Edward John Payne

Edward John Payne (22 July 1844 – 26 December 1904) was an English barrister and historian specializing in colonial history.

The elder son of Edward William Payne, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Payne was educated at High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and at Magdalen Hall and Charsley's Hall, Oxford, taking a second in Honour Moderations (Latin and Greek literature) in the Trinity Term of 1869 and a first class degree in Literae Humaniores in 1871. The next year he was elected a Fellow of University College, Oxford, and in 1874 was called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn. The same year, he published the first volume of his Select Works of Burke. He was appointed as Recorder of High Wycombe in 1883. As a barrister, he was a member of the chambers at 2, Stone Buildings.

Payne was a capable viola da gamba player. In 1880 he gave a musical lecture-recital, when he played pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel, Caix and Abel.

In 1899 Payne married Emma Leonora Helena Pertz, the elder daughter of Major Pertz of Holt, Norfolk, and of Koblenz, Prussia, and they set up home at Holywell Lodge, Wendover, Buckinghamshire. His wife was a niece of the German historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and of the Swedenborgian writer James John Garth Wilkinson.