couragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at its meeting on 28 Feb. 1755, he supported the society during the rest of his life. Having inherited from his father, who was the first of his family to settle there, the estate of Leybourne Grange, near Town Malling, in Kent, Whitworth resided there until 1776, when, with his eldest son's consent, he obtained a private act of parliament which enabled him to sell Leybourne, and he thereupon removed to Stanmore. At the time of his death he was also seated at Blachford, Somerset. He died at Bath on 22 Aug. 1778.
Whitworth married, on 1 June 1749, Martha, eldest daughter of Richard Shelley, who was deputy ranger of St. James's and Hyde Park, and chairman of the board of stamps at his death on 28 Oct. 1755. Whitworth left four daughters and three sons, of whom Charles (1752–1825) [q. v.], the eldest son, became Earl Whitworth. Sir Francis, the second son, was a lieutenant-colonel in the royal artillery, and died on 26 Jan. 1805, aged 48; and Richard, who was a captain in the royal navy, was lost at sea.
Whitworth compiled several works of reference, which, though useful in their day, have long been superseded. They included: 1. ‘Succession of Parliaments from the Restoration to 1761,’ London, 1764, 12mo. 2. ‘A Collection of the Supplies and Ways and Means from the Revolution to the Present Time,’ London, 1764, 12mo; 2nd edit. 1765. 3. ‘A List of the Nobility and Judges,’ London, 1765, 8vo. To the 1766 edition of David Lloyd's ‘State Worthies’ Whitworth contributed the ‘Characters of the Kings and Queens of England.’ In 1771 appeared ‘The Political and Commercial Works of Charles D'Avenant, collected and revised by Sir C. W.;’ and in 1778, the third edition of Timothy Cunningham's ‘History of the Customs, Aids, Subsidies, &c., of England, with several Improvements suggested by Sir C. W.’
[Burke's Extinct Peerage; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Gent. Mag.]
WHITWORTH, CHARLES, Earl Whitworth (1752–1825), son and heir of Sir Charles Whitworth (a nephew of Charles Whitworth, baron Whitworth of Galway [q. v.]), was baptised at Leybourne on 29 May 1752. He was educated at Tunbridge school, his preceptors there including James Cawthorn [q. v.] and ‘Mr. Towers’ (Tunbridge School Register, 1886, p. 13). He entered the first regiment of footguards in April 1772 as ensign, became captain in May 1781, and was eventually on 8 April 1783 appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 104th regiment. His transference from military life to diplomacy is not easy to explain, but in the account given by Wraxall, disfigured though it is by malicious or purely fanciful embroidery, there is perhaps a nucleus of truth. Whitworth was ‘highly favoured by nature, and his address exceeded even his figure. At every period of his life queens, duchesses, and countesses have showered on him their regard. The Duke of Dorset, recently sent ambassador to France (1783), being an intimate friend of Mr. Whitworth, made him known to the queen (Marie-Antoinette), who not only distinguished him by flattering marks of her attention, but interested herself in promoting his fortune, which then stood greatly in need of such patronage.’ The good offices of the queen and Dorset, according to this authority, procured for Whitworth in June 1785 his appointment as envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary to Poland, of which country the unfortunate Stanislaus Poniatowski was still the nominal monarch. He was at Warsaw during the troublous period immediately preceding the second partition. Recalled early in that year, he was in the following August nominated envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg, a post which he held for nearly twelve years.
Whitworth was well received by Catherine II, who was then at war with Turkey, but the harmony between the two countries was disturbed during the winter of 1790–1 by Pitt's subscription to the view of the Prussian government that the three allies—England, Prussia, and Holland—could not with impunity allow the balance of power in Eastern Europe to be disturbed. Pitt hoped by a menace of sending a British fleet to the Baltic to constrain Russia to make restitution of its chief conquest, Oczakow and the adjoining territory as far as the Dniester, and thus to realise his idea of confining the ambition of Russia in the south-east as well as that of France in the north-west portion of Europe. The Russian government replied by an uncompromising refusal to listen to the proposal of restitution. War began to be talked of, and Whitworth sent in a memorandum in which he dwelt upon the strength of the czarina's determination and the great display of vigour that would be necessary to overcome it. In the spring of 1791 he wrote of a French adventurer, named St. Ginier, who had appeared at St. Petersburg with a plan for invading Bengal by way of Cashmere, and in July he communicated to Grenville a
