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TALBOT, Sir Charles, 2nd Bt. (1751-1812), of Mickleham and Chart Park, nr. Dorking, Surr.
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Family and Education
b. 8 Nov. 1751, 1st s. of Sir Charles Henry Talbot, 1st Bt., of Mickleham, and Belfast, co. Antrim by Anne, da. of Thomas Hassell of St. Pancras, Mdx. educ. M. Temple 1768. unm. suc. fa. as 2nd Bt. 10 June 1798; cos. Elizabeth Cornewall, da. and h. of gt.-uncle Henry Talbot (?1700-84), to Chart Park 1802.
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Biography
Talbot’s father, grandson of William Talbot, bishop of Durham 1721-30, and nephew of Charles, Lord Talbot, lord chancellor 1733-7, was described in 1806 as a lawyer (he had entered the Middle Temple in 1750) who ‘repaired occasionally to Ireland, for the purpose of improving the estates of some of the great landowners there, in which capacity he at once acquired wealth and reputation’.1 He became agent and election manager to the 5th Earl of Donegall, over whom he was said to exercise an ascendancy amounting to ‘perfect dominion’. His Irish baronetcy was conferred on him in 1790 as a means of attaching to government the four Members returned to the Irish house of commons on Donegall’s interest.2 He bought the Mickleham estate in 1779.3
Sir Charles Talbot was returned for Lord Bath’s pocket borough of Weobley on a vacancy in 1800 as a supporter of administration. He failed to find a seat in 1802, though evidently had designs on one for Lord Radnor’s borough of Downton.4 The following year he came in for the Treasury borough of Rye on the vacancy created when Robert Banks Jenkinson, Addington’s Foreign secretary, was summoned to the Lords. Listed under ‘Addington’ in March 1804, he apparently supported the ministry to the end and thereafter was a recognized, if unobtrusive member of Addington’s parliamentary squad. He voted against the second reading of Pitt’s additional force bill, 8 June 1804, but was shut out of the division of 11 June.5 When Addington (now Lord Sidmouth) was reconciled with Pitt in January 1805, Talbot began to support the ministry and voted with them against the censure of Melville, 8 Apr.; but, like most of the Addingtonians, he voted for the criminal prosecution of Melville, 12 June 1805. Sidmouth’s inclusion in the Grenville ministry assured them of Talbot’s support. He voted for their repeal of Pitt’s Additional Force Act, 30 Apr. 1806, but no seat was found for him at the general election later in the year. He is not known to have spoken in the House.
In 1812, when Sidmouth was back in office, Talbot was returned on the Kenrick interest for Bletchingley, which lay about eight miles from his Surrey property, but he died 3 Nov. 1812, three weeks before the new Parliament met.
