Background
Charles Townshend was born on 18 April 1674. He was the son of Horatio, the first Viscount Townshend, from whom he inherited the peerage in 1687.
Charles Townshend was born on 18 April 1674. He was the son of Horatio, the first Viscount Townshend, from whom he inherited the peerage in 1687.
He was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, and subsequently completed his education by traveling abroad.
Townshend helped negotiate the Treaty of Union with Scotland in 1706 and was appointed a privy councillor in 1707. He was ambassador plenipotentiary to the Netherlands in 1709.
He was reinstated on the accession of King George I and was appointed secretary of state for the Northern Department (the post of foreign secretary, after 1782). Townshend used his connections at court to secure the post of paymaster general for Sir Robert Walpole.
Out of favor with the king’s favorites, Townshend was relegated to the post of lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1717; but he lost this post also, on suspicion of not being wholeheartedly in support of the government. He regained office in 1720 as president of the Privy Council in the administration of Stanhope; and after Stanhope’s death the following year, he again became secretary of the Northern Department.
He resigned in 1730 and thereafter devoted himself to agriculture at Rainham, Norfolk, where he was popularly dubbed “Turnip Townshend,” due to his practice of feeding his cattle turnips through the winter months. He also became known for his innovations in the method of field rotation. He died in 1738.
In 1710 he negotiated a treaty with the Dutch States General (Parliament) that guaranteed the Hanoverian succession to the English crown, as well as a number of other conventions guaranteeing the security of the Empire. With a change in government in 1711, he was recalled and voted an enemy of the country for having exceeded his instructions in negotiating the barrier treaty (against the return of James Stuart) and for having subsequently aided agitation for the repeal of the union between England and Scotland.
Townshend was involved in the proceedings against the negotiators of the Treaty of Utrecht, and he moved harshly and swiftly to suppress the 1715 Jacobite uprising against English rule. He cooperated with (James) Stanhope, first Earl of Stanhope, in foreign policy, making a definite barrier treaty and an alliance with the Austrian emperor in 1716, but lost his post after he was accused by Charles Spencer, the earl of Sunderland, of obstructing the French alliance and of plotting to replace King George I with his son, the Prince of Wales.
He played a wise and patient role in the uncovering and prosecution of the Jacobite Atterbury plotters. He remained at the center of politics for the next decade, obtaining partial restitution for Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), who had lost some prestige in Parliament and with King George I because of his negotiations on the Spanish succession, and thwarting John Carteret’s political schemes in alliance with the Duchess of Kendal, a mistress of King George I, in 1723.
In foreign affairs, he was dissatisfied with Austria, and negotiated the Treaty of Hanover with Russia and France in 1725. He went further, and forced the Austrian emperor to end his alliance with Spain in 1727. Having been misled by a spurious version of the Austro-Spanish treaty, he also negotiated a subsidiary treaty with the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. Townshend brought the Hanoverian League to the side of Spain and agreed to the Treaty of Seville in 1729, which paved the way for an alliance between France and Spain, thus jeopardizing the peace of Europe by further reducing Austria’s influence. When the king of Prussia sided with the Austrian emperor, Townshend proposed war, but he was overruled by Walpole and Queen Caroline.
Though born and raised a Tory, he later joined the Whig junta and supported religious liberty against the Occasional Conformity Bill, which imposed conformity to the view of the Church of England.
In 1713 he married sister of Sir Robert Walpole.
