General Charles FitzRoy, 1st Baron Southampton (25 June 1737 – 21 March 1797) was a British Army officer who served in the Seven Years' War and a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1759 to 1780.

In the following year he fought at the Battle of Minden as an aide de camp, where he was a part of the controversy surrounding Lord George Sackville's slow reaction to orders sent to him.

He was created Baron Southampton on 17 October 1780 for his support of Lord North's ministry and became Groom of the Stole to the Prince of Wales later in the year, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.

[1][5] With Ferdinand, FitzRoy was present at the Battle of Minden on 1 August, described by the historian Piers Mackesy as "an excited and breathless youth of twenty-two".

Sackville was unusually slow in understanding and responding to the order, and argued with FitzRoy over what he was meant to be doing before halting the cavalry and riding away to speak with Ferdinand.

[4] Like his brother Grafton, an established politician, FitzRoy was a Whig, part of a political faction that was often brought together more by kinship than by shared ideology.

Despite this FitzRoy still voted against the new prime minister, Lord Bute, on the peace preliminaries in December that were to end the Seven Years' War.

He spoke in Parliament against the 1765 Regency Bill in April of the year, and in May worked as an intermediary between Grafton and fellow Whig William Pitt in the organisation of Lord Rockingham's term as prime minister.

[1][4] With Rockingham coming into power, Grafton was made Secretary of State for the Northern Department and FitzRoy found new favour in his military career.

[16][17][18] He was also heavily involved in the troubles, and attempted solutions, surrounding the prince's very large debts, much of which came from the construction of Carlton House.

This was not a popular decision, and on 18 February Lord Carmarthen moved to protest against it, arguing that Germain's court martialling should disqualify him from becoming a peer.

In the subsequent debate Germain argued that his court martial had been politically motivated, but FitzRoy intervened to disagree, saying that it had not been "animated by a factious spirit".