1783, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford, whence he matriculated on 8 June 1787, but took no degree. In 1791 he entered the diplomatic service, and on 22 Nov. 1794 was returned to parliament for Anglesey, which he continued nominally to represent until 1807. On the abandonment by Prussia of the defence of Holland, July 1794, he was despatched to Berlin as envoy extraordinary to recall King Frederick William to a sense of his obligations. His conduct of this delicate mission is commended by Lord Malmesbury (Diaries, iii. 130, 148, 184, 199). Obtaining no satisfactory assurances from the king, he withdrew to Pyrmont about Christmas, and, on the passage of the Waal by the French, returned to England by way of Brunswick and Holland. Some letters from him to the Countess of Lichtenau, written during this perilous journey, in which, as a last resource, he implores her to use her influence with the king on behalf of the Dutch, are printed in ‘Apologie der Gräfin von Lichtenau,’ 2te Abth., 1808, pp. 241–51. Paget was accredited successively envoy extraordinary to the elector palatine and minister to the diet of Ratisbon, 22 May 1798, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the court of Naples, 17 Jan. 1800, and to that of Vienna, 21 Aug. 1801. His despatches from Vienna, July 1802, after Bonaparte's reorganisation of the smaller German states, contained a remarkable prediction of the eventual acquisition by Prussia of the hegemony of Germany. In 1805 he contributed materially to the formation of the third coalition against France, and reported its total discomfiture by the battle of Austerlitz, 2 Dec. 1805. His gloomy despatch on the day after the battle is said to have contributed to the death of Pitt (Yonge, Life of the Second Earl of Liverpool, i. 78, 205). Recalled in February 1806, he was accredited, 15 May 1807, ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. On the signature of the peace of Tilsit on 7 July following, he apprised the Sultan of the secret article by which the provisions in favour of Turkey were rendered nugatory, and exhausted the resources of suasion and menace, even bringing the British fleet into the Dardanelles, in the endeavour to detach the Porte from the French alliance. In this, however, he failed. In May 1809 he was recalled, and retired on a pension of 2,000l.
Paget was sworn of the privy council on 4 Jan. 1804, and nominated on 21 May following K.B. His installation in the order took place on 1 June 1812, and on 2 Jan. 1815 he was made G.C.B. He died at his house in Grosvenor Street on 26 July 1840, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery on 1 Aug.
Paget married at Heckfield, Hampshire, on 16 Feb. 1809, Lady Augusta Jane Vane, second daughter of John, tenth earl of Westmorland, within two days of her divorce from John, second baron Boringdon, afterwards earl of Morley. By her he had several children who survived him.
[Barker and Stenning's Westminster School Reg.; Welch's Alumni Westmon. p. 416; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Mémoires d'un Homme d'État, Paris, 1831, iii. 41, 124, ix. 440; Ann. Reg. 1809, App. to Chron. p. 169; Gent. Mag. 1805 p. 1165, 1809 p. 181, 1815 p. 63, 1840 p. 657; Biogr. Nouv. des Contemp., Paris, 1824, xv. 314; Sir Gilbert Elliot's Life and Letters, iii. 135; Haydn's Dignities, ed. Ockerby; Nicolas's British Knighthood, Order of the Bath, Chron. List.]
PAGET, CHARLES (d. 1612), catholic exile and conspirator, fourth son of William, first baron Paget [q. v.], and Anne, daughter and heiress of Henry Preston, esq., was matriculated as a fellow-commoner of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, on 27 May 1559. His elder brother Thomas, third baron Paget [q. v.], is separately noticed. He was a member of Trinity Hall when Queen Elizabeth visited the university in August 1564, but he does not appear to have taken a degree (Cooper, Athenæ Cantabr. iii. 53). Under his father's will he became entitled to the manor of Weston-Aston and other lands in Derbyshire. He was a zealous Roman catholic, and quitted England, in discontent with its ecclesiastical constitution, about 1572, and fixed his residence in Paris. There he became secretary to James Beaton [q. v.], archbishop of Glasgow, who was Queen Mary Stuart's ambassador at the French court, and he was soon joined in the office with Thomas Morgan (1543–1606?) [q. v.] Morgan and Paget were in constant correspondence with Claude de la Boisseliere Nau [q. v.] and Gilbert Curle, the two secretaries who lived with the queen in England, and ‘they four governed from thenceforth all the queen's affairs at their pleasure.’ Paget and Morgan secretly opposed Archbishop Beaton, Mary's ambassador, and wrung from him the administration of the queen's dowry in France, which was about thirty million crowns a year. Joining themselves afterwards with Dr. Owen Lewis [q. v.] in Rome, and falling out with Dr. Allen and Father Parsons, they were the cause of much division among the catholics (Parsons, Story of Domesticall Difficulties, Stonyhurst MS. No. 413, quoted in Records of the English Catholics, ii. 320 n.) Parsons states that
