He was born in Cottingham, the eldest son of Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Nunburnholme (1833–1907), who with his brother Arthur were joint managers of the firm founded by their father Thomas.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Mentioned in dispatches, and received the Queen's South Africa Medal with four clasps.

[5][12] He did not transfer with the battalion when the Volunteers were subsumed into the Territorial Force (TF) in 1908 (by then he was in Parliament first as an MP, then as a peer), but as Lord-Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire (appointed 24 November 1908),[14] Nunburnholme became ex officio President of the York (East Riding) Territorial Force Association, which was responsible for administering all the TF units in the county.

[17] On 29 August Nunburnholme had a meeting with Kitchener at the War Office (WO), at which he and the East Riding Territorial Force Association (ERTFA) were authorised to raise a local battalion in Hull.

Some came en masse, such as groups from Reckitt and Sons' chemical works and the North Eastern Railway Dock Superintendents' office.

The Hon Stanley Jackson, the former England cricket captain, was the chief speaker at a public meeting held at the Park Street Artillery Barracks on 12 September to raise recruits for this battalion, which reached full strength in October, including many men from Hull Docks.

[32] On Christmas Eve 1914 every officer and man in the Hull Pals and Heavy Artillery received a Christmas Card from Lord Nunburnholme consisting of a picture of St George slaying the dragon with the badge of the East Yorkshire Regiment and coloured bands representing the distinctive armbands worn by the different battalions and batteries before they received their uniforms.

[33] In 1916, Lord and Lady Nunburnholme appealed for donations to provide Chiristmas comforts for all the Hull and East Riding men serving overseas.

[34] The Wilson family sold the shipping line to Sir John Ellerman in 1916, possibly as a result of the heavy losses it had suffered by enemy action during the early years of the war.

[35] When the 4th Bn East Yorkshires (TF) landed in France in April 1915, Nunburnholme published a new appeal for volunteers in the Hull Daily Mail.

[39] Lord Nunburnholme was awarded a civil Companionship of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1918 New Year Honours for his war work.

Its Commanding Officer, Major Basil Floyd, set out to get back as many veterans of the 1st Hull Bty as he could from other RGA units where they had been posted from convalescence hospitals.

From 17 November to the end of January 1919, Lady Nunburnholme and her Peel House VAD workers welcomed home the shiploads of returning British PoWs at Riverside Quay, Hull.

When he died in 1907, Charles Jr. inherited the Barony, after only a year in the House of Commons, forcing a by-election at which his younger brother Guy Wilson was elected in his place.