Charles Townshend

Charles Townshend 1725-67, English statesman; grandson of the 2d Viscount Townshend. Distrusted for his marked instability, he held relatively minor offices until the 1st earl of Chatham made him chancellor of the exchequer in 1766. Because of Chatham's illness Townshend became the leading figure in the ministry. He effectively sabotaged Chatham's plan to bring India under the sovereignty of the crown and undertook the ill-fated American import levies known as the Townshend Acts . He died shortly after the passage of the measures.

Townshend, Charles (1725–67). Townshend dashed across the political sky in the 1760s like a comet, blazed, and was gone. A grandson of ‘Turnip’ Townshend, he was returned to Parliament on the family interest at Great Yarmouth when he was 21 and held a variety of junior posts in the 1750s and early 1760s. In 1766 he became chancellor of the Exchequer in Chatham's (Pitt) ministry. The weakness of the ostensible first minister, Grafton, and the illness of Chatham, gave Townshend his head. In May 1767 he delighted and amazed the Commons with his ‘champagne’ speech, of which few reports survive. At the same time he pledged himself to raise a revenue in America by the imposition of a range of duties, a policy made all the more necessary by his failure to carry the land tax at 4 shillings, which left him short of budgetary income. Having lit the fuse for an American time-bomb, he died in September 1767 of a fever at the age of 42. Lecky called him ‘the spoiled child of the House of Commons’.

J. A. Cannon

Townshend, Charles (1725–67). Townshend dashed across the political sky in the 1760s like a comet, blazed, and was gone. A grandson of ‘Turnip’ Townshend, he was returned to Parliament for Great Yarmouth when he was 21 and held a variety of junior posts in the 1750s and early 1760s. In 1766 he became chancellor of the Exchequer in Chatham's (Pitt) ministry. In May 1767 he pledged himself to raise a revenue in America by the imposition of a range of duties. Having lit the fuse for an American time‐bomb, he died in September 1767 at the age of 42.