Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mansel, Charles Grenville

595940Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 36 — Mansel, Charles Grenville1893George Clement Boase

MANSEL, CHARLES GRENVILLE (1806–1886), Indian official, born in 1806, was appointed a writer in the East India Company's service on 30 April 1826. He was made assistant to the secretary of the western board of revenue in Bengal on 19 Jan. 1827; registrar and assistant to the magistrate of Agra and officiating collector to the government of customs at Agra on 10 July 1828; acting magistrate of Agra, 1830; joint magistrate and deputy collector of Agra, 15 Nov. 1831; acting magistrate and collector of Agra, 13 March 1832; secretary and superintendent of Agra College in 1834; magistrate and collector of Agra, 2 Nov. 1835; and temporary secretary to the lieutenant-governor in political, general, judicial, and revenue departments, 21 Feb. 1837. From December 1838 to April 1841 he acted as Sudder settlement officer in Agra, and in 1842 published a valuable ‘Report on the Settlement of the District of Agra.’ In 1841 he became deputy accountant-general in Calcutta, and in 1843 one of the civil auditors. From 1844 to 1849 he was on furlough, and on his return to India was appointed a member of the board of administration for the affairs of the Punjáb, under the presidency of Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence [q. v.] In November 1850 he was gazetted the resident at Nagpur, where he remained till 1855, when he retired upon the East India Company's annuity fund. He is chiefly remembered as the junior member of the board to which was entrusted the administration and reorganisation of the Punjáb after its annexation. He died at 7 Mills Terrace, West Brighton, on 19 Nov. 1886.

[Malleson's Recreations of an Indian Official, 1872, p. 41; Edwardes's Life of Sir H. Lawrence, 1872, ii. 136 et seq.; Kaye and Malleson's Indian Mutiny, 1889, i. 37, 55, 61, 126; Sir Richard Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India, 1882, pp. 55, 64; Dodwell and Miles's Bengal Civil Servants, 1839, pp. 312–13; East India Registers, 1826 et seq.; R. Boswell Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, 1885, i. 246, 318, 319; Times, 25 Nov. 1886, p. 6.]

G. C. B.