Egerton, one of the most eminent antiquaries and palaeontologists of his time, was the eldest of the seven sons and a daughter born to the Rev. Philip Egerton, a leading freemason, who in 1825 succeeded his brother Sir John Grey Egerton† to the Egerton baronetcy and 9,000-acre Oulton Park estate, which had been denuded of timber to meet electioneering costs in Chester.Oxford DNB." style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote His coming of age was celebrated at Oulton and at Chester’s Albion hotel, the venue of his late uncle’s Egerton or ‘Independent’ party, for whom his kinsman General Charles Egerton had almost recaptured one of the borough seats from the Grosvenors in 1826 and seemed set to do so at the next opportunity.
Egerton married a daughter of the leading Cheshire Tory George John Legh in March 1832 and, backed by the Cheshire Conservatives and his Carlton Club colleagues, he stood for the new Cheshire South constituency in December 1832, but was narrowly defeated by two Liberals.The Times, 3, 6, 14, 21 Jan. 1835. " style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote When he died of a heart attack brought on by bronchitis at his London home in Albemarle Street in April 1881, he was the antiquary to the Royal Academy, a trustee of the British Museum and of the Royal College of Surgeons, a member of the senate of the University of London, and had seats on the councils of the Royal Society and the Geological Society, which awarded him the Woollaston medal in 1873 for his services to palaeontology. He was the first recipient in 1879 of the Kingsley Medal, awarded by the Chester Society of Natural Sciences, of which he was vice-president.Oxford DNB; Ann. Reg. (1881), Chron. p. 115." style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote He was succeeded in the baronetcy and entailed estates by his eldest son Philip le Belward Grey Egerton (1833-91), and provided for his widow (d. 1882), two daughters and younger son Rowland, to whom he left his unentailed estates and fossils at his museum in Oulton.