Edward succeeded his father, John Stuart Bligh, as Earl in 1896. In 1899, he married Jemima Adeline Beatrice Blackwood [d. 1964]. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Adeline Mary, in 1900. The Earl died later that year, being succeeded in his English barony of Clifden by his daughter (who later became a barrister-at-law), and in his Irish earldom by his brother, Ivo F.W. Bligh.