Sir Henry Miers Elliot KCB was an English civil servant and historian who worked with the East India Company in India foryears. He is most known for The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians based on his works, published posthumously in eight volumes, between 18671877 in London.
Elliot was the third son, one of the fifteen children, of John Elliot, of Pimlico Lodge, Westminster, who was colonel commandant of the Westminster volunteers, by a daughter of John Coakley Lettsom, M.D. Born in 1808 he was educated from the age of ten at Winchester College, and destined for New College, Oxford but the demand of the East India Company for civilians beyond the numbers regularly trained at Haileybury tempted him to try for an appointment in their service, and he was the first of the competition wallahs to pass an open examination for an immediate post in India. His oriental languages as well as his classics and mathematics proved so good that he was even placed by himself in an honorary class .
Source: Wikipedia