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Authorised form of nameTownshend; Charles (1675 - 1738); 2nd Viscount Townshend
Dates1675 - 1738
Date of birth02 May 1675
Place of deathRaynham, Norfolk
Date of death21 June 1738
DatesAndPlacesBaptism:
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London (02 May 1675)
Burial:
East Raynham, Norfolk
ActivityEducation:
Eton College; King's College, Cambridge (matriculated 1691)
Career:
Travelled in Europe with his tutor William Sherard (FRS 1720) (1694); High Steward of Lynn and Norwich Cathedral (1701-death); Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk (1701-1713, 1714-1730); Commissioner for the Union of England and Scotland (1706); Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard (1707-1711); Privy Councillor (1707); Joint Plenipotentiary to conclude peace with France (1709); Joint Ambassador extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to The Hague (1709-1711); recalled and censured for having exceeded his instructions; one of the Lords Justice Regents of the Realm (1714); Secretary of State for the South (1714-1716); Secretary of State for the North (1720-1730); appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but declined to go there (1717); Lord President of the Council (1720-1721); Governor of the Charterhouse; retired from public life and devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture (1730)
Honours:
KG 1724
Membership categoryFellow
Date of election03/04/1706
RelationshipsSon of Horatio Townshend, 1st Viscount Townshend, and his second wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Joseph Ashe, Bart, of Twickenham, Middlesex, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Robert Wilson, Merchant, of London; succeeded his father (1687)
Married: 1) (03 July 1698) Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Pelham, 1st Baron Pelham of Laughton, and his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Jones of Ramsbury, Wiltshire (she died 1711); 2) (25 July 1713) Dorothy, daughter of Robert Walpole of Houghton, Norfolk, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Burwell of Rougham, Suffolk
SourceSources:
Bulloch's Roll; DNB; GEC; Venn
References:
Gentleman's Magazine 1738, p324 (obituary)
London Magazine 1738, p309 (obituary)
Historical Register Chronological Diary 1738, p24 (obituary)
CodeNA1542
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