Sir Culling Eardley Eardley, 3rd Baronet was a British Christian campaigner for religious freedom and for the Protestant cause, one of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance.
An instinctive campaigner with an interest in reform of the poor laws, Eardley was briefly LiberalMember of Parliament for Pontefract from 1830 to 1831. Though he stood again, unsuccessfully, in the 1837 general election, his principal driver was his religious faith. He served as High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1858. Eardley was raised in the Church of England and despite his subsequent convictions, in particular his condemnation of State religion, remained a member. His beliefs were closely related to Congregationalism, though he never left the Anglican church. In 1839 he became chairman and treasurer of the Evangelical Voluntary Church Association, which campaigned for disestablishment. When the Association was dissolved in 1844, Eardley became chairman of the Anti-Maynooth Committee and Conference which campaigned, without success, against the Maynooth Grant. In 1845/ 6, with evangelists Ridley Haim Herschell and Edward Steane, he became, one of the founders, and first chairman, of the Evangelical Alliance. He attempted to return to politics to create a platform for his campaigning zeal, fighting Edinburgh in 1846, against Thomas Babington Macaulay who supported Maynooth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1848. However Eardley and the Evangelical Alliance had become interested in campaigning internationally for freedom of religion. In 1852 he campaigned on behalf of the Tuscan prisoners of conscienceFrancesco Madiai and Rosa Madiai. They had been imprisoned when they announced that they had become Protestants causing such international interest that Lord Palmerston had offered to pay their legal fees. He established an influential international network that included Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christian Charles Josias Bunsen and Frederick William IV of Prussia. He was treasurer of the London Missionary Society from 1844 to 1863, and of a fund for relief of Lebanese Christians after the. He worked hard to maintain broad friendly relationships with all creeds and strove to improve relationships between the Church of England and nonconformists. In 1844, he gave financial support to Ridley Haim Herschell's Trinity Chappel in Edgware Road, London. However, he was a particularly strong supporter of those who felt themselves excluded from the Church of England by the practices of the Anglo Catholics. From 1850 to 1853, he sponsored, and gave financial support, to the construction of an evangelical church at Furrough Cross, Babbacombe, defying Henry PhillpottsBishop of Exeter. He also built a church on his Erith estate. He was also a prominent supporter of Giacinto Achilli's, ultimately discredited, evangelical campaign in Britain. In July 1854 Eardley was a founder member and chairman of the Turkish Missions Aid Society, an evangelical charity set up to support missionary work among Armenian Christians in Turkey. The charity is known today as Embrace the Middle East.
Personal life
Mostly resident at Bedwell, he lived at Belvedere from 1848 to 1858 and also had a house at Frognel, Torquay in the 1850s. He suffered from poor health in later life and died, aged 58, at Bedwell from an adverse reaction to a smallpox vaccination.
