Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 – 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand's New Munster province, and Governor of Jamaica.

[2] After completing grammar school at Louth and Sedbergh, he moved to the colonial settlement of Sydney, Australia, rather than join the army or go to university.

He gained experience in the new land by boarding with and forming friendships with prominent gentlemen and became a flock owner when he bought 400 lambs a month before his 18th birthday.

[6] Eyre, together with his aboriginal companion Wylie, was the first European to traverse the coastline of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullarbor Plain by land in 1840–1841, on an almost 3,200-kilometre (2,000 mi) trip to Albany, Western Australia.

[12] As Governor of Jamaica, Eyre passed bills to provide punishment on the treadmill for certain offences, and flogging as the penalty for stealing food.

George William Gordon, a mixed-race member of the Assembly of Jamaica, criticised Eyre's draconian measures, warning that "If we are to be governed by such a Governor much longer, the people will have to fly to arms and become self-governing.

"[13] Baptist preacher and rebel leader Paul Bogle encouraged and led a rebellion, and occasioned the death of 18 militia or officials.

[14] Erroneously convinced that he was one of the leaders of the rebellion, Eyre authorised the execution of Gordon, who was tried for high treason by Lieutenant Herbert Brand in a court-martial.

[14] Eyre's influence on the white planters was so strong that he convinced the House of Assembly to pass constitutional reforms that brought the old form of government to an end and allowed Jamaica to become a Crown Colony, with an appointed, rather than an elected, legislature on the basis that stronger legislative control would ward off another act of rebellion.

That move ended the growing influence of the elected free people of colour Eyre distrusted, such as Gordon, Edward Jordon and Robert Osborn.

Barrister James Fitzjames Stephen travelled to Market Drayton but failed to convince the Justices to endorse his case against Eyre.

The magistrate at Bow Street Police Court declined to arrest him, due to the failure of the cases against the soldiers, whereupon the imagined prosecutors applied to the Queen's Bench for a writ of mandamus justified by the Criminal Jurisdiction Act 1802 and succeeded.

[17] Eyre was exonerated in the Queen's Bench, a writ of error was submitted to the Exchequer, whose judgment affirmed the one below, and an important precedent was thus set by Willes J.