Background
Townshend was born on 29 August 1725, the second son of Charles, third Viscount Townshend, by his wife Etheldreda (Audrey) Harrison.
Townshend was born on 29 August 1725, the second son of Charles, third Viscount Townshend, by his wife Etheldreda (Audrey) Harrison.
He was educated at Leyden, where his schoolmates were John Wilkes and William Dowdeswell, and then at Oxford University.
Townshend began his parliamentary career in 1727 when he became M.P. for Great Yarmouth. In Parliament, he developed an association with George Montagu Dunk, the second Earl of Halifax, who became president of the Board of Trade in 1748 and offered Townshend a post in his department. On the death of Prime Minister Henry Pelham in March 1754, Iown- shend was made a Lord of the Admiralty, and soon afterward, in April 1754, was elected M.P. for Saltash. However, his period in office was brief; he resigned in 1755, and later, in December of that year, publicly attacked the policy of the prime minister, now the Duke of Newcastle, of employing German mercenaries.
Townshend became treasurer of the chamber and a member of the Privy Council in the brief ministry (1756-1757) of William Cavendish, the fourth Duke of Devonshire, and remained in that post throughout the ministry of William Pitt, the Elder (1757-1761). In March 1761 he was appointed secretary at war under Pitt, a post that mainly involved the presentation of military and naval estimates to Parliament.
In the general election of March 1761, Townshend became M.P. for Harwich. He retained his post as secretary at war when Pitt resigned that October; but he himself resigned in 1762, when the third Earl of Bute was prime minister, largely because he expected Pitt to return to power. This did not occur, and Townshend therefore accepted the post of president of the Board of Trade in February 1763. When George Grenville replaced Bute as prime minister in April 1763, Townshend again resigned from the government, refusing the offer of the position of First Lord of the Admiralty. He became a staunch critic of the Grenville administration; but in May 1765, on the dismissal of Henry Fox from office, he became paymaster general, retaining the post through the succeeding ministry of the second Marquess of Rockingham. Townshend’s fortunes improved after Pitt agreed to form a second ministry in August 1766, and Townshend was appointed chancellor of the exchequer.
Pitt was ill at this stage and moved to the House of Lords as the first Earl of Chatham. This left Townshend as the effective leader of government in the House of Commons, which soon led to conflict between him and Chatham. This conflict was most obviously revealed in the fact that Townshend declared that the East India Company had a right to territorial revenue in India, whereas Chatham had declared his intent to deprive it of such rights.
However, Townshend did not live to see the consequences of his actions; he died on 4 September 1767, at the age of 42.The one abiding memory of him is that in order to raise a mere £40,000 he had begun the process that led to the American War of Independence.
On 15 August 1755 he married Caroline, the eldest daughter and coheir of John Campbell (the second Duke of Argyll), and the widow of Francis Scott, earl of Dalkeith.