Charles Yorke

Charles Yorke PC (30 December 1722 – 20 January 1770) was a British politician who briefly served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

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.

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.

[3] 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.

[4] 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.

He continued to hold this office when George Grenville became Prime Minister (April 1763), and advised the government on the question raised by John Wilkes's The North Briton.

Charles Yorke was twice married:[3] First, on 19 May 1755 to Katherine Blount Freeman, with one son: Second, on 30 December 1762 to Agneta Johnson, with children: His wife was heiress to Tyttenhanger House, near St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Tyttenhanger House in 1840
Agneta Yorke, mezzotint by John Boydell after Francis Coates, 1768