TOWNSHEND, Lord Charles Vere Ferrers Compton (1785-1853), of 20 Cavendish Square, Westminster; Raynham Hall, near Fakenham, Norfolk

Hailing from a Foxite family, Lord Charles was the heir presumptive to his disgraced elder, childless brother George, 3rd marquess Townshend, who had been disinherited by his father following numerous reputed homosexual scandals before succeeding to the marquessate in 1811, after which he lived abroad.1K.D. Reynolds, ‘Townshend, George Ferrars, 3rd marquess Townshend (1778-1855)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Although his father’s will bequeathed Raynham Hall and the family’s Norfolk estate, worth £15,000 per annum, to Lord Charles rather than his brother, due to legal complications he only inherited it in 1832.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 405; ibid., 1820-1832, vii. 478-80 (at 478). Townshend’s electoral position in Tamworth, where he had sat as a Whig since 1812 with one brief break, had been weakened by the forced sale of the family’s local estates including the Castle in the 1810s, and was further undermined by the extension of the constituency boundaries in 1832.3Ibid.; N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel (1972), 102. Nevertheless, he was returned unopposed alongside Sir Robert Peel at the 1832 general election, promising general backing for the Grey ministry and offering qualified support for the abolition of the slavery, ‘so far as it could be done while the interest of the slave holder was not injured’.4This, however, was Peel’s summarising of his position, as Townshend’s hustings speech was not well-reported in the newspapers, which gave far more space to Sir Robert’s oration: Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832.

Townshend is not known to have spoken or served on any committees in his last spell in Parliament, but he remained a steady attender. Although he was described by Charles Dod as being ‘of Whig principles’, Townshend was not an uncritical admirer of Grey’s administration.5Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 168. In particular, he favoured a number of different remedies that were proposed to relieve agricultural distress, not all of which were to the taste of the government. In 1833 he sided with critics of the monetary system such as Matthias Attwood, backed the repeal of house and window tax and Sir William Ingilby’s plan to reduce the malt duty, 26 Apr. 1833. He reluctantly voted to continue the malt duty after Lord Althorp, Whig leader of the Commons and chancellor of the exchequer, threatened to replace it with a property tax, 30 Apr. 1833. However, the following year, Townshend once again endorsed Ingilby’s proposal, 27 Feb. 1834, and also supported Lord Chandos’s motion for agricultural relief, 21 Feb. 1834, while resisting a low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834. He also favoured scrutinising the pension list, sympathised with Polish demands for independence and opposed political reforms such as the secret ballot.

Townshend retired at the 1835 general election.6Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 Jan. 1835. It was noted privately that he had ‘not yet paid his bills for the last election & I think never will’.7Charles Harding to Sir Robert Peel, 13 Dec. 1834, Add. 40405, f. 129. Although Townshend had been powerless to resist the return of two Conservatives at the election, he had bought back Tamworth Castle and some of the old estate in the early 1830s, which later facilitated the partial and temporary revival of the Townshend family’s electoral interest in the constituency.8HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 480. Townshend did not seek a return to Parliament, however, probably because his political sympathies had changed. Speaking at the annual meeting of the West Norfolk Conservative Association in November 1836, he favourably contrasted his past support for Lord Althorp and George Tierney with the ‘jobs as had been brought forward by the Melbourne Administration’. Although this was the first time he had attended a Conservative meeting, he promised to do his utmost to secure the return of two members of that party for the division at the next election.9The Standard, 17 Nov. 1836; Bury and Norwich Post, 23 Nov. 1836. In 1840 he allowed Tamworth Castle to be used for the inaugural meeting of the local Operative Conservative Association.10The Standard, 14 Feb. 1840.

In the early 1840s Townshend sought to protect his position as heir presumptive to the marquessate by taking action against the illegitimate offspring of his estranged sister-in-law, marchioness Townshend, who had remarried without divorcing the 3rd marquess. A son by her later, bigamous marriage styled himself as Lord John Townshend and then the earl of Leicester, one of the Townshend family’s courtesy titles, by which name he was known when he was elected as Conservative MP for Bodmin in 1841. In response Lord Charles secured a private Act, passed in 1843, declaring that the marchioness’s children had no claim to the Townshend name, titles or estates. The ‘earl of Leicester’ subsequently changed his name to John Dunn-Gardner.11HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 480; Reynolds, ‘Townshend, George Ferrars’; Gent. Mag. (1853), ii. 631; Lord C. Townshend, letter, Bury and Norwich Post, 29 Dec. 1841. Although he supported the corn laws, ill-health prevented Townshend from playing an active part in the West Norfolk Agricultural Protection Society.12Morning Post, 8 Jan. 1846; Bury and Norwich Post, 30 Jan. 1850. Thereafter he retired to his Raynham estates, before dying childless in 1853, predeceasing his brother. His personal effects, sworn under £25,000 were left to his widow, and the family estates passed to his cousin John Townshend (1798-1863), who was Liberal MP for Tamworth from 1847 until succeeding as 4th marquess Townshend in 1855.13IR 26/2011/176; HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 480.