Charles Yorke

Charles Yorke PC (30 December 172220 January 1770) was briefly Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. His father was also Lord Chancellor, and he began his career as a Member of Parliament. He served successively as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for several governments, during which he was best known for writing what became the Quebec Act. He was appointed Lord Chancellor over his objections, but he committed suicide only three days after taking the post. Life The second son of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, he was born in London, and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His literary abilities were shown at an early age by his collaboration with his brother Philip in the Athenian Letters. 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. In the following year he was called to the bar. 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. He quickly made his mark in the House of Commons, one of his earliest speeches being in favour of his father's reform of the marriage law that led to the Marriage Act 1753. In 1750 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 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.