was called to the bar by the society of Lincoln's Inn. He first attached himself to the northern circuit, and afterwards practised at the Cheshire and Manchester assizes. Later he obtained a large practice on the North Wales circuit. In 1833 he was elected recorder of Macclesfield. In March 1850 he was appointed a queen's counsel, and in the same year became a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. He survived these preferments only a few weeks, dying without issue on 8 May at Burntwood Lodge, Wandsworth Common, the house of his elder brother, Richard Lateward Townsend, vicar of All Saints', Wandsworth, Surrey. He was buried in the vaults of Lincoln's Inn. In 1834 he married Frances, second daughter of Richard Wood of Macclesfield, who survived him.
As an author Townsend was unequal. His works embody great historical and legal knowledge, but their value is impaired by a want of proportion. While the ordinary reader is fatigued by detail, the student often finds necessary information lacking. He was the author of: 1. ‘The Pæan of Orford, a poem,’ London, 1826, 8vo. 2. ‘The History and Memoirs of the House of Commons,’ London, 1843–4. 3. ‘The Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges of the Last and of the Present Century,’ London, 1846, 8vo. 4. ‘Modern State Trials revised and illustrated,’ London, 1850, 8vo. He also contributed poems to Fisher's ‘Imperial Magazine’ as early as 1820.
[Gent. Mag. 1850, ii. 218; Blackwood's Mag. 1850, ii. 373; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Chester Courant, 15 May 1850.]
TOWNSHEND. [See also Townsend.]
TOWNSHEND, CHARLES, second Viscount Townshend (1674–1738), statesman, eldest son of Horatio, first viscount Townshend [q. v.], of Rainham, Norfolk, by his second wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Joseph Ashe, bart., of Twickenham, born in 1674. Both Charles II and the Duke of York were his godfathers, and he was bred in the strictest tory principles. He succeeded to the peerage in December 1687. With Sir Robert Walpole, his junior by two years, he was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge.
Though he took no degree, he left the university with a reputation for learning, which he improved by a foreign tour with Dr. William Sherard [q. v.] (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iii. 652 n.) He took his seat in the House of Lords on 3 Dec. 1697 (Lords' Journals, xvi. 174). He early seceded to the whigs, and on the impeachment of the ministers implicated in the negotiation of the partition treaty he signed the protest deprecating their premature censure by the king, which was entered on the journal of the House of Lords on 16 April 1701 [see Somers, John, Lord Somers].
In the early years of the reign of Queen Anne Townshend was one of the junto who maintained the cause of religious liberty in the struggle against the occasional conformity bill, the rights of the electorate in the conflict between the two Houses of Parliament on the Aylesbury election case, defeated (1706) the factious proposal of the Jacobites to invite the Princess Sophia to England, and carried the Regency Act. He took an active part in arranging the terms of alliance between the junto and Godolphin in 1705, was one of the negotiators of the treaty of union with Scotland in 1706, and was sworn of the privy council on 20 Nov. 1707. He was a member of the committee chosen on 9 Feb. 1707–8 to investigate the charges against William Gregg (Howell, State Trials, xiv. 1374). On 18 Aug. following he was sworn of the privy council on its reconstitution under the Act of Union, and on 14 Nov. the same year he was appointed captain of the yeomen of the guard. Accredited ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the States-General on 2 May 1709, he arrived at The Hague with Marlborough on 18 May (N.S.) (London Gazette; Tatler, No. 18). He was one of the signatories of the preliminaries to the abortive treaty with France, on the negotiation of which the greater part of the summer was spent. On the rejection of its mercilessly hard terms by Louis XIV, Townshend concluded with the States-General (29 Oct. N.S.) a separate treaty by which the Hanoverian succession was guaranteed (Egerton MS. 892). Marlborough, however, declined to sign it, because its terms, aggrandising Holland at the expense of Austria, were calculated to sow division among the allies, and it was only after considerable delay that it was ratified.
Leaving the conferences at Gertruydenberg to the management of the Dutch and French plenipotentiaries, Townshend occupied himself during the spring and summer of 1710 in the negotiation of the conventions of 31 March (N.S.) and 4 Aug. (N.S.), by which, to avert the peril occasioned by the retreat of the Swedish army under Crassau from Poland into Pomerania, the allies guaranteed the peace not only of the empire but of Poland and the duchies of Schleswig and Jutland (Egerton MSS. 893–894). On the change of administration he was recalled (27 Feb. 1710–11) (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. iv. 79), and dismissed
