TOWNSHEND, George, first Marquis, soldier, born in Norfolk, England, 28 February, 1724; died 14 September, 1807. He was the eldest son of the third Viscount Townshend, whom he succeeded in May, 1767. He entered the British army at an early age, and took part in the battles of Dettingen, Fontenoy, Culloden, and Laffeldt. In 1747 he entered parliament. He went out to Canada in 1759 as brigadier-general, and commanded a division under Wolfe, succeeding that officer in command when Wolfe fell at Quebec. Five days later he received the capitulation of the city. He then returned to England, was present at the battle of Fellinghausen in 1761, and served in Portugal in 1762. He became a privy councillor after succeeding to the title, and was lord-lieutenant of Ireland from 1767 till 1772. He was master-general of the ordnance in the latter year, and was created Earl of Leicester in 1784 and Marquis Townshend in 1787. He was a man of "quick perception but unsafe judgment." He is said to have received the capitulation of Quebec as though the achievement had been his own, and in his official report of the battle he omitted the name of Wolfe, whom he indirectly censured. Hurrying away from the citadel, which he believed to be untenable, he returned home, and was soon engaged in assisting his brother Charles in the latter's attempt to make the colonies submit to an odious system of taxation.--His brother, Charles, statesman, born in England, 29 August, 1725 ; died there, 4 September, 1767, entered parliament when only twenty-two years old, and soon achieved a brilliant reputation as an orator and a supporter of the Pelham administration. He was appointed a commissioner of trade and plantations in 1749, and a commissioner for executing the office of lord high admiral in 1751; was a lord of the admiralty in 1754, and treasurer of the chamber and member of the privy council in 1756. From 1761 till 1763 he was secretary of war, and in February of the latter year he was made first lord of trade and plantations. He was subsequently paymaster of the forces and chancellor of the exchequer. From the period of his introduction to office through the commission for the colonies, Townshend made a special study of American affairs. His plan for governing the American colonies was to extract as large a revenue as possible from them by onerous imposts levied without the slightest regard to their rights. In 1765 he had heartily supported Grenville's stamp-act, although he subsequently voted for its repeal, and was in favor of burdening the colonies with an expensive civil list and a standing army. He was also of opinion that the various charters that had been granted to them at different times, and which every ministry of Charles II. had spared, should be annulled, a uniform system of government set up in their stead, and the royal governors, judges, and attorneys made independent of the people. " I would govern the Americans," he said, " as subjects of Great Britain. I would restrain their trade and their manufactures as subordinate to the mother country. These, our children, must not make themselves our allies in time of war and our rivals in peace." The eclipse of Chatham in March, 1767, left Townshend, who had been chancellor of the exchequer since the preceding August, and whom Chatham had vainly endeavored to have dismissed from office, " lord of the ascendant." From that moment he ruled the ministry in all matters relating to America, and succeeded in carrying through parliament a bill taxing the colonies that was far more burdensome than the stamp-act that had nearly created a revolution. Thus the latter left the civil officers dependent on the local legislatures, and preserved the proceeds of the American tax in the exchequer. The revenue collected under Townshend's bill, on the other hand, was to be under the sign manual at the king's pleasure, and could be burdened at will by pensions to Englishmen. By providing an independent support for the crown officers, it virtually did away with the necessity for colonial legislatures, as governors would have little inducement to call them, and an angry minister might dissolve them without inconvenience. When it was suggested to Townshend that the army might perhaps be safely withdrawn from America, in which case expense would cease and no revenue be necessary, he replied: "The moment a resolution shall be taken to withdraw the army, I will resign my office and have no more to do in public affairs. I insist it is absolutely necessary to keep up a large army there and here." Townshend only lived a few months after the successful passage of his bill, which, by its tax on tea and similar imports, lost England her colonies, and was about to be intrusted with the formation of a new ministry, when he was suddenly carried off by a fever at the early age of forty-one. " He was," says Bancroft, "a man of wonderful endowments, dashed with follies and indiscretion Impatient of waiting, his ruling passion was present success In the house of commons his brilliant oratory took its inspiration from the prevailing opinion ; and, careless of consistency, heedless of whom he deserted or whom he joined, he followed the floating indications of the loudest cheers." He had been courted by all parties, but never possessed the confidence of any. If his indiscretion forbade esteem, his good humor dissipated hate. He had clear conceptions, great knowledge of every branch of administration, and indefatigable assiduity in business. Burke styled him " the delight and ornament of the house of commons, and the charm of every private society that he honored with his presence." Macaulay refers to him as "a man of splendid talents, of lax principles, and of boundless vanity and presumption," who " would submit to no control." See his "Essay on the Earl of Chatham" and "Charles Townshend, Wit and Statesman," by Percy Fitzgerald (London, 1866).--Another brother, Roger, British soldier, born in England about 1730; died near Ticonderoga, New York, 25 July, 1759, entered the army at an early age, and became a lieutenant-colonel on 1 February, 1758. He served as adjutant-general of the expeditionary force that was sent against Louis-burg, was deputy adjutant-general of General Sir Jeffrey Amherst's expedition against Fort Ticonderoga, and was killed there in the trenches by a cannon-ball, and taken to Albany for burial.