Charles Yorke PC (30 December 172220 January 1770) was a British lawyer and politician who briefly served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. His father was also Lord Chancellor, and he began his career as a Member of Parliament. He served successively as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for several governments, during which he was best known for writing what became the Quebec Act. He was appointed Lord Chancellor over his objections, but he committed suicide only three days after taking the post.
Life
The second son of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, he was born in London, and was educated at Newcome's School in Hackney and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His literary abilities were shown at an early age by his collaboration with his brother Philip in the Athenian Letters. In 1745 he published an able treatise on the law of forfeiture for high treason, in defence of the severe sentences his father had given to the Scottish Jacobite peers following the Battle of Culloden. In the following year he was called to the bar.
His father being at this time Lord Chancellor, Yorke obtained a sinecure appointment in the Court of Chancery in 1747, and entered Parliament as member for Reigate, a seat which he afterwards exchanged for that for the University of Cambridge. He quickly made his mark in the House of Commons, one of his earliest speeches being in favour of his father's reform of the marriage law
In 1751, he became counsel to the East India Company, and in 1756 he was appointed Solicitor-General, a place which he retained in the administration of the elder Pitt, of whose foreign policy he was a powerful defender. On this account neither was his death a suicide, nor did he refuse to seal the patent for his peerage. Though remaining unsealed, the patent expired with its peer-designate.
Family
thumb|Tyttenhanger House in 1840
Charles Yorke was twice-married: She corresponded with William Gilpin, who instructed her and her three children in their art, and she also rendered some of Gilpin's works, including a view of Netley Abbey, as etchings.
She died in 1820. There is a monument to her at St Andrew's Parish Church, Wimpole, Cambridgeshire.
References
Bibliography
- Cannon, J. (1964) "Yorke, Charles", in L.Namier and J.Brooke (eds.) [1964](1985) The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754–1790, vol.3 new ed., London:Secker & Warburg,
- — (2004) "Yorke, Charles (1722–1770)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 2 March 2008 .