Between school and university he was placed as a rating (at his father's insistence) in the Royal Navy until a mutiny in 1797 led to him fleeing his ship, HMS Pomone.

[2] In 1807, he inherited the Pitchford Hall estate in Shropshire following the death of Adam Ottley (the last of his family's male line).

Charles Jenkinson, as he was then, was elected Member of Parliament for Sandwich in 1807, a seat he held until 1812,[5] and then sat for Bridgnorth from 1812 to 1818,[6] and for East Grinstead from 1818 to 1828.

In 1841 he was invested a member of the Privy Council[8] and appointed Lord Steward of the Household in the government of Sir Robert Peel,[9] a post he held until 1846.

In 1828, he inherited the Jenkinson baronetcy, the barony of Hawkesbury and the earldom of Liverpool at the death of his older half-brother, the former prime minister.