He was born in Wiltshire, eldest surviving son and heir of Sir Henry Long of Draycot, and his wife Eleanor Wrottesley.
He was given the manor of Calstone near Calne in 1538 in a grant by Henry VIII, and at least part of this land was still controlled by the Long family in 1704, when the rent from one farm called Tossells was used for a Draycot charity.
Sir Charles Danvers developed a close friendship with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and served under him in Ireland, later taking a prominent part in the revolt there.
The Danvers brothers got away and took refuge with their friend Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton at his seat, Whitley Lodge near Titchfield, who happened to be in the midst of his twenty-first birthday celebrations.
According to historian John Aubrey, immediately after the murder of her son Henry, Lady Barbara Long, by then a widow and possibly a lady at court, informed the Queen of the 'verie strange owtrage committed by Sir Charles Danvers and Sir Henrie Danvers, Knights', although no indictment was ever preferred against them by either the Long family or the state.