Liverpool, Charles Jenkinson, 1st earl of

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Liverpool, Charles Jenkinson, 1st earl of (1729–1808). Tory politician. Jenkinson was a ‘man of business’, serving Lord Bute as private secretary and under-secretary of state, 1761–2, and holding similar second-rank offices through to 1782. He was ‘a born bureaucrat, of restricted sympathies … rigid in his ideas and authoritarian in his outlook’, according to the History of Parliament. During Lord North's administration and particularly throughout the American War of Independence he was believed to be influential ‘behind the scenes’ and the secret agent of George III in the ministry. He was a close adviser of Lord North and supplied the king with information about the state of the government. He left office on the fall of North but returned under Pitt in 1784, becoming president of the Board of Trade 1786–1804 and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster 1786–1803. He was made Lord Hawkesbury in 1791 and promoted earl of Liverpool in 1796.

E. A. Smith