 1868.