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.
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.